The Making of The West Peoples and Cultures Compress

How to Improve Your Grade
in Your History Class

START
Great. Start
by pre-
reading the
Yes Did you buy the no
book?
chapter.
Start with
the Chapter
Focus
Buy the book and/or LaunchPad
question
(launchpadworks.com).
at the end
of the
introduction. Now, read the chapter carefully.
Stay focused.
As you read, take notes. Focus on

the main ideas of each section,
usually found in the first paragraph
of the section. Focus on each
section’s Review Question.
Once you have read the chapter, go back
and review the chapter. Answer the
Making Connections Questions.
Did your
instructor assign or did you
Yes buy LaunchPad with your no
book?
Great. Go to the book’s Focus on the Chapter
LaunchPad site and Review section at the
complete the adaptive, end of each chapter.
interactive LearningCurve
activity for the chapter.
Did your
instructor give you any
Yes assignments to complete in no
LaunchPad?
Great. You’ll find that LaunchPad
provides a lot of support for Review the main ideas of each
completing your assignments. section and the Key Terms listed
at the end of the chapter.
You are on Your waY to a better Grade

In Your HIstorY Class!
launchpadworks.com
At Macmillan Education, we are committed to providing online resources

that meet the needs of instructors and students in powerful yet simple ways.
LaunchPad, our course space, offers our trusted content and student-friendly
approach, organized for easy assignability in a simple user interface.
• Interactive e-Book: The e-book for The Making of the West comes with
powerful study tools, multimedia content, and easy customization for
instructors. Students can search, highlight, and bookmark, making it
easier to study.
• LearningCurve: Game-like adaptive quizzing motivates students to
engage with their course, and reporting tools help teachers identify the
needs of their students.
• Easy to Start: Pre-built, curated units are easy to assign or adapt with
additional material, such as readings, videos, quizzes, discussion groups,
and more.
LaunchPad also provides access to a gradebook that offers a window into

students’ performance — either individually or as a whole. Use LaunchPad
on its own or integrate it with your school’s learning management system so
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‘The Orrery’, c.1766 (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–97) / Derby Museum and Art Gallery, UK /
Bridgeman Images.
FIFTH EDITION
The Making of the West

Peoples and Cultures
Lynn Hunt
University of California, Los Angeles
Thomas R. Martin
College of the Holy Cross
Barbara H. Rosenwein
Loyola University Chicago
Bonnie G. Smith
Rutgers University
Bedford/St. Martin’s
A Macmillan Education Imprint
Boston • New York

For Bedford / St. Martin’s
Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Higher Education Humanities: Edwin Hill
Publisher for History: Michael Rosenberg
Senior Executive Editor for History and Technology: William J. Lombardo
Director of Development for History: Jane Knetzger
Developmental Editor: Kathryn Abbott
Senior Production Editor: Kerri A. Cardone
Senior Production Supervisor: Jennifer Wetzel
Executive Marketing Manager: Sandra McGuire
Associate Editor: Emily DiPietro
Editorial Assistant: Lexi DeConti
Copyeditor: Lisa Wehrle
Indexer: Leoni Z. McVey, McVey & Associates, Inc.
Cartography: Mapping Specialists, Limited
Photo Researcher: Bruce Carson
Director of Rights and Permissions: Hilary Newman
Senior Art Director: Anna Palchik
Text Designer: Lisa Buckley
Cover Designer: William Boardman
Composition: Jouve
Printing and Binding: RR Donnelley and Sons
Copyright © 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007 by Bedford / St. Martin’s. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes
or in writing by the Publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
0 9 8 7 6 5
f e d c b a
For information, write: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617-399-4000)
ISBN 978–1-4576-8143-1 (Combined Edition) ISBN 978-1-319-02752-0 (Combined Loose-leaf Edition)
ISBN 978–1-4576-8152-3 (Volume I) ISBN 978-1-319-02753-7 (Loose-leaf Edition, Volume 1)
ISBN 978–1-4576-8153-0 (Volume II) ISBN 978-1-319-02754-4 (Loose-leaf Edition, Volume 2)
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the text and art selections they cover; these
acknowledgments and copyrights constitute an extension of the copyright page. It is a violation of the law to
reproduce these selections by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Preface: Why This Book This Way
W
e are delighted to present the fifth edition of The Making of the West:
Peoples and Cultures. With this edition, The Making of the West moves
fully into the digital age, and we are proud and excited to offer a whole
new way of teaching and learning western civilization. At the same time, we have
stayed true to the fundamental approach that has made this book a popular choice for
instructors and students alike. We continue to link the history of the West to wider
developments in the world. We continue to offer a synthetic approach to history —
from military to gender — that integrates different approaches rather than privileging
one or two. And we continue to believe that students benefit from a solid chronologi-
cal framework when they are trying to understand events of the past. This new edi-
tion is priced affordably, to save your students money and keep your overall course
budget manageable. If you have been a user of the comprehensive edition of The Mak-
ing of the West, you will find the complete feature program available in LaunchPad, as
described below. If you were previously a user of the concise edition, you and your
students also have access to the full feature program in LaunchPad. In addition to the
features, LaunchPad is loaded with the full-color e-book plus LearningCurve, an
adaptive learning tool; the popular Sources of the Making of the West documents col-
lection; additional primary sources; a wealth of assessment tools; chapter summa-
tive quizzes; and more.
A Book for the Digital Age

Because we know that the classroom and the world are changing rapidly, we are excited
to offer The Making of the West along with a full feature program in Bedford’s learning
platform, known as LaunchPad, an intuitive new interactive e-book and course space.
LaunchPad is ready to use as is, or can be edited and customized with your own mate-
rial, and assigned right away.
Developed with extensive feedback from history instructors and students, Launch-
Pad includes the complete narrative of the print book, the companion reader Sources
of the Making of the West, by Katharine Lualdi, LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, and
v
vi Preface: Why This Book This Way
a full suite of skill-building features, all of which will be familiar to users of the com-
prehensive edition of The Making of the West and are now made available for the first
time to users of the concise edition
The adaptive learning tool known as LearningCurve is designed to get students to
read before they come to class. With LearningCurve students move through questions
based on the narrative text at their own pace and accumulate points as they go in a
game-like fashion. Feedback for incorrect responses explains why the answer is incor-
rect and directs students back to the text to review. The end result is a better under-
standing of the key elements of the text.
The LaunchPad e-book features five unique skill-building features. Four of these
features appear in every chapter in LaunchPad. They extend the narrative by revealing
the process of interpretation, providing a solid introduction to historical argument
and critical thinking, and capturing the excitement of historical investigation.
■ Primary Sources — at least two per chapter — give students a more direct expe-
rience of the past through original voices. Whether it is Frederick Barbaraossa
replying to the Romans when they offer him the emperor’s crown, Marie de
Sévigne’s description of the French court, or an ordinary person’s account of the
outbreak of the Russian Revolution, primary documents offer a window into
the thoughts and actions of the past. Each document is accompanied by a short,
auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
■ Contrasting Views compares two or more often conflicting primary sources
focused on a central event, person, or development — such as Roman attitudes
toward Cleopatra, the Mongols, the consumer revolution of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and decolonization in Africa — enabling students to understand history
from a variety of contemporaneous perspectives. Each feature contains analyti-
cal questions along with an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
■ Seeing History guides students through the process of reading images as his-
torical evidence. Each one provides either a single image or paired images for
comparison and contrast, with background information, and questions that
encourage visual analysis. It also has an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
■ Taking Measure introduces students to quantitative analysis in every chapter.
Each highlights a chart, table, graph, or map of historical statistics that illumi-
nates an important political, social, or cultural development. Topics include the
distances covered by Alexander the Great’s army, the expansion of the printing
press to 1500, and wartime production of the major powers during the Second
World War. Each comes with a question for analysis and an auto-graded multiple-
choice quiz.
■ Terms of History appears in 11 of the chapters and looks not only at the origin
of a term — such as civilization, renaissance, progress, and globalization — but
also at the changing meaning of the term over time, which further underscores
historical skill building. The feature comes with an auto-graded multiple-choice
quiz.
Preface: Why This Book Contents
This Way vii
About The Making of the West

Even with all the exciting digital changes, our primary goal remains the same: to dem-
onstrate that the history of the West is the story of an ongoing process, not a finished
result with one fixed meaning. No one Western people or culture has existed from the
beginning until now. Instead, the history of the West includes many different peoples
and cultures. To convey these ideas, we have written a sustained story of the West’s
development in a broad, global context that reveals the cross-cultural interactions fun-
damental to the shaping of Western politics, societies, cultures, and economies. Indeed,
the first chapter opens with a section on the origins and contested meaning of the term
Western civilization.
Chronological Framework
We know from our own teaching that introductory students need a solid chronological
framework, one with enough familiar benchmarks to make the material easy to grasp.
Each chapter is organized around the main events, people, and themes of a period in
which the West significantly changed; thus, students learn about political and mili-
tary events and social and cultural developments as they unfolded. This chronological
integration also makes it possible for students to see the interconnections among
varieties of historical experience — between politics and cultures, between public
events and private experiences, between wars and diplomacy and everyday life. For
teachers, our chronological approach ensures a balanced account and provides the
opportunity to present themes within their greater context. But perhaps best of all, this
approach provides a text that reveals history as a process that is constantly alive, sub-
ject to pressures, and able to surprise us.
An Expanded Vision of the West

Cultural borrowing between the peoples of Europe and their neighbors has character-
ized Western civilization from the beginning. Thus, we have insisted on an expanded
vision of the West that includes the United States and fully incorporates Scandinavia,
eastern Europe, and the Ottoman Empire. Now this vision encompasses an even wider
global context than before, as Latin America, Africa, China, Japan, and India also
come into the story. We have been able to offer sustained treatment of crucial topics
such as Islam and to provide a more thorough examination of globalization than any
competing text. Study of Western history provides essential background to today’s
events, from debates over immigration to conflicts in the Middle East. Instructors have
found this synthesis essential for helping students understand the West amid today’s
globalization.
Updated Scholarship
As always, we have also incorporated the latest scholarly findings throughout the book
so that students and instructors alike have a text on which they can confidently rely. In
viii Preface: Why This Book This Way
the fifth edition, we have included new and updated discussions of topics such as fresh
archaeological evidence for the possible role of religion in stimulating the major changes
of the Neolithic Revolution; the dating of the Great Sphinx in Egypt, the scholarly
debate that could radically change our ideas of the earliest Egyptian history; the newest
thinking on the origins of Islam; the crucial issues in the Investiture Conflict between
pope and emperor; the impact of the Great Famine of the fourteenth century; the slave
trade, especially its continuation into the nineteenth century; and the ways in which
scholars are considering recent events within the context of the new digital world.
Study Aids to Support Active Reading and Learning

We know from our own teaching that students need all the help they can get in absorbing
and making sense of information, thinking analytically, and understanding that history
itself is often debated and constantly revised. With these goals in mind, we retained the
class-tested learning and teaching aids that worked well in the previous editions, but we
have also done more to help students distill the central story of each age.
Focused Reading
Each chapter begins with a vivid anecdote that draws readers into the atmosphere of
the period and introduces the chapter’s main themes, accompanied by a full-page
illustration. The Chapter Focus poses an overarching question at the start of the nar-
rative to help guide students’ reading. Strategically placed at the end of each major
section, a Review Question helps students assimilate core points in digestible incre-
ments. Key Terms and names that appear in boldface in the text have been updated to
concentrate on likely test items; these terms are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms
and People at the end of the book.
Reviewing the Chapter

At the end of each chapter, the Conclusion further reinforces the central develop-
ments covered in the chapter. The newly designed Chapter Review begins by asking
students to revisit the key terms, identifying each and explaining its significance.
Review Questions are also presented again so that students can revisit the chapter’s
core points. Making Connections questions then follow and prompt students to think
across the sections of a given chapter. A chronology of Important Events enables stu-
dents to see the sequence and overlap of important events in a given period and asks
students a guiding question that links two or more events in the chapter. Finally, a list
of author-selected Suggested References directs students to print and online resources
for further investigation.
Geographic Literacy
The map program of The Making of the West has been praised by reviewers for its com-
prehensiveness. In each chapter, we offer three types of maps, each with a distinct role
Preface: Why This Book Contents
This Way ix
in conveying information to students. Up to five full-size maps show major develop-

ments, up to four “spot” maps — small maps positioned within the discussion right
where students need them — serve as immediate locators, and Mapping the West sum-
mary maps at the end of each chapter provide a snapshot of the West at the close of a
transformative period and help students visualize the West’s changing contours over
time. In this edition, we have added new maps and carefully considered each of the
existing maps, simplifying where possible to better highlight essential information,
and clarifying and updating borders and labels where needed.
Images and Illustrations

We have integrated art as fully as possible into the narrative. Over 240 images and
illustrations were carefully chosen to reflect this edition’s broad topical coverage and
geographic inclusion, reinforce the text, and show the varieties of visual sources from
which historians build their narratives and interpretations. All artifacts, illustrations,
paintings, and photographs are contemporaneous with the chapter; there are no
anachronistic illustrations. The captions for the maps and art help students learn how
to read visuals, and we have frequently included specific questions or suggestions for
comparisons that might be developed.
Acknowledgments
In the vital process of revision, the authors have benefited from repeated critical read-
ings by many talented scholars and teachers. Our sincere thanks go to the following
instructors, whose comments often challenged us to rethink or justify our interpreta-
tions and who always provided a check on accuracy down to the smallest detail:
Stephen Andrews, Central New Mexico Community College; David Bachrach,
University of New Hampshire; Curtis Bostick, Southern Utah University; Fedja Buric,
Bellarmine University; Marie Therese Champagne, University of West Florida; Sviato-
slav Dmitriev, Ball State University; Gabrielle Everett, Jefferson College; William Grose,
Wytheville Community College; Elizabeth Heath, Baruch College-CUNY; Kevin Her-
lihy, University of Central Florida; Renzo Honores, High Point University; Chris Laney,
Berkshire Community College; Christina Bosco Langert, Suffolk Community College;
Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Cleveland State University; James Martin, Campbell University;
Walter Miszczenko, College of Western Idaho; Yvonne Rivera, Montgomery County
Community College; David Pizzo, Murray State University; Kevin Robbins, Indiana
University/Purdue University; James Robertson, College of San Mateo; Brian Rutishauser,
Fresno City College; Charles Levine, Mesa Community College; Lisa Ossian, Des Moines
Area Community College; Ruma Salhi, Northern Virginia Community College; Christo-
pher Sleeper, Mira Costa College; Allison Stein, Pellissippi State Community College;
Pamela Stewart, Arizona State University; Nancy Vavra, University of Colorado at Boul-
der; K. Steven Vincent, North Carolina State University; and Joanna Vitiello, Rockhurst
University.
x ContentsWhy This Book This Way
Preface:
Many colleagues, friends, and family members have made contributions to this
work. They know how grateful we are. We also wish to acknowledge and thank the
publishing team at Bedford/St. Martin’s who did so much to bring this revised edition
to completion: editorial director Edwin Hill; publisher for history Michael Rosenberg;
director of development for history Jane Knetzger; developmental editor Kathryn Ab-
bott; associate editor Emily DiPietro; editorial assistant Lexi DeConti; senior market-
ing manager Sandra McGuire; senior production editor Kerri Cardone; art researcher
Bruce Carson; text designer Lisa Buckley; cover designer Billy Boardman; and copy-
editor Lisa Wehrle.
Our students’ questions and concerns have shaped much of this work, and we
welcome all our readers’ suggestions, queries, and criticisms. Please contact us at our
respective institutions or via history@macmillanhighered.com.
Versions and Supplements
A
dopters of The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures and their students
have access to abundant print and digital resources and tools, the acclaimed
Bedford Series in History and Culture volumes, and much more. The Launch-
Pad course space for The Making of the West provides access to the narrative as well as
a wealth of primary sources and other features, along with assignment and assessment
opportunities at the ready. See below for more information, visit the book’s catalog site
at macmillanhighered.com/hunt/catalog, or contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s
sales representative.
Get the Right Version for Your Class

To accommodate different course lengths and course budgets, The Making of the West
is available in several different formats, including 3-hole-punched loose-leaf Budget
Books versions and low-priced PDF e-books. And for the best value of all, package a
new print book with LaunchPad to get the best each format offers — a print version for
easy portability and reading with a LaunchPad interactive e-book and course space
with loads of additional assignment and assessment options.
■ Combined Volume (Chapters 1–29): available in paperback, loose-leaf, and
e-book formats and in LaunchPad.
■ Volume 1: To 1750 (Chapters 1–17): available in paperback, loose-leaf, and
e-book formats and in LaunchPad
■ Volume 2: Since 1500 (Chapters 14–29): available in paperback, loose-leaf, and
e-book formats and in LaunchPad
As noted below, any of these volumes can be packaged with additional titles for a dis-
count. To get ISBNs for discount packages, see the online catalog at
macmillanhighered.com/hunt/catalog or contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s repre-
sentative.
xi
xii Versions and Supplements
Assign LaunchPad — an Assessment-Ready

Interactive e-book and Course Space.
Available for discount purchase on its own or for packaging with new books, LaunchPad
is a breakthrough solution for today’s courses. Intuitive and easy-to-use for students
and instructors alike, LaunchPad is ready to use as is, and can be edited, customized
with your own material, and assigned in seconds. LaunchPad for The Making of the
West includes Bedford/St. Martin’s high-quality content all in one place, including the
full interactive e-book and the companion reader Sources of The Making of the West, by
Katharine Lualdi, plus LearningCurve formative quizzing, guided reading activities
designed to help students read actively for key concepts, additional primary sources,
including auto-graded source-based questions to build skill development, chapter sum-
mative quizzes, and more.
Through a wealth of formative and summative assessments, including the adap-
tive learning program of LearningCurve (see the full description ahead), students gain
confidence and get into their reading before class. In addition to LearningCurve, we
are delighted to offer a full skill-building feature program to accompany the print
book. Each chapter in LaunchPad has at least two primary source documents, a “Con-
trasting Views” feature that compares two or more primary sources, a “Seeing History”
visual analysis of one or more images, and “Taking Measure” focuses on quantitative
analysis. Each of these features is accompanied by analytical questions and auto-
graded quizzes. These LaunchPad features do for skill development what Learning-
Curve does for content mastery and reading comprehension.
LaunchPad easily integrates with course management systems, and with fast ways
to build assignments, rearrange chapters, and add new pages, sections, or links, it lets
teachers build the courses they want to teach and hold students accountable. For more
information, visit launchpadworks.com or to arrange a demo, contact us at history@
macmillanhighered.com.
Assign LearningCurve So Your Students

Come to Class Prepared
Students using LaunchPad receive access to LearningCurve for The Making of the West.
Assigning LearningCurve in place of reading quizzes is easy for instructors, and the
reporting features help instructors track overall class trends and spot topics that are
giving students trouble so they can adjust their lectures and class activities. This online
learning tool is popular with students because it was designed to help them rehearse
content at their own pace in a nonthreatening, game-like environment. The feedback
for wrong answers provides instructional coaching and sends students back to the
book for review. Students answer as many questions as necessary to reach a target
score, with repeated chances to revisit material they haven’t mastered. When Learn-
ingCurve is assigned, students come to class better prepared.
Versions and Supplements
Contents xiii
Take Advantage of Instructor Resources

Bedford/St. Martin’s has developed a rich array of teaching resources for this book and
for this course. They range from lecture and presentation materials and assessment
tools to course management options. Most can be found in LaunchPad or can be down-
loaded or ordered at macmillanhighered.com/hunt/catalog.
Bedford Coursepack for Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or Moodle. We can help you inte-
grate our rich content into your course management system. Registered instructors
can download coursepacks that include our popular free resources and book-specific
content for The Making of the West. Visit macmillanhighered.com/cms to find your
version or download your coursepack.
Instructor’s Resource Manual. The instructor’s manual offers both experienced and
first-time instructors tools for presenting textbook material in engaging ways. It
includes content learning objectives, annotated chapter outlines, and strategies for
teaching with the textbook, plus suggestions on how to get the most out of Learning-
Curve and a survival guide for first-time teaching assistants.
Online Test Bank. The test bank includes a mix of fresh, carefully crafted multiple-
choice, matching, short-answer, and essay questions for each chapter. All questions
appear in Microsoft Word format and in easy-to-use test bank software that allows
instructors to add, edit, re-sequence, and print questions and answers. Instructors can
also export questions into a variety of course management systems.
The Bedford Lecture Kit: Lecture Outlines, Maps, and Images. Look good and save time
with The Bedford Lecture Kit. These presentation materials are downloadable individu-
ally from the Instructor Resources tab at macmillanhighed.com/huntconcise/catalog.
They include fully customizable multimedia presentations built around chapter out-
lines that are embedded with maps, figures, and images from the textbook and are
supplemented by more detailed instructor notes on key points and concepts.
Package and Save Your Students Money

For information on free packages and discounts up to 50%, visit macmillanhighered
.com/hunt/catalog, or contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative.
The products that follow all qualify for discount packaging.
Sources of The Making of the West, Fourth Edition. This companion sourcebook pro-
vides written and visual sources to accompany each chapter of The Making of the West.
Political, social, and cultural documents offer a variety of perspectives that comple-
ment the textbook and encourage students to make connections between narrative his-
tory and primary sources. To aid students in approaching and interpreting documents,
xiv Versions and Supplements
each chapter contains an introduction, document headnotes, and questions for discus-
sion. Now with a chapter organization that matches the textbook, this reader is avail-
able free when packaged with the print text.
Sources of The Making of the West e-Book. The reader is also available as an e-book.
When packaged with the print or electronic version of the textbook, it is available
for free.
The Bedford Series in History and Culture. More than 100 titles in this highly praised
series combine first-rate scholarship, historical narrative, and important primary doc-
uments for undergraduate courses. Each book is brief, inexpensive, and focused on
a specific topic or period. For a complete list of titles, visit bedfordstmartins.com
/history/series.
Rand McNally Atlas of Western Civilization. This collection of almost seventy full-
color maps illustrates the eras and civilizations in world history from the emergence of
human societies to the present.
Trade Books. Titles published by sister companies Hill and Wang; Farrar, Straus and
Giroux; Henry Holt and Company; St. Martin’s Press; Picador; and Palgrave Macmil-
lan are available at a 50% discount when packaged with Bedford/St. Martin’s textbooks.
For more information, visit macmillanhighered.com/tradeup.
A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. This portable and affordable reference tool by
Mary Lynn Rampolla provides reading, writing, and research advice useful to students
in all history courses. Concise yet comprehensive advice on approaching typical his-
tory assignments, developing critical reading skills, writing effective history papers,
conducting research, using and documenting sources, and avoiding plagiarism —
enhanced with practical tips and examples throughout — have made this slim refer-
ence a best-seller.
A Student’s Guide to History. This complete guide to success in any history course
provides the practical help students need to be successful. In addition to introducing
students to the nature of the discipline, author Jules Benjamin teaches a wide range of
skills from preparing for exams to approaching common writing assignments, and
explains the research and documentation process with plentiful examples.
Brief Contents
1 Early Western Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 3

2 Near East Empires and the Reemergence of Civilization in Greece,
1000–500 b.c.e. 41
3 The Greek Golden Age, c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e. 77
4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World, 400–30 b.c.e. 113
5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic, 753–44 b.c.e. 143
6 The Creation of the Roman Empire, 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e. 175
7 The Transformation of the Roman Empires, 284–600 c.e. 211
8 The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe, 600–750 249
9 From Centralization to Fragmentation, 750–1050 279
10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform, 1050–1150 313
11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages, 1150–1215 347
12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks, 1215–1340 379
13 Crisis and Renaissance, 1340–1492 409
14 Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation, 1492–1560 441
15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews, 1560–1648 473
16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order, 1640–1700 505
17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences, 1700–1750 541
18 The Promise of Enlightenment, 1750–1789 575
19 The Cataclysm of Revolution, 1789–1799 607
20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy, 1800–1830 639
21 Industrialization and Social Ferment, 1830–1850 673
22 Politics and Culture of the Nation-State, 1850–1870 709
23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life, 1870–1890 745
24 Modernity and the Road to War, 1890–1914 783
25 World War I and Its Aftermath, 1914–1929 821
26 The Great Depression and World War II, 1929–1945 859
27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe, 1945–1960s 899
28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order, 1960s–1989 937
29 A New Globalism, 1989 to the Present 973
xv
Contents
‘The Orrery’, c.1766 (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–97) / Derby
Museum and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman Images.
Preface v
Versions and Supplements xi
Maps and Figures xlvi
LaunchPad Features li
Authors’ Note: The b.c.e./c.e. Dating System lvi
World Map lviii
Map of Europe lx
xvi
Contents xvii
Egyptian Museum, Cairo / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 1
Early Western Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 3
From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 4

Life and Change in the Stone Age 4 ■ The Emergence of Cities in
Mesopotamia, 4000–2350 b.c.e. 8 ■ Metals and Empire Making:
The Akkadians and the Ur III Dynasty, c. 2350–c. 2000 b.c.e. 12 ■
The Achievements of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Canaanites,
2000–1000 b.c.e. 13
Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e. 15

From the Unification of Egypt to the Old Kingdom, 3050–2190 b.c.e. 16 ■
The Middle and New Kingdoms in Egypt, 2061–1081 b.c.e. 22
The Hittites, the Minoans, and the Mycenaeans, 2200–1000 b.c.e. 26

The Hittites, 1750–1200 b.c.e. 27 ■ The Minoans, 2200–1400 b.c.e. 28
■ The Mycenaeans, 1800–1000 b.c.e. 31 ■ The Violent End to Early
Western Civilization, 1200–1000 b.c.e. 34
Conclusion 36
Chapter 1 Review 38
xviii Contents
© The Trustees of the British

Museum / Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 2
Near East Empires and the Reemergence of
Civilization in Greece, 1000–500 b.c.e. 41
From Dark Age to Empire in the Near East, 1000–500 b.c.e. 42
The New Empire of Assyria, 900–600 b.c.e. 43 ■ The Neo-Babylonian
Empire, 600–539 b.c.e. 43 ■ The Persian Empire, 557–500 b.c.e. 44 ■
The Israelites, Origins to 539 b.c.e. 46
The Reemergence of Greek Civilization, 1000–750 b.c.e. 50

The Greek Dark Age 50 ■ The Values of the Olympic Games 52 ■
Homer, Hesiod, and Divine Justice in Greek Myth 53
The Creation of the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 54

The Physical Environment of the Greek City-State 55 ■ Trade and
“Colonization,” 800–580 b.c.e. 55 ■ Citizenship and Freedom in the Greek
City-State 56
New Directions for the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 64

Oligarchy in the City-State of Sparta, 700–500 b.c.e. 64 ■ Tyranny in the
City-State of Corinth, 657–585 b.c.e. 67 ■ Democracy in the City-State of
Athens, 632–500 b.c.e. 68 ■ New Ways of Thought and Expression in
Greece, 630–500 b.c.e. 70
Conclusion 73
Chapter 2 Review 74
Contents xix
The Triptolemos Painter / © National Museums of Scotland / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 3
The Greek Golden Age, c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e. 77
Wars between Persia and Greece, 499–479 b.c.e. 78

From the Ionian Revolt to the Battle of Marathon, 499–490 b.c.e. 78 ■
The Great Persian Invasion, 480–479 b.c.e. 80
Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 b.c.e. 81

The Establishment of the Athenian Empire 81 ■ Radical Democracy
and Pericles’ Leadership, 461–431 b.c.e. 83 ■ The Urban Landscape in
Athens 85
Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 89

Religious Tradition in a Period of Change 89 ■ Women, Slaves, and
Metics 90 ■ Innovative Ideas in Education, Philosophy, History,
and Medicine 93 ■ The Development of Greek Tragedy 99 ■
The Development of Greek Comedy 102
The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e. 104

The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 b.c.e. 104 ■ Athens Defeated: Tyranny
and Civil War, 404–403 b.c.e. 107
Conclusion 108
Chapter 3 Review 110

xx Contents
Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 4
From the Classical to the Hellenistic World,
400–30 b.c.e. 113
Classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War, 400–350 b.c.e. 114
Athens’s Recovery after the Peloponnesian War 114 ■ The Execution of
Socrates, 399 b.c.e. 116 ■ The Philosophy of Plato 116 ■ Aristotle,
Scientist and Philosopher 118 ■ Greek Political Disunity 118
The Rise of Macedonia, 359–323 b.c.e. 119

Macedonian Power and Philip II, 359–336 b.c.e. 119 ■ The Rule of
Alexander the Great, 336–323 b.c.e. 120
The Hellenistic Kingdoms, 323–30 b.c.e. 122

Creating New Kingdoms 123 ■ The Layers of Hellenistic Society 126 ■
The End of the Hellenistic Kingdoms 128
Hellenistic Culture 129

The Arts under Royal Support 129 ■ Philosophy for a New Age 131 ■
Scientific Innovation 133 ■ Cultural and Religious Transformations 135
Conclusion 138

Contents xxi
Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 5
The Rise of Rome and Its Republic, 753–44 b.c.e. 143
Roman Social and Religious Traditions 144

Roman Moral Values 144 ■ The Patron-Client System 145 ■ The Roman
Family 146 ■ Education for Public Life 148 ■ Public and Private
Religion 148
From Monarchy to Republic 150

Roman Society under the Kings, 753–509 b.c.e. 150 ■ The Early Roman
Republic, 509–287 b.c.e. 152
Roman Imperialism and Its Consequences 156

Expansion in Italy, 500–220 b.c.e. 156 ■ Wars with Carthage and in the East,
264–121 b.c.e. 158 ■ Greek Influence on Roman Literature and the Arts 160
■ Stresses on Society from Imperialism 161
Civil War and the Destruction of the Republic 163

The Gracchus Brothers and Violence in Politics, 133–121 b.c.e. 163 ■ Marius
and the Origin of Client Armies, 107–100 b.c.e. 164 ■ Sulla and Civil War,
91–78 b.c.e. 165 ■ Julius Caesar and the Collapse of the Republic, 83–44
b.c.e. 167
Conclusion 170

xxii Contents
Museo Arqueologico Nacional, Madrid, Spain / De Agostini Picture Library /

Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 6
The Creation of the Roman Empire,
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e. 175
From Republic to Empire, 44 b.c.e.–14 c.e. 176
Civil War, 44–27 b.c.e. 176 ■ The Creation of the Principate, 27 b.c.e.–
14 c.e. 177 ■ Daily Life in the Rome of Augustus 179 ■ Changes in
Education, Literature, and Art in Augustus’s Rome 182
Politics and Society in the Early Roman Empire 184

The Perpetuation of the Principate after Augustus, 14–180 c.e. 184 ■
Life in the Roman Golden Age, 96–180 c.e. 188
The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire 193

Jesus and His Teachings 193 ■ Growth of a New Religion 196 ■
Competing Religious Beliefs 199
From Stability to Crisis in the Third Century c.e. 202

Threats to the Northern and Eastern Frontiers of the Early Roman Empire 202
■ Uncontrolled Spending, Natural Disasters, and Political Crisis,
193–284 c.e. 203
Conclusion 205

Contents xxiii
Basilica di San Giovanni Battista, Monza, Italy / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 7
The Transformation of the Roman Empire,
284–600 c.e. 211
From Principate to Dominate in the Late Roman Empire, 284–395 212
The Political Transformation and Division of the Roman Empire 212 ■
The Social Consequences of Financial Pressures 215 ■ From the Great
Persecution to Religious Freedom 217
The Official Christianization of the Empire, 312–c. 540 218

Polytheism and Christianity in Competition 218 ■ The Struggle for
Clarification in Christian Belief 221 ■ The Emergence of Christian
Monks 226
Non-Roman Kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire, c. 370–550s 229

Non-Roman Migrations into the Western Roman Empire 229 ■
Social and Cultural Transformation in the Western Roman Empire 234
The Roman Empire in the East, c. 500–565 236

Imperial Society in the Eastern Roman Empire 236 ■ The Reign of Emperor
Justinian, 527–565 239 ■ The Preservation of Classical Traditions in the Late
Roman Empire 241
Conclusion 244

xxiv Contents
Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 8
The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe,
600–750 249
Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire 250
Nomads and City Dwellers 250 ■ The Prophet Muhammad and the Faith
of Islam 251 ■ Growth of Islam, c. 610–632 252 ■ The Caliphs,
Muhammad’s Successors, 632–750 253 ■ Peace and Prosperity in Islamic
Lands 255
Byzantium Besieged 257

Wars on the Frontiers, c. 570–750 257 ■ From an Urban to a Rural Way of
Life 259 ■ New Military and Cultural Forms 260 ■ Religion, Politics, and
Iconoclasm 260
Western Europe: A Medley of Kingdoms 262

Frankish Kingdoms with Roman Roots 262 ■ Economic Activity in a Peasant
Society 266 ■ The Powerful in Merovingian Society 267 ■ Christianity
and Classical Culture in the British Isles 270 ■ Unity in Spain, Division in
Italy 272 ■ Political Tensions and the Power of the Pope 273
Conclusion 274

Contents xxv
From the First Bible of Charles the Bald, c. 843–851 / Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
France / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 9
From Centralization to Fragmentation, 750–1050 279
The Byzantine Emperor and Local Elites 280

Imperial Power 281 ■ The Macedonian Renaissance, c. 870–c. 1025 282 ■
The Dynatoi: A New Landowning Elite 283 ■ The Formation of Eastern

Europe and Kievan Rus 283
The Rise and Fall of the Abbasid Caliphate 285

The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–936 285 ■ Regional Diversity in Islamic
Lands 286 ■ Unity of Commerce and Language 288 ■ The Islamic
Renaissance, c. 790–c. 1050 289
The Carolingian Empire 289

The Rise of the Carolingians 290 ■ Charlemagne and His Kingdom,
768–814 291 ■ The Carolingian Renaissance, c. 790–c. 900 293 ■
Charlemagne’s Successors, 814–911 294 ■ Land and Power 295 ■
Viking, Muslim, and Magyar Invasions, c. 790–955 297
After the Carolingians: The Emergence of Local Rule 299

Public Power and Private Relationships 299 ■ Warriors and Warfare 302 ■
Efforts to Contain Violence 303 ■ Political Communities in Italy, England,

and France 304 ■ Emperors and Kings in Central and Eastern Europe 306
Conclusion 309

xxvi Contents
South Portal, Church of St. Pierre, Moissac, France / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 10
Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform,
1050–1150 313
The Commercial Revolution 314
Fairs, Towns, and Cities 314 ■ Organizing Crafts and Commerce 318 ■
Communes: Self-Government for the Towns 319 ■ The Commercial

Revolution in the Countryside 320
Church Reform 321

Beginnings of Reform 321 ■ The Gregorian Reform and the Investiture
Conflict, 1075–1122 324 ■ The Sweep of Reform 327 ■ New Monastic
Orders of Poverty 329
The Crusades 331

Calling the Crusade 332 ■ The First Crusade 334 ■ The Crusader
States 335 ■ The Disastrous Second Crusade 336 ■ The Long-Term
Impact of the Crusades 337
The Revival of Monarchies 337

Reconstructing the Empire at Byzantium 338 ■ England under Norman
Rule 338 ■ Praising the King of France 340 ■ Surviving as Emperor 341
Conclusion 344

Contents xxvii
Ingram Publishing / Newscom.
Chapter 11
The Flowering of the Middle Ages, 1150–1215 347
New Schools and Churches 348

The New Learning and the Rise of the University 348 ■ Architectural Style:
From Romanesque to Gothic 351
Governments as Institutions 355

England: Unity through Common Law 355 ■ France: Consolidation
and Conquest 359 ■ Germany: The Revived Monarchy of Frederick
Barbarossa 360 ■ Eastern Europe and Byzantium: Fragmenting Realms 363
The Growth of a Vernacular High Culture 364

The Troubadours: Poets of Love and Play 364 ■ The Birth of Epic and
Romance Literature 366
Religious Fervor and Crusade 367

New Religious Orders in the Cities 368 ■ Disastrous Crusades to the Holy
Land 370 ■ Victorious Crusades in Europe and on Its Frontiers 371
Conclusion 374

xxviii Contents
Opening page of the Metaphysics of Artistotle, 13th century / Bibliotheque Mazarine,

Paris, France / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 12
The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks,
1215–1340 379
The Church’s Mission 380
Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council 380 ■ The Inquisition 382 ■
Lay Piety 382 ■ Jews and Lepers as Outcasts 383
Reconciling This World and the Next 385

The Achievement of Scholasticism 385 ■ New Syntheses in Writing and
Music 387 ■ Gothic Art 389
The Politics of Control 390

The Weakening of the Empire 392 ■ Louis IX and a New Ideal of
Kingship 393 ■ The Birth of Representative Institutions 396 ■
The Weakening of the Papacy 397 ■ The Rise of the Signori 399 ■
The Mongol Takeover 400 ■ The Great Famine 402
Conclusion 404

Contents xxix
National Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 13
Crisis and Renaissance, 1340–1492 409
Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism 410

The Black Death, 1347–1352 410 ■ The Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453 413
■ The Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople, 1453 417 ■ The Great Schism,
1378–1417 418
The Renaissance: New Forms of Thought and Expression 421

Renaissance Humanism 422 ■ The Arts 423
Consolidating Power 428

New Political Formations in Eastern Europe 429 ■ Powerful States in
Western Europe 430 ■ Power in the Republics 432 ■ The Tools of
Power 435
Conclusion 436

xxx Contents
Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 14
Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation,
1492–1560 441
The Discovery of New Worlds 442
Portuguese Explorations 442 ■ The Voyages of Columbus 444 ■ A New
Era in Slavery 444 ■ Conquering the New World 445 ■ The Columbian
Exchange 446
The Protestant Reformation 447

The Invention of Printing 447 ■ Popular Piety and Christian Humanism 448
■ Martin Luther’s Challenge 450 ■ Protestantism Spreads and Divides 452
■ The Contested Church of England 453
Reshaping Society through Religion 455

Protestant Challenges to the Social Order 455 ■ New Forms of
Discipline 457 ■ Catholic Renewal 459
Striving for Mastery 461

Courtiers and Princes 461 ■ Dynastic Wars 463 ■ Financing War 465
■ Divided Realms 466
Conclusion 468

Contents xxxi
akg-images.
Chapter 15
Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews,
1560–1648 473
Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 474
French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598 474 ■ Dutch Revolt against Spain 476
■ Elizabeth I’s Defense of English Protestantism 479 ■ The Clash of Faiths
and Empires in Eastern Europe 481
The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 482

Origins and Course of the War 482 ■ The Effects of Constant Fighting 483
■ The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 484
Economic Crisis and Realignment 487

From Growth to Recession 487 ■ Consequences for Daily Life 488 ■
The Economic Balance of Power 490
The Rise of Science and a Scientific Worldview 492

The Scientific Revolution 493 ■ The Natural Laws of Politics 496 ■
The Arts in an Age of Crisis 497 ■ Magic and Witchcraft 499
Conclusion 500

xxxii Contents
Chateau de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles, France / © RMN-Grand Palais /

Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 16
Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search
for Order, 1640–1700 505
Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits 506
The Fronde, 1648–1653 506 ■ Court Culture as an Element of
Absolutism 508 ■ Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy 509 ■ Extending
State Authority at Home and Abroad 510
Constitutionalism in England 514

England Turned Upside Down, 1642–1660 514 ■ Restoration and Revolution
Again 518 ■ Social Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke 520
Outposts of Constitutionalism 521

The Dutch Republic 521 ■ Freedom and Slavery in the New World 524
Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe 525

Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed 525 ■ Brandenburg-Prussia: Militaristic
Absolutism 526 ■ An Uneasy Balance: Austrian Habsburgs and Ottoman
Turks 527 ■ Russia: Setting the Foundations of Bureaucratic Absolutism 528
The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture 530

Freedom and Constraint in the Arts and Sciences 530 ■ Women and
Manners 533 ■ Reforming Popular Culture 535
Conclusion 536

Contents xxxiii
Basilica di San Giovanni Battista, Monza, Italy / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 17
The Atlantic System and Its Consequences,
1700–1750 541
The Atlantic System and the World Economy 542
Slavery and the Atlantic System 542 ■ World Trade and Settlement 546 ■
The Birth of Consumer Society 548
New Social and Cultural Patterns 550

Agricultural Revolution 550 ■ Social Life in the Cities 551 ■ New Tastes
in the Arts 554 ■ Religious Revivals 555
Consolidation of the European State System 556

A New Power Alignment 556 ■ British Rise and Dutch Decline 557 ■
Russia’s Emergence as a European Power 560 ■ Continuing Dynastic

Struggles 563 ■ The Power of Diplomacy and the Importance of
Population 564
The Birth of the Enlightenment 566

Popularization of Science and Challenges to Religion 566 ■ Travel Literature
and the Challenge to Custom and Tradition 568 ■ Raising the Woman
Question 570
Conclusion 571

xxxiv Contents
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartes, France / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 18
The Promise of Enlightenment, 1750–1789 575
The Enlightenment at Its Height 576

Men and Women of the Republic of Letters 576 ■ Conflicts with Church
and State 578 ■ The Individual and Society 580 ■ Spreading the
Enlightenment 582 ■ The Limits of Reason: Roots of Romanticism and
Religious Revival 584
Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 585

The Nobility’s Reassertion of Privilege 586 ■ The Middle Class and the
Making of a New Elite 587 ■ Life on the Margins 590
State Power in an Era of Reform 592

War and Diplomacy 592 ■ State-Sponsored Reform 595 ■ Limits of
Reform 597
Rebellions against State Power 598

Food Riots and Peasant Uprisings 598 ■ Public Opinion and Political
Opposition 599 ■ Revolution in North America 601
Conclusion 603

Contents xxxv
The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.
Chapter 19
The Cataclysm of Revolution, 1789–1799 607
The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 608

Protesters in the Low Countries and Poland 608 ■ Origins of the French
Revolution, 1787–1789 609
From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 614

The Revolution of Rights and Reason 614 ■ The End of Monarchy 617
Terror and Resistance 619

Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety 620 ■ The Republic of
Virtue, 1793–1794 621 ■ Resisting the Revolution 624 ■ The Fall of
Robespierre and the End of the Terror 625
Revolution on the March 628

Arms and Conquests 628 ■ Poland Extinguished, 1793–1795 630 ■
Revolution in the Colonies 631 ■ Worldwide Reactions to Revolutionary
Change 633
Conclusion 634

xxxvi Contents
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 20
Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy,
1800–1830 639
The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 640
A General Takes Over 640 ■ From Republic to Empire 641 ■ The New
Paternalism: The Civil Code 644 ■ Patronage of Science and Intellectual
Life 645
“Europe Was at My Feet”: Napoleon’s Conquests 646

The Grand Army and Its Victories, 1800–1807 646 ■ The Impact of French
Victories 649 ■ From Russian Winter to Final Defeat, 1812–1815 652
The “Restoration” of Europe 654

The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815 654 ■ The Emergence of
Conservatism 657 ■ The Revival of Religion 658
Challenges to the Conservative Order 659

Romanticism 659 ■ Political Revolts in the 1820s 662 ■ Revolution and
Reform, 1830–1832 666
Conclusion 668

Contents xxxvii
By Salvatore Fergola, Museum San Martino, Naples, Italy / photo © Roger Viollet /
The Image Works.
Chapter 21
Industrialization and Social Ferment, 1830–1850 673
The Industrial Revolution 674

Roots of Industrialization 674 ■ Engines of Change 676 ■ Urbanization
and Its Consequences 680 ■ Agricultural Perils and Prosperity 682
Reforming the Social Order 683

Cultural Responses to the Social Question 683 ■ The Varieties of Social
Reform 687 ■ Abuses and Reforms Overseas 689
Ideologies and Political Movements 691

The Spell of Nationalism 691 ■ Liberalism in Economics and Politics 693 ■
Socialism and the Early Labor Movement 695
The Revolutions of 1848 697

The Hungry Forties 698 ■ Another French Revolution 698 ■ Nationalist
Revolution in Italy 700 ■ Revolt and Reaction in Central Europe 700 ■
Aftermath to 1848: Reimposing Authority 702
Conclusion 703

xxxviii Contents
© Lordprice Collection / Alamy.
Chapter 22
Politics and Culture of the Nation-State,
1850–1870 709
The End of the Concert of Europe 710
Napoleon III and the Quest for French Glory 711 ■ The Crimean War,
1853–1856: Turning Point in European Affairs 712 ■ Reform in Russia 713
War and Nation Building 716

Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Process of Italian Unification 717 ■ Bismarck and
the Realpolitik of German Unification 719 ■ Francis Joseph and the Creation
of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 722 ■ Political Stability through Gradual
Reform in Great Britain 723 ■ Nation Building in North America 724
Nation Building through Social Order 726

Bringing Order to the Cities 726 ■ Expanding Government Bureaucracy 727
■ Schooling and Professionalizing Society 728 ■ Spreading National Power
and Order beyond the West 729 ■ Contesting the Nation-State’s Order at
Home 731
The Culture of Social Order 733

The Arts Confront Social Reality 734 ■ Religion and National Order 736 ■
From the Natural Sciences to Social Science 739
Conclusion 740

Contents xxxix
The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.
Chapter 23
Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life, 1870–1890 745
The New Imperialism 746

The Scramble for Africa — North and South 747 ■ Acquiring Territory
in Asia 750 ■ Japan’s Imperial Agenda 751 ■ The Paradoxes of
Imperialism 752
The Industry of Empire 755

Industrial Innovation 755 ■ Facing Economic Crisis 758 ■ Revolution
in Business Practices 759
Imperial Society and Culture 761

The “Best Circles” and the Expanding Middle Class 761 ■ Working People’s
Strategies 762 ■ National Fitness: Reform, Sports, and Leisure 764 ■
Artistic Responses to Empire and Industry 765
The Birth of Mass Politics 767

Workers, Politics, and Protest 768 ■ Expanding Political Participation in
Western Europe 770 ■ Power Politics in Central and Eastern Europe 773
Conclusion 778

xl Contents
The Scream, 1893 (oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard)

by Edvard Munch (1863–1944) / Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo,
Norway / Bridgeman Images / © 2015 The Munch Museum /
The Munch-Ellingsen Group. Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York.
Chapter 24
Modernity and the Road to War, 1890–1914 783
Public Debate over Private Life 784

Population Pressure 785 ■ Reforming Marriage 786 ■ New Women,
New Men, and the Politics of Sexual Identity 787 ■ Sciences of the Modern
Self 788
Modernity and the Revolt in Ideas 790

The Opposition to Positivism 791 ■ The Revolution in Science 791 ■
Modern Art 792 ■ The Revolt in Music and Dance 794
Growing Tensions in Mass Politics 794

The Expanding Power of Labor 795 ■ Rights for Women and the Battle for
Suffrage 796 ■ Liberalism Tested 798 ■ Anti-Semitism, Nationalism, and
Zionism in Mass Politics 799
European Imperialism Challenged 803

The Trials of Empire 803 ■ The Russian Empire Threatened 807 ■
Growing Resistance to Colonial Domination 808
Roads to War 810

Competing Alliances and Clashing Ambitions 810 ■ The Race to Arms 813
■ 1914: War Erupts 814
Conclusion 816

Contents xli
Kathe Kollwitz / photo © Paul Maeyaert / Bridgeman Images / © 2015 Artists Rights
Society [ARS], New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
Chapter 25
World War I and Its Aftermath, 1914–1929 821
The Great War, 1914–1918 822

Blueprints for War 822 ■ The Battlefronts 825 ■ The Home Front 827
Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918 830

War Protest 830 ■ Revolution in Russia 830 ■ Ending the War, 1918 834
The Search for Peace in an Era of Revolution 835

Europe in Turmoil 835 ■ The Paris Peace Conference, 1919–1920 836 ■
Economic and Diplomatic Consequences of the Peace 838
A Decade of Recovery: Europe in the 1920s 840

Changes in the Political Landscape 841 ■ Reconstructing the Economy 844
■ Restoring Society 845
Mass Culture and the Rise of Modern Dictators 847

Culture for the Masses 847 ■ Cultural Debates over the Future 849 ■
The Communist Utopia 851 ■ Fascism on the March in Italy 852
Conclusion 854

xlii Contents
Hugo Jaeger / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images.
Chapter 26
The Great Depression and World War II,
1929–1945 859
The Great Depression 860
Economic Disaster Strikes 860 ■ Social Effects of the Depression 862 ■
The Great Depression beyond the West 862
Totalitarian Triumph 864

The Rise of Stalinism 865 ■ Hitler’s Rise to Power 867 ■ The Nazification
of German Politics 868 ■ Nazi Racism 870
Democracies on the Defensive 871

Confronting the Economic Crisis 871 ■ Cultural Visions in Hard Times 874
The Road to Global War 875

A Surge in Global Imperialism 875 ■ The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 877
■ Hitler’s Conquest of Central Europe, 1938–1939 878
World War II, 1939–1945 881

The German Onslaught 881 ■ War Expands: The Pacific and Beyond 883 ■
The War against Civilians 883 ■ Societies at War 886 ■ From Resistance
to Allied Victory 887 ■ An Uneasy Postwar Settlement 892
Conclusion 893

Contents xliii
MGM / The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 27
The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe,
1945–1960s 899
World Politics Transformed 900
Chaos in Europe 901 ■ New Superpowers: The United States and the
Soviet Union 902 ■ Origins of the Cold War 903 ■ The Division of
Germany 906
Political and Economic Recovery in Europe 908

Dealing with Nazism 908 ■ Rebirth of the West 910 ■ The Welfare
State: Common Ground East and West 913 ■ Recovery in the East 915
Decolonization in a Cold War Climate 917

The End of Empire in Asia 918 ■ The Struggle for Identity in the Middle
East 920 ■ New Nations in Africa 921 ■ Newcomers Arrive in
Europe 923
Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War 925

Restoring “Western” Values 925 ■ Cold War Consumerism and Shifting
Gender Norms 927 ■ The Culture of Cold War 930 ■ The Atomic
Brink 931
Conclusion 932

xliv Contents
© Marc Garanger / Corbis.
Chapter 28
Postindustrial Society and the End of the
Cold War Order, 1960s–1989 937
The Revolution in Technology 938
The Information Age: Television and Computers 938 ■ The Space Age 940
■ The Nuclear Age 941 ■ Revolutions in Biology and Reproductive
Technology 942
Postindustrial Society and Culture 943

Multinational Corporations 944 ■ The New Worker 944 ■ The Boom in
Education and Research 945 ■ Changing Family Life and the Generation
Gap 946 ■ Art, Ideas, and Religion in a Technocratic Society 947
Protesting Cold War Conditions 949

Cracks in the Cold War Order 949 ■ The Growth of Citizen Activism 953
■ 1968: Year of Crisis 954
The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 957
A Changing Balance of World Power 957 ■ The Western Bloc Meets
Challenges with Reform 959 ■ Collapse of Communism in the Soviet
Bloc 963
Conclusion 968

Contents xlv
© Directphoto Collection / Alamy.
Chapter 29
A New Globalism, 1989 to the Present 973
Collapse of the Soviet Union and Its Aftermath 974

The Breakup of Yugoslavia 975 ■ The Soviet Union Comes Apart 977 ■
Toward a Market Economy 979 ■ International Politics and the New

Russia 980
The Nation-State in a Global Age 981

Europe Looks beyond the Nation-State 981 ■ Globalizing Cities and
Fragmenting Nations 984 ■ Global Organizations 985
An Interconnected World’s New Challenges 986

The Problems of Pollution 986 ■ Population, Health, and Disease 988 ■
North versus South? 989 ■ Radical Islam Meets the West 990 ■
The Promise and Problems of a World Economy 993
Global Culture and Society in the Twenty-First Century 996

Redefining the West: The Impact of Global Migration 997 ■ Global
Networks and the Economy 998 ■ A New Global Culture? 999
Conclusion 1005

Maps and Figures
MAPS MAPPING THE WEST Greece, Europe,

and the Mediterranean, 400
Chapter 1 b.c.e. 109
MAP 1.1 The Ancient Near East,
4000–3000 b.c.e. 6
Chapter 4
SPOT MAP The Akkadian Empire, SPOT MAP Athens’s Long Walls as
2350–2200 b.c.e. 12 Rebuilt after the Peloponnesian
War 115
MAP 1.2 Ancient Egypt 17
MAP 4.1 Conquests of Alexander the
MAP 1.3 Greece and the Aegean Sea,
Great, r. 336–323 b.c.e. 121
1500 b.c.e. 31
MAP 4.2 Hellenistic Kingdoms, 240
MAPPING THE WEST The Violent End
b.c.e. 123
to Early Western Civilization,
1200–1000 b.c.e. 37 MAPPING THE WEST Roman Takeover
of the Hellenistic World, to
Chapter 2 30 b.c.e. 139
MAP 2.1 Expansion of the Persian Chapter 5
Empire, c. 550–490 b.c.e. 45
MAP 5.1 Ancient Italy, 500 b.c.e. 151
MAP 2.2 Phoenician and Greek
Expansion, 750–500 b.c.e. 57 MAP 5.2 The City of Rome during the
Republic 154
SPOT MAP Sparta and Corinth,
750–500 b.c.e. 64 SPOT MAP Roman Roads, 110
b.c.e. 157
SPOT MAP Ionia and the Aegean,
750–500 b.c.e. 72 MAP 5.3 Roman Expansion, 500–
44 b.c.e. 159
MAPPING THE WEST Mediterranean
Civilizations, c. 500 b.c.e. 73 MAPPING THE WEST The Roman
World at the End of the Republic,
Chapter 3 44 b.c.e. 171
MAP 3.1 The Persian Wars, 499–479 Chapter 6
b.c.e. 79
MAP 6.1 The Expansion of the Roman
MAP 3.2 Fifth-Century b.c.e.
Empire, 30 b.c.e.–117 c.e. 187
Athens 86
MAP 6.2 Natural Features and
MAP 3.3 The Peloponnesian War,
Languages of the Roman World 190
431–404 b.c.e. 105
xlvi
Maps and Figures xlvii
MAP 6.3 Christian Populations in the SPOT MAP The Kingdom of the Franks
Late Third Century c.e. 198 under Hugh Capet 987–996 306
SPOT MAP The Fragmented Roman MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
Empire of the Third Century 205 Mediterranean, c. 1050 309
MAPPING THE WEST The Roman
Empire in Crisis, 284 c.e. 207 Chapter 10
SPOT MAP The Walls of Placenza 317
Chapter 7 SPOT MAP The World of the Investiure
MAP 7.1 Diocletian’s Reorganization Conflict, c. 1070–1122 324
of 293 214 MAP 10.1 The First Crusade, 1096–
SPOT MAP The Empire’s East/West 1099 333
Division, 395 215 SPOT MAP The Crusader States in
MAP 7.2 The Spread of Christianity, 1109 336
300–600 220 SPOT MAP Norman Conquest of
MAP 7.3 Migrations and Invasions of England, 1066 338
the Fourth and Fifth Centuries 231 MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
MAPPING THE WEST Western Europe Mediterranean c. 1150 343
and the Eastern Roman (or
Byzantine) Empire, c. 600 245 Chapter 11
MAP 11.1 Europe in the Age of Henry II
Chapter 8 and Frederick Barbarossa, 1150–
MAP 8.1 Expansion of Islam to 1190 356
750 254 SPOT MAP The Consolidation of
MAP 8.2 Byzantine and Sasanid France under Phillip Augustus,
Empires, c. 600 258 1180–1223 360
MAP 8.3 The Merovingian Kingdoms MAP 11.2 Crusades and Anti-Heretic
in the Seventh Century 263 Campaigns, 1150–1215 371
SPOT MAP Tours, c. 600 265 MAP 11.3 The Reconquista, 1150–
SPOT MAP The British Isles 270 1212 372
SPOT MAP Lombard Italy, Early Eighth SPOT MAP The Albigensian Crusade,
Century 273 1209–1229 374
MAPPING THE WEST Rome’s Heirs, MAPPING THE WEST Europe and
c. 750 275 Byzantium, c. 1215 375
Chapter 9 Chapter 12
MAP 9.1 The Byzantine Empire, SPOT MAP Italy at the End of the
1025 281 Thirteenth Century 393
MAP 9.2 Islamic States, c. 1000 286 MAP 12.1 France under Louis IX,
MAP 9.3 Expansion of the Carolingian r. 1226–1270 395
Empire under Charlemagne 292 MAP 12.2 The Mongol Invasions to
SPOT MAP England in the Age of King 1259 401
Alfred, 871–899 304 MAPPING THE WEST Europe,
c. 1340 405
xlviii Maps and Figures
Chapter 13 MAP 16.3 State Building in Central and

MAP 13.1 Advance of the Black Death,
Eastern Europe, 1648–1699 527
1346–1353 411 MAPPING THE WEST Europe at the
MAP 13.2 The Hundred Years’ War,
End of the Seventeenth
1337–1453 415 Century 537
MAP 13.3 Ottoman Expansion in the Chapter 17
Fourteenth and Fifteenth
MAP 17.1 European Trade Patterns,
Centuries 417
c. 1740 543
SPOT MAP Italy at the Peace of Lodi,
MAP 17.2 Europe, c. 1715 558
1454 433
MAP 17.3 Russia and Sweden after the
MAPPING THE WEST Europe,
c. 1492 437 Great Northern War, 1721 563
SPOT MAP Austrian Conquest of
Chapter 14 Hungary, 1657–1730 564
MAP 14.1 Early Voyages of World MAPPING THE WEST Europe in
Exploration 443 1750 571
MAP 14.2 The Peasants’ War of
Chapter 18
1525 456
MAP 18.1 The Seven Years’ War,
MAPPING THE WEST Reformation
Europe, c. 1560 469 1756–1763 593
SPOT MAP The First Partition of
Chapter 15 Poland, 1772 595
MAP 15.1 The Empire of Philip II, SPOT MAP The Pugachev Rebellion,
r. 1556–1598 476 1773 599
SPOT MAP Retreat of the Spanish MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
Armada, 1588 480 World, c. 1780 603
SPOT MAP Russia, Poland-Lithuania,
Chapter 19
and Sweden in the Late 1500s 481
MAP 19.1 Redrawing the Map of
MAP 15.2 The Thirty Years’ War and
the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 485 France, 1789–1791 616
MAP 19.2 French Expansion, 1791–
MAP 15.3 European Colonization of the
Americas, c. 1640 492 1799 630
MAP 19.3 The Second and Third
MAPPING THE WEST The Religious
Divisions of Europe, c. 1648 501 Partitions of Poland, 1793 and
1795 631
Chapter 16 SPOT MAP St. Dominque on the Eve
MAP 16.1 Louis XIV’s Acquisitions,
of the Revolt, 1791 632
1668–1697 513 MAPPING THE WEST Europe in
MAP 16.2 Dutch Commerce in the
1799 635
Seventeenth Century 522 Chapter 20
SPOT MAP Poland-Lithuania in the
MAP 20.1 Napoleon’s Empire at Its
Seventeenth Century 525
Height, 1812 647
Maps and Figures xlix
MAP 20.2 Europe after the Congress MAP 23.2 Expansion of Russia In Asia,
of Vienna, 1815 656 1865–1895 751
MAP 20.3 Revolutionary Movements MAP 23.3 Expansion of Berlin to
of the 1820s 663 1914 773
SPOT MAP Nationalistic Movements MAP 23.4 The Balkans, c. 1878 776
in the Balkans, 1815–1830 664 MAPPING THE WEST The West and the
MAP 20.4 Latin American World, c. 1890 779
Independence, 1804–1830 666
MAPPING THE WEST Europe in Chapter 24
1830 669 MAP 24.1 Jewish Migrations In the Late
Nineteenth Century 802
Chapter 21 SPOT MAP The Struggle for Ethiopia,
MAP 21.1 Industrialization in Europe, 1896 803
c. 1850 677 MAP 24.2 Africa In 1914 805
SPOT MAP The Opium War, 1839– MAP 24.3 Imperialism In Asia, 1894–
1842 690 1914 806
MAP 21.2 The Spread of Cholera, MAP 24.4 The Balkans, 1908–
1826–1855 681 1914 812
MAP 21.3 Languages of Nineteenth- MAPPING THE WEST Europe at the
Century Europe 692 Outbreak of World War I, August
SPOT MAP The Divisions of Italy, 1914 817
1848 700
MAPPING THE WEST Europe in Chapter 25
1850 705 MAP 25.1 The Fronts of World War I,
1914–1918 823
Chapter 22 MAP 25.2 The Russian Civil War,
MAP 22.1 The Crimean War, 1853– 1917–1922 833
1856 712 MAP 25.3 Europe and the Middle East
MAP 22.2 Unification of Italy, 1859– after the Peace Settlements of
1870 718 1919–1920 837
MAP 22.3 Unification of Germany, SPOT MAP National Minorities in
1862–1871 721 Postwar Poland 842
SPOT MAP The Austro-Hungarian SPOT MAP The Irish Free State and
Monarchy, 1867 723 Ulster, 1921 843
MAP 22.4 U.S. Expansion, 1850– MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
1870 725 World In 1929 855
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
Mediterranean, 1871 741 Chapter 26
MAP 26.1 The Spanish Civil War,
Chapter 23 1936–1939 878
MAP 23.1 Africa, c. 1890 748 MAP 26.2 The Growth of Nazi
SPOT MAP British Colonialism in the Germany, 1933–1939 880
Malay Peninsula and Burma,
1826–1890 750
l Maps and Figures
SPOT MAP The Division of France, Chapter 29

1940 882 MAP 29.1 The Former Yugoslavia,
MAP 26.3 Concentration Camps and c.2000 976
Extermination Sites in Europe 884 MAP 29.2 Countries of the Former
MAP 26.4 World War II in Europe and Soviet Union, c. 2000 978
Africa 889 MAP 29.3 The European Union in
MAP 26.5 World War II in the 2015 983
Pacific 890 MAP 29.4 The Middle East in the
MAPPING THE WEST Europe at War’s Twenty-First Century 991
End, 1945 895 SPOT MAP Tigers of the Pacific Rim,
Chapter 27 c. 1995 994
MAPPING THE WEST The World’s
MAP 27.1 The Impact of World War II
Top Fifteen Economies as of
on Europe 902 2015 1007
SPOT MAP Yugoslavia after the
Revolution 906
MAP 27.2 Divided Germany and the
FIGURES
Berlin Airlift, 1946–1949 907 FIGURE 1.1 Cuneiform Writing 11
MAP 27.3 European NATO Members FIGURE 1.2 Egyptian Hieroglyphs 19
and the Warsaw Pact in the FIGURE 3.1 Triremes, the Foremost
1950s 908 Classical Greek Warships 82
SPOT MAP The Korean War, 1950–
FIGURE 3.2 Styles of Greek
1953 919 Capitals 87
SPOT MAP Indochina, 1954 919
FIGURE 6.1 Cutaway Reconstruction of
MAP 27.4 The Partition of Palestine the Forum of Augustus 179
and the Creation of Israel, 1947– FIGURE 9.1 Diagram of a Manor and Its
1948 920 Three-Field System 297
MAP 27.5 The Decolonization of
FIGURE 10.1 Plan of Fountains
Africa, 1951–1990 922 Abbey 331
MAPPING THE WEST The Cold War
FIGURE 11.1 Plan of a Romanesque
World, c. 1960 933 Church 353
Chapter 28 FIGURE 11.2 Troubadour Song: “I Never
Died for Love” 366
MAP 28.1 The Vietnam War, 1954–
FIGURE 13.1 The Valois
1975 951
Succession 414
SPOT MAP Prague Spring, 1968 955
FIGURE 17.1 African Slaves Imported
SPOT MAP Israel after the Six-Day
Into American Territories, 1701–
War, 1967 958 1810 544
SPOT MAP Nationalist Movements of
FIGURE 17.2 Annual Imports In the
the 1970s 960 Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450–
MAPPING THE WEST The Collapse 1870 545
of Communism in Europe, 1989– FIGURE 28.1 Fluctuating Oil Prices,
1990 969 1955–1985 959
LaunchPad Features
Chapter 1 CONTRASTING VIEWS The Nature of

DOCUMENT 1.1 Hammurabi’s Laws for
Women and Marriage
Physicians SEEING HISTORY How to Look Like a
DOCUMENT 1.2 Declaring Innocence
Man in Ancient Greece
on Judgment Day in Ancient Egypt TAKING MEASURE Military Forces of
CONTRASTING VIEWS The Gains and
Athens and Sparta at the Beginning
the Losses of Life in Civilization vs. of the Peloponnesian War (431
Life in Nature b.c.e.)
SEEING HISTORY Remembering the Chapter 4
Dead in Ancient Egypt
DOCUMENT 4.1 Aristotle on the
TAKING MEASURE The Rate of
Nature of the Greek Polis
Population Growth to 1000 b.c.e.
DOCUMENT 4.2 Epigrams by Women
TERMS OF HISTORY Civilization
Poets
Chapter 2 CONTRASTING VIEWS Roman
Attitudes Toward Cleopatra VII,
DOCUMENT 2.1 Excerpt from a Gatha
the Last Hellenistic Queen
DOCUMENT 2.2 Zaleucus’s Law Code
SEEING HISTORY Showing Struggle
for a Greek City-State in Seventh- and Pain in Hellenistic Sculpture
Century b.c.e. Italy
TAKING MEASURE The March of
CONTRASTING VIEWS Persians Debate
Alexander the Great’s Army
Democracy, Oligarchy, and
Monarchy Chapter 5
SEEING HISTORY The Shift in
DOCUMENT 5.1 The Rape and Suicide
Sculptural Style from Egypt to of Lucretia
Greece
DOCUMENT 5.2 Polybius on Roman
TAKING MEASURE Greek Family Size
Military Discipline
and Agricultural Labor in the
CONTRASTING VIEWS What Was
Archaic Age
Julius Caesar Like?
Chapter 3 SEEING HISTORY Visualizing the
DOCUMENT 3.1 Athenian Regulations
Connection between War and
for a Rebellious Ally Religion in the Roman Republic
DOCUMENT 3.2 Sophists Argue Both
Sides of a Case
li
lii LaunchPad Features
TAKING MEASURE Census Records TAKING MEASURE Papal Letters Sent

during the First and Second Punic from Rome to Northern Europe,
Wars c. 600–c. 700
TERMS OF HISTORY Medieval
Chapter 6
DOCUMENT 6.1 Augustus, Res Gestae Chapter 9
(My Accomplishments) DOCUMENT 9.1 A Portrait of Basil II
DOCUMENT 6.2 The Scene at a Roman DOCUMENT 9.2 When She Approached
Bath CONTRASTING VIEWS Charlemagne:
DOCUMENT 6.3 A Roman Stoic Roman Emperor, Father of Europe,
Philosopher on the Capabilities of or the Chief Bishop?
Women SEEING HISTORY The Many Styles of
CONTRASTING VIEWS Christians in the Macedonian Renaissance
the Empire: Conspirators or Faithful TAKING MEASURE Sellers, Buyers, and
Subjects? Donors, 800–1000
SEEING HISTORY The Symbolism of TERMS OF HISTORY Feudalism
Augustus as Ruler of the World
TAKING MEASURE The Value of Chapter 10
Roman Imperial Coinage, 27 b.c.e.– DOCUMENT 10.1 Peppercorns as
300 c.e. Money
DOCUMENT 10.2 Opposition to the
Chapter 7
Norman Conquest
DOCUMENT 7.1 Diocletian’s Edict on
CONTRASTING VIEWS Henry IV
Maximum Prices and Wages
SEEING HISTORY Two Faces of
DOCUMENT 7.2 The Edict of Milan on
Monasticism
Religious Freedom
TAKING MEASURE English Livestock
CONTRASTING VIEWS Debate: Did
in 1086
Romans or Huns Better Protect Life,
Law, and Freedom? Chapter 11
SEEING HISTORY Changing Religious
DOCUMENT 11.1 Frederick I’s Reply to
Beliefs: Pagan and Christian the Romans
Sarcophagi
DOCUMENT 11.2 Bertran de Born,
TAKING MEASURE Peasants’ Use of
“I love the joyful time of Easter”
Farm Produce in the Roman Empire
DOCUMENT 11.3 The Children’s
Chapter 8 Crusade (1212)
CONTRASTING VIEWS Magna Carta
DOCUMENT 8.1 The Fatihah of the
Qur’an SEEING HISTORY Romanesque
DOCUMENT 8.2 The Pact of Umar
versus Gothic: The View Down
the Nave
CONTRASTING VIEWS Icons: Idols or
TAKING MEASURE The
Aids to Worship
Bureaucratization of the French
SEEING HISTORY Who Conquered
Monarchy
Whom? A Persian and an Arabic
Coin Compared
LaunchPad Features liii
Chapter 12 CONTRASTING VIEWS Political

Authority and Religion: What
DOCUMENT 12.1 Thomas Aquinas
Happened When Subjects Held
Writes about Sex
Different Beliefs?
DOCUMENT 12.2 The Debate between
SEEING HISTORY Religious Differences
Reason and the Lover
in Painting of the Baroque Period:
CONTRASTING VIEWS The Mongols: Rubens and Rembrandt
Instruments of God or Cruel Invaders?
TAKING MEASURE Precious Metals
SEEING HISTORY The Agony and the and the Spanish Colonies, 1550–
Ecstasy 1800
TAKING MEASURE Grain Prices during
the Great Famine Chapter 16
DOCUMENT 16.1 Marie de Sévigné,
Chapter 13 Letter Describing the French Court
DOCUMENT 13.1 Wat Tyler’s Rebellion (1675)
(1381) DOCUMENT 16.2 John Milton, Defense
DOCUMENT 13.2 The Ducal Entry into of Freedom of the Press (1644)
Ghent (1458) CONTRASTING VIEWS The English
CONTRASTING VIEWS Joan of Arc: Civil War
Who Was “the Maid”? SEEING HISTORY Symbols and Power
SEEING HISTORY Facades from Gothic in the Age of Louis XIV
to Renaissance TAKING MEASURE The Seventeenth-
TAKING MEASURE Population Losses Century Army
and the Black Death
TERMS OF HISTORY Renaissance Chapter 17
DOCUMENT 17.1 European Views of
Chapter 14 Indian Religious Practices (1731)
DOCUMENT 14.1 Columbus Describes DOCUMENT 17.2 Montesquieu, Persian
His First Voyage (1493) Letters: Letter 37 (1721)
DOCUMENT 14.2 Ordinances for CONTRASTING VIEWS The Consumer
Calvinist Churches (1547) Revolution
CONTRASTING VIEWS Martin Luther: SEEING HISTORY The “Invisibility” of
Holy Man or Heretic Slavery
SEEING HISTORY Expanding TAKING MEASURE Relationship of
Geographic Knowledge: World Maps Crop Harvested to Seed Used,
in an Age of Exploration 1400–1800
TAKING MEASURE The Printing Press TERMS OF HISTORY Progress
in Europe c. 1500
Chapter 18
Chapter 15 DOCUMENT 18.1 Denis Diderot,
DOCUMENT 15.1 The Horrors of the “Encyclopedia” (1755)
Thirty Years’ War, 1626 DOCUMENT 18.2 Thomas Jefferson,
DOCUMENT 15.2 Sentence Pronounced Declaration of Independence (July 4,
against Galileo (1633) 1776)
liv LaunchPad Features
CONTRASTING VIEWS Women and SEEING HISTORY Visualizing Class

the Enlightenment Differences
SEEING HISTORY Pottery and Social TAKING MEASURE Railroad Lines,
Distinction 1830–1850
TAKING MEASURE European
Urbanization, 1750–1800 Chapter 22
TERMS OF HISTORY Enlightenment DOCUMENT 22.1 Mrs. Seacole: The
Other Florence Nightingale
Chapter 19 DOCUMENT 22.2 Education of a
DOCUMENT 19.1 The Rights of Mathematical Genius in Russia
Minorities (1789) DOCUMENT 22.3 Bismarck Tricks the
DOCUMENT 19.2 Address on Abolishing Public to Get His War
the Slave Trade (February 5, 1790) SEEING HISTORY Photographing the
CONTRASTING VIEWS Perspectives on Nation: Domesticity and War
the French Revolution CONTRASTING VIEWS The Nation-
SEEING HISTORY The Cutting Edge of State in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Caricature TAKING MEASURE Literacy and
TAKING MEASURE Naval Power Illiteracy in the Nineteenth Century
TERMS OF HISTORY Revolution TERMS OF HISTORY Nationalism
Chapter 20 Chapter 23
DOCUMENT 20.1 Napoleon’s Army DOCUMENT 23.1 An African King
Retreats from Moscow (1812) Describes His Government
DOCUMENT 20.2 Wordsworth’s Poetry DOCUMENT 23.2 Henrik Ibsen, From
(1798) A Doll’s House
CONTRASTING VIEWS Napoleon: For CONTRASTING VIEWS Experiences of
and Against Migration
SEEING HISTORY The Clothing SEEING HISTORY Anglo-Indian Polo
Revolution: The Social Meaning of Team
Changes in Postrevolutionary TAKING MEASURE European
Fashion Emigration, 1870–1890
TAKING MEASURE Power Capability
of the Leading States, 1816–1830 Chapter 24
DOCUMENT 24.1 Leon Pinsker Calls
Chapter 21 for a Jewish State
DOCUMENT 21.1 Marx and Engels, DOCUMENT 24.2 Turkish Nationalism
The Communist Manifesto (1848) DOCUMENT 24.3 Vietnamese
DOCUMENT 21.2 Alexis de Tocqueville Resistance and the Importance of
Describes the June Days in Paris Becoming Modern
(1848) CONTRASTING VIEWS Debating the
CONTRASTING VIEWS The Effects of Revolt in Art, Ideas, and Lifestyles
Industrialization SEEING HISTORY Outrage and
Consumption in Modern Art
LaunchPad Features lv
TAKING MEASURE The Growth in CONTRASTING VIEWS Decolonization

Armaments, 1890–1914 in Africa
TERMS OF HISTORY Modern SEEING HISTORY The Soviet System
and Consumer Goods
Chapter 25 TAKING MEASURE Military Spending
DOCUMENT 25.1 Outbreak of the and the Cold War Arms Race,
Russian Revolution 1950–1970
DOCUMENT 25.2 Memory and
Battlefield Tourism Chapter 28
CONTRASTING VIEWS The Middle DOCUMENT 28.1 Margaret Thatcher’s
East at the End of World War I: Economic Vision
Freedom or Subjugation? DOCUMENT 28.2 A Citizen’s
SEEING HISTORY Portraying Soldiers Experience of Gorbachev’s Reforms
in World War I CONTRASTING VIEWS Feminist
TAKING MEASURE The Victims of Debates
Influenza, 1918–1919 SEEING HISTORY Critiquing the Soviet
System: Dissident Art in the 1960s
Chapter 26 and 1970s
DOCUMENT 26.1 A Family Copes with TAKING MEASURE Postindustrial
Unemployment Occupational Structure, 1984
DOCUMENT 26.2 The Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere Chapter 29
CONTRASTING VIEWS Nazism and DOCUMENT 29.1 Václav Havel,
Hitler: For and Against “Czechoslovakia Is Returning to
SEEING HISTORY Militarization of the Europe”
Masses DOCUMENT 29.2 The Green Parties
TAKING MEASURE Wartime Unite Transnationally and Announce
Production of the Major Powers, Common Goals (2006)
1939–1945 CONTRASTING VIEWS The Dutch
TERMS OF HISTORY Fascism Debate Globalization, Muslim
Immigrants, and Turkey’s Admission
Chapter 27 to the EU
DOCUMENT 27.1 The Schuman Plan SEEING HISTORY World Leaders and
on European Unity (1950) Citizens Come Together After
Murders in Paris
DOCUMENT 27.2 Torture in Algeria
TAKING MEASURE World Population
DOCUMENT 27.3 Popular Culture,
Growth, 1950–2010
Youth Consumerism, and the Birth
of the Generation Gap TERMS OF HISTORY Globalization
Authors’ Note
The b.c.e./c.e. Dating System
W
hen were you born? What year is it? We customarily answer questions
like these with a number, such as “1991” or “2008.” Our replies are usually
automatic, taking for granted the numerous assumptions Westerners
make about how dates indicate chronology. But to what do numbers such as 1991 and
2008 actually refer? In this book the numbers used to specify dates follow a recent revi-
sion of the system most common in the Western secular world. This system reckons
the dates of solar years by counting backward and forward from the traditional date of
the birth of Jesus Christ, over two thousand years ago.
Using this method, numbers followed by the abbreviation b.c.e., standing for “be-
fore the common era” (or, as some would say, “before the Christian era”), indicate the
number of years counting backward from the assumed date of the birth of Jesus Christ.
b.c.e. therefore indicates the same chronology marked by the traditional abbreviation
b.c. (“before Christ”). The larger the number preceding b.c.e. (or b.c.), the earlier in
history is the year to which it refers. The date 431 b.c.e., for example, refers to a year
431 years before the birth of Jesus and therefore comes earlier in time than the dates
430 b.c.e., 429 b.c.e., and so on. The same calculation applies to numbering other time
intervals calculated on the decimal system: those of ten years (a decade), of one hun-
dred years (a century), and of one thousand years (a millennium). For example, the
decade of the 440s b.c.e. (449 b.c.e. to 440 b.c.e.) is earlier than the decade of the
430s b.c.e. (439 b.c.e. to 430 b.c.e.). “Fifth century b.c.e.” refers to the fifth period of
100 years reckoning backward from the birth of Jesus and covers the years 500 b.c.e. to
401 b.c.e. It is earlier in history than the fourth century b.c.e. (400 b.c.e. to 301 b.c.e.),
which followed the fifth century b.c.e. Because this system has no year “zero,” the first
century b.c.e. covers the years 100 b.c.e. to 1 b.c.e. Dating millennia works similarly:
the second millennium b.c.e. refers to the years 2000 b.c.e. to 1001 b.c.e., the third
millennium to the years 3000 b.c.e. to 2001 b.c.e., and so on.
To indicate years counted forward from the traditional date of Jesus’s birth, num-
bers are followed by the abbreviation c.e., standing for “of the common era” (or “of the
Christian era”). c.e. therefore indicates the same chronology marked by the traditional
abbreviation a.d., which stands for the Latin phrase anno Domini (“in the year of the
Lord”). a.d. properly comes before the date being marked. The date a.d. 1492, for ex-
ample, translates as “in the year of the Lord 1492,” meaning 1492 years after the birth of
Jesus. Under the b.c.e./c.e. system, this date would be written as 1492 c.e. For dating
centuries, the term “first century c.e.” refers to the period from 1 c.e. to 100 c.e. (which
is the same period as a.d. 1 to a.d. 100). For dates c.e, the smaller the number, the
earlier the date in history. The fourth century c.e. (301 c.e. to 400 c.e.) comes before
the fifth century c.e. (401 c.e. to 500 c.e.). The year 312 c.e. is a date in the early fourth
lvi
Authors’ Note lvii
century c.e., while 395 c.e. is a date late in the same century. When numbers are given
without either b.c.e. or c.e., they are presumed to be dates c.e. For example, the term
eighteenth century with no abbreviation accompanying it refers to the years 1701 c.e.
to 1800 c.e.
No standard system of numbering years, such as b.c.e./c.e., existed in antiquity.
Different people in different places identified years with varying names and numbers.
Consequently, it was difficult to match up the years in any particular local system with
those in a different system. Each city of ancient Greece, for example, had its own method
for keeping track of the years. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, therefore, faced
a problem in presenting a chronology for the famous Peloponnesian War between
Athens and Sparta, which began (by our reckoning) in 431 b.c.e. To try to explain to
as many of his readers as possible the date the war had begun, he described its first year
by three different local systems: “the year when Chrysis was in the forty-eighth year of
her priesthood at Argos, and Aenesias was overseer at Sparta, and Pythodorus was
magistrate at Athens.”
A Catholic monk named Dionysius, who lived in Rome in the sixth century c.e.,
invented the system of reckoning dates forward from the birth of Jesus. Calling him-
self Exiguus (Latin for “the little” or “the small”) as a mark of humility, he placed Jesus’s
birth 754 years after the foundation of ancient Rome. Others then and now believe his
date for Jesus’s birth was in fact several years too late. Many scholars today calculate that
Jesus was born in what would be 4 b.c.e. according to Dionysius’s system, although a
date a year or so earlier also seems possible.
Counting backward from the supposed date of Jesus’s birth to indicate dates earlier
than that event represented a natural complement to reckoning forward for dates after
it. The English historian and theologian Bede in the early eighth century was the first
to use both forward and backward reckoning from the birth of Jesus in a historical work,
and this system gradually gained wider acceptance because it provided a basis for stan-
dardizing the many local calendars used in the Western Christian world. Nevertheless,
b.c. and a.d. were not used regularly until the end of the eighteenth century. b.c.e. and
c.e. became common in the late twentieth century.
The system of numbering years from the birth of Jesus is far from the only one in
use today. The Jewish calendar of years, for example, counts forward from the date
given to the creation of the world, which would be calculated as 3761 b.c.e. under the
b.c.e./c.e. system. Under this system, years are designated a.m., an abbreviation of the
Latin anno mundi, “in the year of the world.” The Islamic calendar counts forward from
the date of the Prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca, called the Hijra, in what is the
year 622 c.e. The abbreviation a.h. (standing for the Latin phrase anno Hegirae, “in the
year of the Hijra”) indicates dates calculated by this system. Anthropology commonly
reckons distant dates as “before the present” (abbreviated b.p.).
History is often defined as the study of change over time; hence the importance of
dates for the historian. But just as historians argue over which dates are most signifi-
cant, they disagree over which dating system to follow. Their debate reveals perhaps
the most enduring fact about history—its vitality.
80°N
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UNITED
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UNITED STATES PORTUGAL
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BAHAMAS
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Hawaii CUBA HAITI
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20°N (U.S.) ST. KITTS AND NEVIS
JAMAICA CAPE MAURITANIA
Guadeloupe (Fr.) ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BELIZE DOMINICA VERDE
HONDURAS Martinique (Fr.) ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES SENEGAL
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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO GUINEA-BISSAU
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GERMANYPOLAND BELARUS
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B.H. KOS.BULGARIA GEORGIA KI KYRGYZSTAN
MONT.MAC. ARMENIA
ST
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ALB. TURKMENI N. KOREA
GREECE TURKEY ST TAJIKISTAN JAPAN
AN
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TUNISIA
MALTA SYRIA
LEBANON AFGHANISTAN
C H I N A
CYPRUS
N
ISRAEL IRAQ
IRAN
STA
NE
BHUTAN PAC I F I C OCEAN
KI
JORDAN
ALGERIA LIBYA BAHRAIN PAL
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KUWAIT
EGYPT SAUDI ARABIA
QATAR BANGLADESH TAIWAN
UNITED ARAB OMAN MYANMAR
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NIGER (U.S.)
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SUDAN E N THAILAND PHILIPPINES

AM
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ERITREA DJIBOUTI CAMBODIA Guam MARSHALL
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TOGO CENTRAL SOUTH ETHIOPIA MALDIVES LANKA
AFRICAN REP.SUDAN BRUNEI PALAU
CAMEROON SOMALIA FEDERATED STATES
M A L AY S I A OF MICRONESIA
EQ. UGANDA
GUINEA RWANDA
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KENYA
NG
GABON SINGAPORE NAURU KIRIBATI

DEM. REP. OF
CO
BURUNDI PAPUA
THE CONGO TUVALU
TANZANIA I N D O N E S I A NEW
SÃO TOMÉ COMOROS GUINEA SOLOMON
SEYCHELLES INDIAN OCEAN IS.
& PRÍNCIPE EAST TIMOR
ANGOLA
ZAMBIA MALAWI
VANUATU FIJI
ZIMBABWE MADAGASCAR
NAMIBIA MAURITIUS New Caledonia
BOTSWANA (Fr.)
A U S T R A L I A
MOZAMBIQUE
SOUTH SWAZILAND
AFRICA LESOTHO
NEW
ZEALAND
Abbreviations Tasmania
(Aust.)
ALB. ALBANIA
AUS. AUSTRIA
BEL. BELGIUM
B.H. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
CR. CROATIA
CZ. REP. CZECH REPUBLIC
DEN. DENMARK
HUNG. HUNGARY
A N TA RC T I C A KOS. KOSOVO
20°E 40°E 60°E 80°E 100°E LUX. 140°E
120°E LUXEMBOURG
160°E
MAC. MACEDONIA
MONT. MONTENEGRO
NETH. NETHERLANDS
SERB. SERBIA
SLK. SLOVAKIA
SLN. SLOVENIA
SWITZ. SWITZERLAND
N Bergen NORWAY
W Oslo SWEDEN
E
S
Stockholm
NORTHERN SCOTLAND
IRELAND Göteborg
Glasgow Edinburgh
a
Se
Belfast North Sea
ic
Aarhus
lt
Dublin UNITED DENMARK Copenhagen Ba
IRELAND Liverpool RUSSIA
Kaliningrad
KINGDOM
Cork Birmingham Gdansk
WALES
ENGLAND NETHERLANDS
El
be
Thames R. R.
Amsterdam Vi
Berlin stu Warsaw
Rotterdam la R
London .
Antwerp
POLAND
nel
English Chan Brussels GERMANY
Rhi
Od
BELGIUM er
ne
AT L A N T I C
R.
Frankfurt
R.
Prague Cracow
Paris
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in Luxembourg
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Loire R. SLOVAKIA
LIECHTENSTEIN Munich D Vienna
anube R. Bratislava
Zürich Vaduz
Bay of FRANCE Bern AUSTRIA
Innsbruck Budapest
Biscay SWITZERLAND Graz
Lyon P S HUNGARY
L SLOVENIA
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A Milan Ljubljana
e
Zagreb
Rhôn
Po R. CROATIA Belgrade
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SPAIN Tirana
Naples ALBANIA
Sardinia Tyrrhenian
Seville Balearic Is. Sea
Gibraltar Palermo
Ionian
(Br.) Algiers Sea
Sicily
Tunis
Rabat
Valletta
MALTA
ALGERIA
MOROCCO TUNISIA M e d i t e r r a n e a n
Elevation Tripoli
Feet Meters
Over 13,120 Over 4,001
6,561–13,120 2,001–4,000
1,641–6,560 501–2,000
661–1640 201–500 LIBYA
0–660 0–200
Below sea level Below sea level
0 150 300 miles
National capital
0 150 300 kilometers
Major city
FINLAND
U R
Helsinki
St. Petersburg
A L
Tallinn
ESTONIA
M T
Pärnu
S .
Moscow
Riga
R.
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Ur
R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
LITHUANIA
R.
l ga
Kaunas
Vo
Vilnius
Minsk KAZAKHSTAN
BELARUS
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Kiev Kharkiv
Dnie
p e r R.
UKRAINE
CA
RP
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MOLDOVA a
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sp
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ia
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Odessa
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n
C A U C A
S
S U S a
e
ROMANIA M T S .
Baku
Bucharest Tbilisi
GEORGIA
Danube R. Black Sea
ARMENIA
SERBIA
BULGARIA Yerevan
Pristina
Sofia
KOSOVO Plovdiv
Skopje
Istanbul AZERBAIJAN
MACEDONIA
Salonica Ankara
Aegean TURKEY IRAN

Sea
Izmir
GREECE
Tig
ri
sR
Athens
.
SYRIA
Baghdad
Crete
CYPRUS
Beirut
Damascus
IRAQ
Eu
LEBANON ph
rate
s R.
S e a
ISRAEL
Tel Aviv Amman
KUWAIT
Jerusalem
JORDAN
Alexandria
Cairo SAUDI ARABIA

EGYPT
Nile R.
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The Making of the West
Peoples and Cultures
Early Western Civilization
1
400,000–1000 b.c.e.
K
ings in ancient Egypt believed the gods judged them in the afterlife. In
Instructions for Merikare, written around 2100–2000 b.c.e., a king advises his
son: “Secure your place in the cemetery by being upright, by doing justice,
upon which people’s hearts rely. . . . When a man is buried and mourned, his deeds
are piled up next to him as treasure.” Being judged pure of heart led to an eternal
reward: “abiding [in the afterlife] like a god, roaming [free] like the lords of time.”
Ordinary Egyptians, too, believed they should live justly by worshipping the
gods and obeying the king. A guidebook instructing mummies about the under-
world, the Book of the Dead, said the jackal-headed god Anubis would weigh the
dead person’s heart against the goddess Maat
and her feather of Truth, with the bird-headed
The Afterlife in Egyptian Religion god Thoth recording the result. Pictures in the
This illustration comes from the
book show the Swallower of the Damned —
ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead,
a collection of illustrated instruc-
with a crocodile’s head, a lion’s body, and a
tions and magic spells buried with hippopotamus’s hind end — crouching ready
dead people to help them in the to eat the heart of anyone who failed. Egyptian
afterlife. It shows the deceased mythology thus taught that living a just life
standing in front of offerings made was the most important human goal because
to Osiris, the god of the underworld.
it won a blessed existence after death.
He is seated on a throne with his
sister and wife, the goddess Isis, This belief — that there is a divine world
and her sister standing behind him. more powerful than the human — goes back to
The myth of Osiris, who died and the time before civilization, when people in
was cut up into pieces but then the Stone Age lived as hunter-gatherers. Ten to
reassembled and resurrected by
twelve thousand years ago, when a global warm-
Isis, expressed Egyptians’ belief in
an eternal life after death. (Egyptian
ing led to the invention of agriculture and the
Museum, Cairo / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art domestication of animals, human life changed
Archive at Art Resource, NY.) in revolutionary ways that still affect our lives
today. Civilization first emerged around 4000–
3000 b.c.e. in cities in Mesopotamia (the region
between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, today Iraq). Historians define civilization
as a way of life based on agriculture and trade, with cities containing large buildings
for religion and government; technology to produce metals, textiles, pottery, and
3
4 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
other manufactured objects; and knowledge of writing. Current archaeological
research indicates that those conditions first existed in Mesopotamia.
Civilization always arose with religion at its core. In Mesopotamian civilization,
rulers believed they were judged for maintaining order on earth and honoring the gods.
Egyptian civilization, which began about 3100–3000 b.c.e., built enormous temples and
pyramids. Civilizations emerged starting about 2500 b.c.e. in India, China, and the
Americas. By 2000 b.c.e., civilizations appeared in Anatolia (today Turkey), on islands
in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and in Greece. The formation of civilization pro-
duced intended and unintended consequences. The spread of metallurgy (using high
heat to extract metals from ores), for example, created better tools and weapons but
also increased preexisting social hierarchy (ranking people as superiors or inferiors).
The peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, and Greece created
Western civilization by exchanging ideas, technologies, and objects through trade, travel,
and war. Building on concepts from the Near East, Greeks originated the idea of the
West as a separate region, identifying Europe as the West (where the sun sets) and
different from the East (where the sun rises). The making of the West depended on
cultural, political, and economic interaction
CHAPTER FOCUS What changes did Western
among diverse groups. The West remains
civilization bring to human life? an evolving concept, not a fixed region with
unchanging borders and members.
From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization,

400,000–1000 b.c.e.
People in the Stone Age developed patterns of life that still exist. The most significant
of those early developments were (1) the evolution of hierarchy in society and (2)
the invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Those inventions
allowed people to stay in one place and raise their own food instead of wandering
around to find things to eat in the wild. This change in how human beings met their
most basic need — nutrition — led them to settle down in permanent communities
for the first time. Eventually, some of these communities grew large enough in popu-
lation and area to be considered cities. The conditions of life in these populous settle-
ments incubated civilization, beginning in the fertile plains of the two great rivers
of the Near East, the Euphrates and the Tigris. There, the Mesopotamians learned
to work metals, and their rulers’ desire to acquire and control the sources of these
increasingly precious resources generated the drive to create empires. That drive in
turn set the world on a course that extends to the modern age.
Life and Change in the Stone Age

About four hundred thousand years ago, people whose brains and bodies resembled
ours appeared first in Africa. Called Homo sapiens (“wise human beings”), they were
the immediate ancestors of modern people. Spreading out from Africa, they grad-
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 5
ually populated the rest of the earth. Anthropologists call this time the Stone Age
because people made tools and weapons from stone as well as from bone and wood;
they did not yet know how to work metals. The Stone Age is divided into an early
part, the Paleolithic (“Old Stone”), and a later part, the Neolithic (“New Stone”).
In the Paleolithic Age, people existed as hunter-gatherers who originally lived
in mostly egalitarian bands (meaning all adults enjoyed a rough equality in making
group decisions). They roamed in groups of twenty to fifty, hunting animals, catch-
ing fish and shellfish, and gathering plants, fruits, and nuts. Women with young
children foraged for plants close to camp; they provided the group’s most reliable
supply of nourishment. Men did most of the hunting of wild animals far from camp,
although recent archaeological evidence shows that women also participated, espe-
cially in hunting with nets. Objects from distant regions found in burials show that
hunter-gatherer bands traded with one another. Trade spread knowledge — especially
technology, such as techniques for improving tools, and art for creating beauty and
expressing beliefs. The use of fire for cooking was a major innovation because it
allowed people to eat wild grains that they could not digest raw.
Evidence from graves shows that hierarchy emerged in Paleolithic times. Some
Paleolithic burial sites contain weapons, tools, animal figurines, ivory beads, sea-
shells, and bracelets alongside the corpses; the objects indicate that certain dead
persons had greater status and wealth than others. Hierarchy probably began when
men acquired prestige from bringing back meat after long hunts and from fighting
in wars. (The many traumatic wounds seen in male skeletons show warfare was
frequent.) Older women and men also earned status from their experience and lon-
gevity, in an age when illness or accidents killed most people before age thirty. The
decoration of corpses with red paint and valuable objects suggests that Paleolithic
people thought about the mystery of death and perhaps believed in an afterlife.
Paleolithic artists also sculpted statuettes of human figures, probably for religious
purposes.
Climate and geography — the fundamental features of our natural environment —
defined a new way of life for human beings beginning about 10,000 b.c.e. A slow
process of transformation started when climate change in the late Paleolithic period
brought warmer temperatures and more rainfall at higher elevations. This weather
increased the amount of wild grains people could gather in the foothills of the Near
East’s Fertile Crescent, an arc of territory extending up from the Jordan valley in
Israel, through eastern Turkey, and down into the foothills and plains of Iraq and
Iran (Map 1.1).* Paleolithic hunter-gatherers came to settle where wild grains grew
abundantly and game animals grazed. Recent archaeological excavation in Turkey
suggests that around eleven thousand years ago, groups organized to erect stone
monuments to worship gods who they believed helped them to survive, and they
started growing food nearby. A more reliable food supply allowed people to raise
*In this book, we observe the common usage of the term Near East to mean the lands of southwest-
ern Asia and Egypt.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Fertile Crescent Black Sea
Battle
N
Ca
spia
Hattusas W E
HITTITE KINGDOM
n Sea
S
ANATOLIA
ASSYRIAN
KINGDOM
M
ES
SYRIA
O
Ebla Euph
P
GUTIANS
O
rat
Tigr
es
TA
Cyprus Kadesh R.
is
M
c. 1274 B.C.E.
R.
Med
IA
CIA
iterr AKKADIA/
anean
ENI
Sea BABYLONIA Akkad?

PHO
Babylon
NILE
DELTA CANAAN/ Nippur
PALESTINE SUMER Presumed
ancient coastline
Uruk
Giza Memphis Ur
Eridu
LOWER SINAI
.
eR
EGYPT PENINSULA
Nil
Tell
el-Amarna ARABIAN
Pe
DESERT ia
rs
n
SAHA R A DESERT
Re
G
Thebes ul
dS
Deir el-Bahri 0 250 500 miles f

ea
UPPER 0 250 500 kilometers

EGYPT
MAP 1.1 The Ancient Near East, 4000–3000 b.c.e.

The diverse region we call the ancient Near East included many different landscapes, climates,
peoples, and languages. Kings ruled its independent city-states, the centers of the world’s first
civilizations, beginning around 4000–3000 B.C.E. Trade by land and sea for natural resources,
especially metals, and wars of conquest kept the peoples of the region in constant contact and
conflict with one another. How did geography facilitate — or hinder — the development of civiliza-
tion in the Near East?
more children, and increased social organization promoted larger settlements. The
more people that were born, however, the greater the need for food became.
After thousands of years of trial and error, people in the Fertile Crescent invented
reliable agriculture by sowing seeds from wild grains to produce harvests year after
year. This marked the start of the Neolithic Age. Since women had the most experi-
ence gathering plants, they probably played the major role in developing farming,
while men continued to hunt. Recent research suggests that people also learned to
domesticate animals about the same time. By nine thousand years ago, keeping herds
for food was widespread in the Near East, which was home to wild animals that
could be domesticated, such as sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle.
Historians call agriculture and the domestication of animals the “farming pack-
age”; this package created the Neolithic Revolution. The farming package had revo-
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
Model of a House at Çatalhöyük

Archaeologists built this model of a house to show how Neolithic villagers lived in Çatalhöyük
(today in central Turkey) from around 6500 to 5500 B.C.E. The wall paintings and bull-head
sculpture had religious meaning, perhaps linked to the graves that the residents dug under the
floor for their dead. The main entrance to the house was through the ceiling, as the houses
were built right next to one another without streets in between, only some space for dumping
refuse; the roofs served as walkways. Why do you think the villagers chose this arrangement
for their settlement? (Çatalhöyük Research Project.)
lutionary effects because it produced many permanent settlements and food sur-
pluses. Some Neolithic people lived as pastoralists (herders moving around to find
grazing land for their animals), while others were farmers who had to reside in a
settled location to raise crops. Fixed settlements marked a turning point in the rela-
tion between human beings and the environment, as farmers increasingly channeled
streams for irrigation. DNA evidence from ancient bones and modern populations
shows that by 4000 b.c.e., immigrants and traders from the Fertile Crescent had
helped spread knowledge of agriculture and domestication as far as the European
shores of the Atlantic Ocean. When farmers began producing more food than they
needed, the surpluses allowed other people in the settlement to specialize in archi-
tecture, art, crafts, metalwork, textile production, and trade.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
The Neolithic Revolution generated more hierarchy because positions of authority
were needed to allow some people to supervise the complex irrigation system that sup-
ported agricultural surpluses, and because greater economic activity created a stricter
division of labor by gender. Men began to dominate agriculture following the invention
of heavy wooden plows pulled by oxen, sometime after 4000 b.c.e. Not having to bear
and nurse babies, men took over long-distance trade. Women and older children mas-
tered new domestic tasks such as turning milk from domesticated animals into cheese
and yogurt and making clothing for themselves and their families. This gendered
division of labor arose as an efficient response to the conditions and technologies of
the time, but it had the unintended consequence of increasing men’s status.
The Emergence of Cities in Mesopotamia, 4000–2350 b.c.e.

Significant changes in human society took place when the first cities — and therefore
the first civilization — emerged in Mesopotamia about 4000–3000 b.c.e. on the plains
bordering the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (see Map 1.1, page 6). Cities developed
there because the climate and the land could support large populations. Mesopota-
mian farmers operated in a challenging environment: temperatures soared to 120
degrees Fahrenheit and little rain fell in the low-lying plains, yet the rivers flooded
unpredictably. They maximized agricultural production by devising the technology
and administrative arrangements necessary to irrigate the arid flatlands with water
diverted from the rivers. A vast system of canals controlled flooding and turned the
desert green with food crops. The need to construct and maintain a system of irriga-
tion canals in turn led to the centralization of authority in Mesopotamian cities,
which controlled the farmland and irrigation systems outside their fortified walls.
This political arrangement — an urban center exercising control over the surround-
ing countryside — is called a city-state. Mesopotamian city-states were independent
communities competing with each other for land and resources.
The people of Sumer (southern Mesopotamia) established the earliest city-states.
Unlike other Mesopotamians, the Sumerians did not speak a Semitic language (the
group of languages from which Hebrew and Arabic came); the origins of their lan-
guage remain a mystery. By 3000 b.c.e., the Sumerians had created twelve indepen-
dent city-states — including Uruk, Eridu, and Ur — which repeatedly battled each
other for territory. By 2500 b.c.e., most of the cities had expanded to twenty thou-
sand residents or more. The rooms in Sumerians’ mud-brick houses surrounded
open courts. Large homes had a dozen rooms or more.
Agricultural surpluses and trade in commodities and manufactured goods made
the Sumerian city-states prosperous. Their residents bartered grain, vegetable oil,
woolens, and leather with one another, and they acquired metal, timber, and precious
stones from foreign trade. The invention of the wheel for use on transport wagons
around 3000 b.c.e. strengthened the Mesopotamian economy. Traders traveled as far
as India, where the cities of Indus civilization emerged about 2500 b.c.e. Two groups
dominated the Sumerian economy: religious officials controlled the temples, and
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
The Ziggurat at Ur in Sumer

Sumerian royalty built this massive temple (called a ziggurat) in the twenty-first century B.C.E.
To construct its three huge terraces (connected with stairways), workers glued bricks together
with tar around a central core. The walls had to be more than seven feet thick to hold the weight
of the building, whose original height is uncertain. The first terrace reached forty-five feet above
the ground. Still, the Great Pyramid in Egypt dwarfed even this large monument. (© Michael S.
Yamashita / Corbis.)
ruling families controlled large farms and gangs of laborers. Some private households
also became rich.
Increasingly rigid forms of hierarchy evolved in Sumerian society. Slaves, owned
by temple officials and by individuals, had the lowest status. People were enslaved
by being captured in war, being born to slaves, voluntarily selling themselves or their
children (usually to escape starvation), or being sold by their creditors when they
could not repay loans (debt slavery). Children whose parents dedicated them as slaves
to the gods could rise to prominent positions in temple administration. In general,
however, slaves existed in near-total dependence on other people and were excluded
from normal social relations. They usually worked without pay and lacked almost
all legal rights. Considered as property, they could be bought, sold, beaten, or even
killed by their masters.
Slaves worked in domestic service, craft production, and farming, but historians
dispute whether slaves or free laborers were more important to the economy. Free
persons performed most government labor, paying their taxes with work rather than
with money, which was measured in amounts of food or precious metal (currency
was not invented until much later). Although some owners liberated slaves in their
wills and others allowed slaves to keep enough earnings to purchase their freedom,
most slaves had little chance of becoming free.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Hierarchy became so strong in Mesopotamian society that it led to monarchy —
the political system that became the most widespread form of government in the
ancient world. In a monarchy, the king was at the top of the hierarchy, like the ruler
of the gods. His male descendants inherited his position. To display their exalted
status, royal families lived in elaborate palaces that served as administrative centers
and treasure houses. Archaeologists excavating royal graves in Ur have revealed the
rulers’ dazzling riches — spectacular possessions crafted in gold, silver, and precious
stones. These graves also have yielded grisly evidence of the top-ranking status of
the king and queen: servants killed to care for their royal masters after death.
Patriarchy — domination by men in political, social, and economic life — already
existed in Mesopotamian city-states, probably as an inheritance from the development
of hierarchy in Paleolithic times. A Sumerian queen was respected because she was the
king’s wife and the mother of the royal children, but her husband held supreme power.
The king formed a council of older men as his advisers, but he publicly acknowledged
the gods as his rulers; this concept made the state a theocracy (government by gods)
and gave priests and priestesses public influence. The king’s greatest responsibility was
to keep the gods happy and to defeat attacks from rival cities. The king collected taxes
from the working population to support his family, court, palace, army, and officials.
The kings, along with the priests of the large temples, regulated most of the economy
in their kingdoms by controlling the exchange of food and goods between farmers
and craft producers in a system known as a redistributive economy.
In religion, Mesopotamians continued earlier traditions by practicing polytheism:
worshipping many gods thought to control different aspects of life, including the
weather, fertility, and war. People believed that their safety depended on the goodwill
of the gods, and each city-state honored a deity as its special protector. To please the
gods, city dwellers offered sacrifices and built ziggurats (temple towers) soaring as high
as ten stories. Mesopotamians believed that if human beings angered the gods, divin-
ities such as the sky god, Enlil, and the goddess of love and war, Inanna (also called
Ishtar), would punish them by sending disease, floods, famine, and defeats in war.
Myths told in long poems such as the Epic of Creation and the Epic of Gilgamesh
expressed Mesopotamian ideas about the challenges and violence that human beings
faced in struggling with the natural environment and creating civilization. Gilgamesh
was a legendary king of Uruk who forced the young men of Uruk to labor like slaves
and the young women to sleep with him. When his subjects begged the mother of
the gods to grant them a protector, she created Enkidu, “hairy all over . . . dressed as
cattle are.” A week of sex with a prostitute tamed this brute, preparing him for civi-
lization: “Enkidu was weaker; he ran slower than before. But he had gained judgment,
was wiser.” After wrestling to a draw, Gilgamesh and Enkidu became friends; together
they defeated Humbaba (the ugly giant of the Pine Forest) and the Bull of Heaven.
The gods doomed Enkidu to die soon after these triumphs. Depressed about the
human condition and longing to cheat death, Gilgamesh sought the secret of immor-
tality, but a thieving snake ruined his quest. He decided that the only immortality for
mortals was winning fame for deeds. Only memory and gods could live forever.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
Mesopotamian myths told in poetry, song, and art greatly influenced other
peoples. A version of the Gilgamesh story recounted how the gods sent a huge flood
over the earth. They warned one man, instructing him to build a boat. He loaded
his vessel with his relatives, workers, and possessions; domesticated and wild ani-
mals; and “everything there was.” After a week of torrential rains, they left the boat
to repopulate the earth and regenerate civilization. This story recalled the frequent
floods of the Mesopotamian environment and was echoed later in the biblical account
of the great flood covering the globe and Noah’s ark.
The invention of writing in Mesopotamia transformed the way people exchanged
stories and ideas. Sumerians originally invented this new technology to do account-
ing. Before writing, people drew small pictures on clay tablets to keep count of
objects or animals. Writing developed when people created symbols to represent the
sounds of speech instead of pictures to represent concrete things. Sumerian writing
did not use an alphabet (a system in which each symbol represents the sound of a
letter), but rather a system of wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay tablets to repre-
sent the sounds of syllables and entire words (Figure 1.1). Today this form of writing
is called cuneiform (from cuneus, Latin for “wedge”). For a long time, writing was
SAG
Head
NINDA
bread
GU7
eat
AB2
cow
APIN
plough
SUHUR
)
carp
c. 3100 B.C.E. c. 3000 B.C.E. c. 2500 B.C.E. c. 2100 B.C.E. c. 700 B.C.E. Sumerian
(Neo- reading +
Assyrian) meaning
FIGURE 1.1 Cuneiform Writing

The earliest known form of writing developed in different locations in Mesopotamia in 4000–
3000 B.C.E. when people began linking meaning and sound to signs such as those shown in
the chart. Some scribes who mastered the system used sticks or reeds to press dense rows
of small wedge-shaped marks into damp clay tablets; others used chisels to engrave them on
stone. Cuneiform was used for at least fifteen Near Eastern languages and continued to be
written for three thousand years.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
a professional skill for accounting mastered by only a few men and women known
as scribes.
The possibilities for communication over time and space exploded when people
began writing down nature lore, mathematics, foreign languages, and literature. In
the twenty-third century b.c.e., Enheduanna, the daughter of King Sargon of the city
of Akkad, composed the oldest written poetry whose author is known. Written in
Sumerian, her poetry praised the life-giving goddess of love, Inanna: “The great gods
scattered from you like fluttering bats, unable to face your intimidating gaze . . .
knowing and wise queen of all the lands, who makes all creatures and people mul-
tiply.” Later princesses who wrote love songs, lullabies, dirges, and prayers continued
the Mesopotamian tradition of royal women becoming authors.
Metals and Empire Making: The Akkadians and

the Ur III Dynasty, c. 2350–c. 2000 b.c.e.
The riches for which people now fought had a new component: metal. Early metal-
lurgy demonstrates how technological innovation can generate social and political
change. Pure copper, which people had long been using, lost its shape and edge
quickly. So craftsmen were motivated to invent ways to smelt ore and to make metal
alloys at high temperatures. The invention of bronze, a copper-tin alloy hard enough
to hold a razor edge, enabled metalsmiths to produce durable and deadly swords,
daggers, and spearheads. The period from about 4000 to 1000 b.c.e. is called the
Bronze Age because at this time bronze was the most important metal for weapons
and tools; iron was not yet commonly used. The ownership of metal objects strength-
ened visible status divisions in society between men and women and rich and poor.
This new technology allowed the Mesopotamian social elite to acquire new luxury
goods in metal, improved tools for agriculture and construction, and bronze weap-
ons. The desire to accumulate wealth and status symbols stimulated demand for
decorated weapons and elaborate jewelry. Rich men ordered bronze swords and dag-
gers with expensive inlays. Such weapons increased visible social differences between
men and women because they marked the status of the masculine roles of hunter
and warrior.
Mesopotamian rulers fought to capture terri-
AKKADIAN Caspian
EMPIRE Sea tory containing ore mines. The desire to acquire
M
Syria
metals led the kings of Akkad to create by force the
ea
GUTIANS
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Ebla phra
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world’s first empire (a political state in which a

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Akkad? Presumed
ancient single power rules formerly independent peoples).
dite
coastline
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SUMERIAN
Uruk
It began around 2350 b.c.e., when Sargon, king of
CIVILIZATION
Akkad, launched invasions north and south of his
Per
0 125 250 miles

si a
central Mesopotamian homeland. He conquered

nG
Red
0 125 250 kilometers lf
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Sea
Sumer and the regions all the way westward to the
The Akkadian Empire, Mediterranean Sea, creating the Akkadian Empire.
2350–2200 b.c.e. A poet of around 2000 b.c.e. credited Sargon’s
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
success to the favor of the god Enlil: “To Sargon the king of Akkad, from below to
above, Enlil had given him lordship and kingship.”
Sargon’s grandson Naram-Sin also conquered distant places to gain resources
and glory. By around 2250 b.c.e., he had reached Ebla, a large city in Syria. Archae-
ologists have unearthed many cuneiform tablets at Ebla; these discoveries suggest
that the city was a center for learning and trade.
The process of building an empire by force had the unintended consequence
of spreading Mesopotamian literature and art and promoting cultural interaction.
The Akkadians spoke a language unrelated to Sumerian, but in conquering Sumer
they adopted much of that region’s religion, literature, and culture. Other peoples
conquered by the Akkadians were then exposed to Sumerian beliefs and traditions,
which they in turn adapted to suit their own purposes.
Civil war ended the Akkadian Empire. A newly resurgent Sumerian dynasty
called Ur III (2112–2004 b.c.e.) seized power in Sumer. The Ur III rulers created a
centralized economy, presided over a flourishing of Sumerian literature, published
the earliest preserved law code, and justified their rule by proclaiming their king
to be divine. The best-preserved ziggurat was built in their era. Royal hymns, a new
literary form, glorified the king; one example reads: “Your commands, like the word
of a god, cannot be reversed; your words, like rain pouring down from heaven, are
without number.”
Mesopotamia remained politically unstable, however. When civil war weakened
the Ur III kingdom, nearby Amorite marauders conducted damaging raids. The Ur III
dynasty collapsed after only a century of rule.
The Achievements of the Assyrians, the Babylonians,

and the Canaanites, 2000–1000 b.c.e.
New kingdoms emerged in Assyria and Babylonia in the second millennium b.c.e.
At the time, Mesopotamia was experiencing extended economic troubles caused by
climate change and agricultural pollution. By around 2000 b.c.e., intensive irrigation
had unintentionally raised the soil’s salt level so high that crop yields declined. When
decreased rainfall made the situation worse, economic stress generated political
instability lasting for centuries.
The Assyrians, who inhabited northern Mesopotamia, took advantage of their
geography to create a kingdom whose rulers permitted long-distance trade conducted
by private entrepreneurs. Assyrians became prosperous by acting as intermediaries
in the trade for wood and metals between Anatolia and Mesopotamia. They exported
woolen textiles to Anatolia in exchange for raw materials, which they sold to the rest
of Mesopotamia.
Centralized state monopolies in which the government controlled international
trade and redistributed goods had previously dominated the Mesopotamian economy.
This kind of redistributive economy persisted in Mesopotamia, but by 1900 b.c.e.
Assyrian kings were allowing individuals to transact commerce. This market-based
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
system let private entrepreneurs maximize profits in successful ventures. Private Assyr-
ian investors, for example, financed traders to export cloth. The traders then formed
donkey caravans to travel hundreds of miles to Anatolia, where, if they survived the
dangerous journey, they could make huge profits to be split with their investors.
Royal regulators settled any complaints of trader fraud or losses in transit.
To maintain social order, Mesopotamians established written laws made known
to the people. Private commerce and property created a need to guarantee fairness
in contracts. Mesopotamians believed that the king had a sacred duty to make divine
justice known to his subjects by rendering judgments in all sorts of cases, from
commercial disputes to crime. Once written down, the record of the king’s decisions
became what historians today call a law code. Hammurabi, king of Babylon (r. c. 1792–
c. 1750 b.c.e.), became the most famous lawgiver in Mesopotamia. His laws for his
kingdom straddling the Euphrates River drew on earlier Mesopotamian codes, such
as that of the Ur III dynasty, and reveal details on city life in particular.
Hammurabi proclaimed that he was supporting “the principles of truth and
equity” and protecting the weak. His law code was based on an ideal of justice. Its
“eye-for-an-eye” principle matched the crime and punishment as literally as possible.
The code punished fraudulent prosecutions by imposing the death penalty on any-
one failing to prove a serious accusation. It also relied on “nature-decided justice”
by allowing accused persons to leap into a river: if they sank, they were guilty; if they
floated, they were innocent. As king, Hammurabi emphasized relieving the poor’s
burdens as crucial to royal justice. His laws divided society into free persons, com-
moners, and slaves. These categories reflected a social hierarchy in which some
people were assigned a higher value than others. An attacker who caused a pregnant
woman of the free class to miscarry, for example, paid twice the fine levied for the
same offense against a commoner. Between social equals, the code specified “an eye
for an eye.” A member of the free class who killed a commoner, however, was not
executed, only fined.
Many of Hammurabi’s laws concerned the king’s interests as a property owner
leasing land to tenants. His laws were harsh for offenses against property, including
mutilation or a gruesome death for crimes ranging from theft to wrongful sales and
careless construction. Women had limited legal rights, but they could make contracts
and appear in court. Marriages were arranged between the bride’s father and the
groom and sealed with a legal contract. A wife could divorce her husband for cruelty;
a husband could divorce his wife for any reason. The law protected the wife’s interests
by requiring a husband to restore his divorced wife’s property.
Hammurabi’s laws were not always strictly followed, and penalties were often
less severe than specified. The people themselves assembled in courts to determine
most cases by their own judgments. Why, then, did Hammurabi have his laws writ-
ten down? He explained that it was to show Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and
god of justice, that he had fulfilled his responsibility as a divinely installed king —
to ensure justice and the moral and material welfare of his people: “So that the
powerful may not oppress the powerless, to provide justice for the orphan and the
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e. 15
widow . . . let the victim of injustice see the law which applies to him, let his heart
be put at ease.”
The laws on surgery reveal that doctors treated patients in the cities. Because
people believed that angry gods or evil spirits caused serious diseases, Mesopota-
mian medicine included magic: a doctor might prescribe an incantation along with
potions and diet recommendations. Magicians or exorcists offered medical treat-
ment that depended on spells and interpreting signs, such as the patient’s dreams or
hallucinations.
Babylonian cities had many taverns and wine shops, often run by women pro-
prietors. Contaminated drinking water caused many illnesses because sewage disposal
was rudimentary. Citizens found relief from a city’s odors and crowding in its open
spaces. The world’s oldest known map, an inscribed clay tablet showing the outlines
of the city of Nippur about 1500 b.c.e., indicates a large park.
Cities involved large numbers of people from different places in many different
interactions, which stimulated intellectual developments. Mesopotamian achieve-
ments in mathematics and astronomy had an enduring effect. Mathematicians
devised algebra, including the derivation of roots of numbers. They invented place-
value notation, which makes a numeral’s position in a number indicate ones, tens,
hundreds, and so on. The system of reckoning based on sixty, still used in the divi-
sion of hours and minutes and in the degrees of a circle, also comes from Mesopo-
tamia. Mesopotamian expertise in recording the paths of the stars and planets prob-
ably arose from the desire to make predictions about the future, following the
astrological belief that the movement of celestial bodies directly affects human life.
The charts and tables compiled by Mesopotamian stargazers underlay later advances
in astronomy.
In Canaan (ancient Palestine), west of Mesopotamia, the population grew by
absorbing foreign merchants. The interaction of traders and travelers from many dif-
ferent cultures encouraged innovation in recording business transactions. This multi-
lingual business environment produced the alphabet about 1600 b.c.e. In this new
writing system, a simplified picture — a
letter — stood for only one sound in the lan-
REVIEW QUESTION How did life change for
guage, a large change from cuneiform. The
people in and nearby Mesopotamia, first after
Canaanite alphabet later became the basis the Neolithic Revolution and then when they
for the Greek and Roman alphabets and began to live in cities?
therefore of modern Western alphabets.
Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e.

The other earliest example of Western civilization arose in Egypt, in northeastern
Africa. The Egyptians built a wealthy, profoundly religious, and strongly centralized
society ruled by kings. Unlike the separate Mesopotamian city-states, Egypt became
unified. Its prosperity and stability depended on the king maintaining strong central
authority and defeating enemies. Egypt was located close enough to Mesopotamia
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
to learn from peoples there but was geographically separate enough to develop its
own distinct culture, which Egyptians believed was superior to any other. The Egyp-
tians believed that a just society respected the gods, preserved hierarchy, and obeyed
the king. The Egyptian rulers’ belief in the soul’s immortality and a happy afterlife
motivated them to construct the largest tombs in history, the pyramids. Egyptian
architecture, art, and religious ideas influenced later Mediterranean peoples, espe-
cially the Greeks.
From the Unification of Egypt to the Old Kingdom, 3050–2190 b.c.e.

When climate change dried up the grasslands of the Sahara region of Africa about
5000–4000 b.c.e., people slowly migrated from there to the northeast corner of the
continent, settling along the Nile River. Recent radiocarbon dating of skeletons,
hair, and plants has confirmed that Egypt became a united political state by about
3050 b.c.e., when King Narmer (also called Menes)* united the previously separate
territories of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt. (Upper and Lower refer
to the direction of the Nile River, which begins south of Egypt and flows northward
to the Mediterranean.) The Egyptian ruler therefore referred to himself as King of
the Two Lands. By around 2687 b.c.e., its monarchs had created a large centralized
state, called the Old Kingdom. It lasted until around 2190 b.c.e. (Map 1.2). Egyptian
kings built only a few large cities. The first capital, Memphis (south of modern Cairo),
grew into a metropolis packed with mammoth structures.
The most spectacular — and most mysterious — of the Old Kingdom architec-
tural marvels is the so-called Great Sphinx. The world’s oldest monumental sculp-
ture, this stone statue has a human head on the body of a lion lying on its four paws.
It is nearly 250 feet long and almost 70 feet high. A temple was built in front of it,
perhaps to worship the sun as a god. The Sphinx’s purpose and date remain hotly
debated. No records exist to explain its original meaning. Most scholars believe that
it was erected sometime in the Old Kingdom. A few, however, citing its weathering
and erosion patterns, argue that it is as old as 5000 b.c.e. If clear evidence supporting
this date is ever discovered, then the history of early Egypt will have to be completely
rewritten. This is just one of the many controversies about ancient Egypt that archae-
ology may someday settle.
The Old Kingdom’s costly architecture demonstrates the prosperity and power
of Narmer’s unified state. Its territory consisted of a narrow strip of fertile land run-
ning along both sides of the Nile River. This ribbon of green fields zigzagged for
*Since the Egyptians did not include vowel sounds in their writing, we are not sure how to spell their
names. The spelling of names here is taken from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by
Donald B. Redford (2001), with alternate names given in cases where they seem more familiar. Dates
are approximate and uncertain, and scholars bitterly disagree about them. (For an explanation of the
problems, see Redford, “Chronology and Periodization,” The Oxford Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 264–68.) The
dates appearing in this book are compiled with as much consistency as possible from articles in The
Oxford Encyclopedia and in the “Egyptian King List” given at the back of each of its volumes.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
CANAAN/
Mediterranean Sea PALESTINE
E .)
.C.
NILE
4B
DELTA
66
Avaris
.1
LOWER (c
Hy ion
EGYPT k s o s i n va s
Giza
Saqqara Memphis
R.
Nile
N
EA
SINAI
W E
PENINSULA
ST
ER
S Tell
N
el-Amarna
DE
SE
RT
WESTERN
DESERT UPPER MAP 1.2 Ancient Egypt
Re
EGYPT
Large deserts enclosed the Nile
d
Deir el-Bahri
Thebes
Se
Old Kingdom
River on the west and the east. The
a
(c. 2687–2190 B.C.E.) Nile provided Egyptians with water

Middle Kingdom to irrigate their fields and a highway
(c. 2061–1665 B.C.E.)
New Kingdom for traveling north to the Mediter-
(c. 1569–1081 B.C.E.) ranean Sea and south to Nubia. The
Major pyramid sites only easy land route into and out of
Other ancient sites Egypt lay through the northern Sinai
NUBIA peninsula into the coastal area of
the eastern Mediterranean; Egyptian
0 100 200 miles
NU B I AN D ES E RT kings always fought to control this
region to secure their land.
seven hundred miles southward from the Mediterranean Sea. The deserts flanking the
fields on the west and the east protected Egypt; invasion was possible only through
the northern Nile delta and from Nubia in the south. The deserts also were sources
of wealth because they contained large deposits of metal ores. Egypt’s geography also
contributed to its prosperity by supporting seaborne commerce in the Mediterranean
Sea and the Indian Ocean, as well as overland trade with central Africa.
Agriculture was Egypt’s most important economic resource. Usually, the Nile
River overflowed its channel for several weeks each year, when melting snow from
central African mountains swelled its waters. This predictable annual flood enriched
the soil with nutrients from the river’s silt and diluted harmful mineral salts, thereby
making farming more productive and supporting strong population growth. Unlike
the unpredictable floods that harmed Mesopotamia, the regular flooding of the Nile
benefited Egyptians. Trouble came in Egypt only if the usual flood did not take place,
as happened when too little winter precipitation fell in the mountains.
The plants and animals raised by Egypt’s farmers fed a fast-growing population.
Egypt had expanded to perhaps several million people by around 1500 b.c.e. Date
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
The Great Sphinx of Egypt

This enormous stone sculpture of a sphinx, a mythical female creature with a human head and
torso and lion’s body, was built near the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Since no inscriptions tell us
which king or kings ordered it built, or when or why, scholars still debate its place in ancient
Egyptian history and thought. It remains the largest stone monument in the world. (Gianni Dagli
Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
palms, vegetables, grass for pasturing animals, and grain grew in abundance. The
Egyptians loved beer, which people of all ages consumed. Thicker and more nutritious
than modern brews, Egyptian beer was such an important food that it could be used
to pay workmen’s wages. Egyptians, like other ancient societies, often flavored their
beer with fruits.
Egypt’s population included people whose skin color ranged from light to dark.
Although many ancient Egyptians would be regarded as black by modern racial
classification, ancient peoples did not observe such distinctions. The modern con-
troversy over whether Egyptians were people of color is therefore not an issue that
ancient Egyptians would have considered. If asked, they would probably have identi-
fied themselves by geography, language, religion, or traditions rather than skin color.
Like many other ancient groups, the Egyptians called themselves simply The People.
Later peoples, especially the Greeks, recognized the ethnic and cultural differences
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
between themselves and the Egyptians, but they deeply admired Egyptian civilization
for its long history and strongly religious character.
Although Egyptians absorbed knowledge from both the Mesopotamians and the
Nubians, their African neighbors to the south, they developed their own written
scripts. For official documents they used a pictographic script known as hieroglyphic
(Figure 1.2). They developed other, simpler scripts for everyday purposes.
Hieroglyph Meaning Sound value
vulture glottal stop
flowering reed consonantal I
forearm and ayin

hand
quail chick W
foot B
stool P
horned viper F
FIGURE 1.2 Egyptian Hieroglyphs
owl M Ancient Egyptians used pictures such
as these to develop their own system
water N of writing around 3000 B.C.E. Egyptian
hieroglyphs include around seven
mouth R
hundred pictures in three categories:
reed shelter H ideograms (signs indicating things or
ideas), phonograms (signs indicating
twisted flax slightly guttural sounds), and determinatives (signs clari-
placenta (?) H as in “loch” fying the meaning of the other signs).
Because Egyptians employed this formal
animal’s belly slightly softer script mainly for religious inscriptions on
than h buildings and sacred objects, Greeks
door bolt S referred to it as ta hieroglyphica (“the
sacred carved letters”), from which
folded cloth S comes the modern word hieroglyphic,
used to designate this system of writ-
pool SH ing. Eventually, Egyptians also developed
hill Q the handwritten cursive script called
demotic (Greek for “of the people”),
basket with K a much simpler and quicker form of
handle writing. The hieroglyphic writing system
continued until about 400 C.E., when
jar stand G
it was replaced by the Coptic alphabet.
loaf T Compare hieroglyphs with cuneiform
shapes (see page 11).
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Some scholars believe that Nubian society was the outside influence that most
deeply affected early Egypt. A Nubian social elite lived in dwellings much grander
than the small huts housing most of the population. Egyptians interacted with
Nubians while trading for raw materials such as gold, ivory, and animal skins, and
Nubia’s hierarchical political and social organization possibly influenced the develop-
ment of Egypt’s politically centralized Old Kingdom. Eventually, however, Egypt’s
greater power led it to dominate its southern neighbor.
Keeping Egypt unified and stable was difficult. When the kings were strong,
as during the Old Kingdom, the country was peaceful, with flourishing international
trade. Regional governors rebelling against weak kings, however, could create politi-
cal turmoil. Kings gained strength by fulfilling their public religious obligations. Egyp-
tians worshipped a great variety of gods, often shown in paintings and sculptures as
creatures with both human and animal features, such as the head of a jackal or a
bird atop a human body. These images reflected the belief that the gods each had
a particular animal through which they revealed themselves to human beings. Egyp-
tian gods were associated with powerful natural objects, emotions, qualities, and
technologies — examples are Re, the sun god; Isis, the goddess of love and fertility;
and Thoth, the god of wisdom and the inventor of writing. People worshipped the
gods with rituals, prayers, and festivals that expressed their respect and devotion to
these divine powers.
Egyptians regarded their king as a helpful divinity in human form, identified
with the hawk-headed god Horus. They saw the king’s rule as divine because he
helped generate maat (“what is right”), the supernatural force that brought order and
harmony to human beings if they maintained a stable hierarchy. The goddess Maat —
the embodiment of the divine force of justice — therefore oversaw a society that
the Egyptians believed would fall apart violently if the king ruled unjustly. The
king therefore had the duties of pleasing the gods, making law, and waging war on
enemies.
Art expressed the king’s legitimacy as ruler by representing him doing his reli-
gious and military duties. The requirement to show piety (proper religious belief and
behavior) demanded strict regulation of the king’s daily activities: he had specific
times to take a bath, go for a walk, and make love to his wife. Most important, he
had to ensure the country’s fertility and prosperity. If the Nile flood failed to occur,
this was seen as the king’s fault and weakened his authority by leaving many people
hungry and angry, thus encouraging rebellions by rivals.
Successful Old Kingdom rulers used expensive building programs to demon-
strate their piety and status. They erected huge tombs — the pyramids — in the desert
outside Memphis. Temples and halls accompanied the tombs for religious ceremo-
nies and royal funerals. Although the pyramids were not the first monuments built
from enormous worked stones (the temples, admittedly enormously smaller in scale,
on the Mediterranean island of Malta are earlier), they rank as the grandest, much
larger even than the Great Sphinx.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
The Pyramids at Giza in Egypt

The kings of the Egyptian Old
Kingdom built massive stone pyra-
mids for their tombs. The largest
pyramid shown here is the Great
Pyramid of King Khufu (Cheops).
Erected at Giza in the desert out-
side what is today Cairo in the
twenty-sixth century B.C.E., it
stands almost 480 feet high, not
much shorter than the 550-foot-
high Washington Monument in
Washington, D.C. The pyramids
formed the centerpieces of large
complexes of temples and court-
yards stretching down to the
banks of the Nile River or along
a canal leading there. The hidden
burial chambers of the kings lay
at the end of narrow tunnels
snaking deep into the pyramids’
interiors. (Guido Alberto Rossi / Tips
Images RM / age footstock.)
Old Kingdom rulers spent vast resources on these giant complexes to proclaim
their divine status and protect their mummified bodies for existence in the after-
life. King Khufu (r. 2609–2584 b.c.e.; also known as Cheops) commissioned the
hugest monument of all — the Great Pyramid at Giza. Taller than a forty-story sky-
scraper at 480 feet high, it covered thirteen acres and stretched 760 feet long on each
side. It required more than two million blocks of limestone, some of which weighed
fifteen tons. Its exterior blocks were quarried along the Nile, floated down the river
on barges, and pulled to the site on sleds over sand dampened to reduce friction. Free
workers then dragged the blocks up ramps into position using rollers and wooden
pads.
The Old Kingdom rulers’ expensive preparations for death reflected their
belief in the afterlife. One text says: “O [god] Atum, put your arms around King
Neferkare Pepy II [r. c. 2300–2206 b.c.e.], around this construction work, around
this pyramid. . . . May you guard lest anything happen to him evilly throughout the
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
course of eternity.” The royal family equipped their tombs with many comforts to
use in the underworld. The kings had gilded furniture, sparkling jewelry, and pre-
cious objects placed alongside the coffins holding their mummies. Archaeologists
have even uncovered two full-sized cedar ships buried next to the Great Pyramid,
meant to carry King Khufu on his journey into eternity.
The Old Kingdom ranked Egyptians in a strict hierarchy to preserve their kings’
authority and support what they regarded as the proper order of a just society. Egyp-
tians, believing their ordered society was superior to any other, despised foreigners.
The king and queen headed the hierarchy. Brothers and sisters in the royal family
could marry each other, perhaps because such matches were thought to preserve the
purity of the royal line and imitate the gods’ marriages. The priests, royal adminis-
trators, provincial governors, and army commanders ranked second. Then came the
free common people, most of whom worked in agriculture. Free workers had heavy
obligations to the state. In a system called corvée labor, the kings commanded com-
moners to work on the pyramids during slack times in farming. The state fed,
housed, and clothed the workers while they performed this seasonal work; their
labor was a way of paying taxes. Taxation reached 20 percent on the farmers’ pro-
duce. Slaves captured in foreign wars served the royal family and the priests; privately
owned slaves became numerous only after the Old Kingdom. The king hired mer-
cenaries, many from Nubia, to form the majority of the army.
Egyptians preserved more of the gender equality of the early Stone Age than did
their neighbors. Women generally enjoyed the same legal rights as free men. They
could own land and slaves, inherit property, pursue lawsuits, transact business, and
initiate divorces. Portrait statues show the equal status of wife and husband: each
figure is the same size and sits on the same kind of chair. Men dominated public
life, while women devoted themselves mainly to private life, managing their house-
holds and property. When their husbands went to war or were killed in battle, how-
ever, women often took on men’s work. Women could serve as priestesses, farm
managers, or healers in times of crisis.
The formal style of Egyptian art illustrates the high value placed on order and
predictability. Statues represent the subject either standing stiffly with the left leg
advanced or sitting on a chair or throne, stable and poised. The concern for deco-
rum (suitable behavior) also appears in the Old Kingdom literature called wisdom
literature — texts giving instructions for appropriate behavior. One text instructs a
young man to seek advice from ignorant people as well as the wise, and to avoid
arrogant overconfidence. This kind of literature had a strong influence on later civi-
lizations, especially the ancient Israelites.
The Middle and New Kingdoms in Egypt, 2061–1081 b.c.e.

The Old Kingdom began to disintegrate in the late third millennium b.c.e. Climate
change perhaps caused the annual Nile flood to shrink, making people believe the
kings had betrayed Maat. Rivalry for power erupted among leading families, and
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
civil war between a northern and a southern dynasty ripped the country apart. This
disunity allowed regional governors to increase their power, and some now seized
independence for their regions. Famine and civil unrest during the so-called First
Intermediate Period (2190–2061 b.c.e.) prevented the reestablishment of political
unity.
The kings of the Middle Kingdom (2061–1665 b.c.e.) restored the strong central
authority their Old Kingdom predecessors had lost. They waged war to extend
Egypt’s southern boundaries, and they expanded diplomatic and trade contacts in
the eastern Mediterranean region and with the island of Crete. Middle Kingdom
literature reveals that restored unity contributed to a deeply felt pride in the home-
land. The Egyptian narrator of The Story of Sinuhe, for example, reports that he lived
luxuriously during a forced stay in Syria but still longed to return: “Whichever god
you are who ordered my exile, have mercy and bring me home! Please allow me to
see the land where my heart dwells! Nothing is more important than that my body
be buried in the country where I was born!” For this lonely man, love for Egypt
outranked personal riches and comfort in a foreign land.
The Middle Kingdom lost its unity during the Second Intermediate Period
(1664–1570 b.c.e.), when the kings proved too weak to control foreign migrants who
had established independent communities in Egypt. By 1664 b.c.e., diverse bands of
a Semitic people originally from the eastern Mediterranean coast seized power. The
Egyptians called these foreigners Hyksos (“rulers of the foreign countries”). Hyksos
settlers transplanted foreign cultural elements to Egypt: their capital, Avaris, boasted
wall paintings done in the Minoan style of the island of Crete. The Hyksos promoted
frequent contact between Egypt and other Near Eastern states and possibly intro-
duced bronze-making technology, new musical instruments, humpbacked cattle, and
olive trees. Hyksos rulers strengthened Egypt’s military capacity by increasing the
use of war chariots and more powerful bows.
The leaders of Thebes, in southern Egypt, reunited the kingdom after long
struggles with the Hyksos. The series of dynasties they founded is called the New
Kingdom (1569–1081 b.c.e.). Thebes may have drawn strength from its connections
with prosperous settlements that emerged far out in the western desert, such as at
Kharga Oasis. Oases featured abundant water from underground aquifers in the
middle of a scorching environment. Oasis settlements flourished by providing stop-
ping points for the caravans of merchants who endured dangerously harsh desert
conditions to profit from commerce. Thebes’s expansion of contact with the western
desert settlements reveals that Egyptian society did not remain unchanged by com-
pletely shutting itself off behind its natural boundaries along the Nile. Similarly,
contacts with peoples to the east across the Red Sea and along the Indian Ocean
expanded in the New Kingdom.
The kings of the New Kingdom, known as pharaohs, rebuilt central authority
by restricting the power of regional governors and promoting national identity. To
prevent invasions, the pharaohs created a standing army, another significant change
in Egyptian society. These kings still employed mercenaries, but they formed an
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Egyptian military elite as commanders. Recognizing that knowledge of the rest of
the world was necessary for safety, the pharaohs promoted diplomacy with neighbor-
ing monarchs to increase their international contacts. The pharaohs exchanged offi-
cial letters with their “brother kings,” as they called them, in Mesopotamia, Anatolia,
and the eastern Mediterranean region.
The New Kingdom pharaohs sent their army into foreign wars to gain territory
and show their superiority. Their imperialism has earned them the title “warrior
pharaohs.” They waged many campaigns abroad and presented themselves in offi-
cial propaganda and art as the incarnations of warrior gods. They invaded lands to
the south to win access to gold and other precious materials, and they fought up
and down the eastern Mediterranean coast to control that crucial land route into
Egypt.
Massive riches supported the power of these aggressive pharaohs. Egyptian trad-
ers exchanged local fine goods, such as ivory, for foreign luxury goods, such as wine
and olive oil transported in painted pottery from Greece. Egyptian
rulers displayed their wealth most conspicuously in the enormous
sums spent to build stone temples. Queen Hatshepsut (r. 1502–
1482 b.c.e.), for example, built her massive mortuary temple at
Deir el-Bahri, near Thebes, including a temple dedicated to the
god Amun (or Amen), to express her claim to divine birth and
the right to rule. After her husband (who was also her half
brother) died, Hatshepsut proclaimed herself “female king” as
co-ruler with her young stepson. In this way, she sidestepped
the restrictions of Egyptian political tradition, which did not
recognize the right of a queen to reign by herself. Hatshepsut
also had herself represented in official art as a king, with a
Hatshepsut as Pharaoh Offering Maat

This granite statue, eight and a half feet tall, portrayed
Hatshepsut, queen of Egypt in the early fifteenth century
B.C.E., as pharaoh wearing a beard and male clothing. She is
performing her royal duty of offering maat (the divine principle
of order and justice) to the gods. Egyptian religion taught
that the gods “lived on maat” and that the land’s rulers
were responsible for providing it. Hatshepsut had this
statue, and many others, placed in a huge temple she
built outside Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Why do you think
Hatshepsut is shown as calm and relaxed, despite
having her toes severely flexed? (Egypt, 18th dynasty,
c. 1473–1458 B.C.E. Granite, h. 261.5 cm [10215∕16 in.]; w. 80 cm.
[31½ in.]; d. 137 cm [5315∕16 in.]. Rogers Fund, 1929 [29.3.1].
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA. Image
copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Resource, NY.)
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
royal beard and male clothing. Hatshepsut succeeded in her unusual rule because
she demonstrated that a woman could ensure safety and prosperity by maintaining
the goodwill of the gods toward the country and its people.
Egyptians believed that the gods oversaw all aspects of life and death and built
large temples and festivals to honor them. A calendar based on the moon governed
the dates of religious ceremonies. (The Egyptians also developed a calendar for
administrative and fiscal purposes that had 365 days, divided into 12 months of 30
days each, with the extra 5 days added before the start of the next year. Our modern
calendar comes from this source.) The early New Kingdom pharaohs promoted their
state god Amun-Re (a combination of Thebes’s patron god and the sun god) so
energetically that he became far more important than the other gods. This Theban
cult subordinated the other gods, without denying their existence or the continued
importance of their priests. The pharaoh Akhenaten (r. 1372–1355 b.c.e.) went a step
further, however: he proclaimed that official religion would concentrate on worship-
ping Aten, who represented the pure power of the sun. Akhenaten made the king and
the queen the only people with direct access to the cult of Aten; ordinary people had
no part in it. Some scholars identify Akhenaten’s religious reform as a step toward
monotheism, with Aten meant to be the state’s sole god.
To showcase the royal family and the concentration of power that he desired,
Akhenaten moved 40,000 Egyptians to construct a new capital for Aten at Tell el-
Amarna (Map 1.2, page 17). Archaeology shows that the workers had very hard lives,
suffering from poor nutrition and dangerous labor conditions. The pharaoh tried to
force his revised religion on the priests of the old cults, who resisted fiercely. His-
torians have blamed Akhenaten’s religious zeal for leading him to neglect his king-
dom’s defense, but international correspondence found at Tell el-Amarna has shown
that the pharaoh tried to use diplomacy to turn foreign enemies against one another
so that they would not become strong enough to threaten Egypt. His policy failed,
however, when the Hittites from Anatolia defeated the Mitanni, Egypt’s allies in
eastern Syria. Akhenaten’s religious reform also died with him. During the reign of
his successor, Tutankhamun (r. 1355–1346 b.c.e.) — famous today through the dis-
covery in 1922 of his rich, unlooted tomb — the cult of Amun-Re reclaimed its lead-
ing role. The crisis created by Akhenaten’s attempted reform emphasizes the over-
whelming importance of religious conservatism in Egyptian life and the control of
religion by the ruling power.
Most New Kingdom Egyptians’ lives revolved around their labor and the annual
flood of the Nile. During the months when the river stayed between its banks, they
worked their fields, rising early in the morning to avoid the searing heat. When the
flooding halted agricultural work, the king required laborers to work on his building
projects. They lived in workers’ quarters erected next to the construction sites.
Although slaves became more common as household workers in the New King-
dom than they had been before, free workers — who were obliged to perform a cer-
tain amount of labor for the king — did most of the work on this period’s mammoth
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
royal construction projects. Workers lightened their burden by singing songs, telling
adventure stories, and drinking a lot of beer. They accomplished a great deal: the
majority of the ancient temples remaining in Egypt today were built during the New
Kingdom.
Ordinary people worshipped many different gods, especially those believed to
protect them in their daily existence. They venerated Bes, for instance, a dwarf with
the features of a lion, as a protector of the household. They carved his image on
amulets, beds, headrests, and mirror handles. By this time, ordinary people believed
that they could have a blessed afterlife and put great effort into preparing for it.
Those who could afford it arranged to have their tombs outfitted with all the goods
needed for the journey in the underworld. Most important, they paid burial experts
to turn their corpses into mummies so that they could have a complete body for
eternity. Making a mummy required removing the brain (through the nose with a
long-handled spoon), cutting out the internal organs to store separately in stone jars,
drying the body with mineral salts to the consistency of old leather, and wrapping
the shrunken flesh in linen soaked with ointments.
Every mummy had to travel to the afterlife with a copy of the Book of the Dead,
which included magic spells for avoiding dangers along the way, as well as instruc-
tions on how to prepare for the judgment-day trial before the gods. To prove that
they deserved a good fate, the dead had to convincingly recite claims such as the
following: “I have not committed crimes against people; I have not mistreated cattle;
I have not robbed the poor; I have not caused pain; I have not caused tears.”
Magic played a large role in the lives of Egyptians. Professional magicians sold
spells and charms, both written and oral, which the buyers used to promote eternal
salvation, protect against demons, smooth the rocky course of love, exact revenge on
enemies, and find relief from disease and injury. Egyptian doctors knew many
medicinal herbs (knowledge they passed on to later civilizations) and could perform
major surgeries, including opening the
skull. Still, no doctor could cure severe
REVIEW QUESTION How did religion guide
the lives of both rulers and ordinary people in infections; as in the past, sick people con-
ancient Egypt? tinued to rely on the help of supernatural
forces through prayers and spells.
The Hittites, the Minoans, and the Mycenaeans,

2200–1000 b.c.e.
The first examples of Western civilization to emerge in the central Mediterranean
region were located in Anatolia, dominated by the warlike Hittite kingdom (Map 1.1,
page 6); on the large island of Crete and nearby islands, home to the Minoans; and
on the Greek mainland, where the Mycenaeans grew rich from raiding and trade.
As early as 6000 b.c.e., people from southwestern Asia, especially Anatolia, began
migrating westward and southward to inhabit islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] The Hittites, the Minoans, and the Mycenaeans, 2200–1000 b.c.e. 27
From this migration, the rich civilization of the Minoans gradually emerged on Crete
and other islands in the Aegean Sea by around 2200 b.c.e. In mainland Greece, civi-
lization eventually arose among peoples who had moved into the area thousands of
years before, again most likely from southwestern Asia.
The Hittites, the Minoans, and the Mycenaeans had advanced military technolo-
gies, elaborate architecture, striking art, a desire for luxury, and extensive trade con-
tacts with Egypt and the Near East. The Hittites, like the Egyptians, created a unified
state under a single central authority. The Minoans and the Mycenaeans, like the
Mesopotamians, established separate city-states. All three peoples inhabited a dan-
gerous world in which repeated raids and violent disruptions lasting from around
1200 to 1000 b.c.e. ultimately destroyed their prosperous cultures. Nevertheless, their
accomplishments paved the way for the later civilization of Greece, which greatly
influenced Western civilization.
The Hittites, 1750–1200 b.c.e.

By around 1750 b.c.e., the Hittites had made themselves the most powerful people
of central Anatolia. They had migrated from the Caucasus area, between the Black
and Caspian Seas, and defeated indigenous Anatolian peoples to found their central-
ized kingdom. It flourished because they inhabited a fertile upland plateau in the
peninsula’s center, excelled in war and diplomacy, and controlled trade in their region
and southward. The Hittites’ military campaigns eventually threatened Egypt’s pos-
sessions on the eastern Mediterranean coast, bringing them into conflict with the
pharaohs of the New Kingdom.
Since the Hittites spoke an Indo-European language, they belonged to the lin-
guistic family that over time populated most of Europe. The original Indo-European
speakers, who were pastoralists and raiders, had migrated as separate groups into
Anatolia and Europe, including Greece, most likely from western Asia. Archaeologi-
cal discoveries in that region have revealed graves of women buried with weapons.
These burials suggest that women in these groups originally occupied positions of
leadership in war and peace alongside men; the prominence of Hittite queens in
documents, royal letters, and foreign treaties perhaps sprang from that tradition.
As in other early civilizations, rule in the Hittite kingdom depended on religion
for its legitimacy. Hittite religion combined worship of Indo-European gods with
worship of deities inherited from the original Anatolian population. The king served
as high priest of the storm god, and Hittite belief demanded that he maintain a strict
purity in his life as a demonstration of his justice and guardianship of social order. His
drinking water, for example, always had to be strained. The king’s water carrier was
executed if so much as one hair was found in the water. Like Egyptian kings, Hittite
rulers felt responsible for maintaining the gods’ goodwill toward their subjects. King
Mursili II (r. 1321–1295 b.c.e.), for example, issued a set of prayers begging the gods
to end a plague: “What is this, o gods, that you have done? Our land is dying. . . .
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
We have lost our wits, and we can do nothing right. O gods, whatever sin you behold,
either let a prophet come forth to identify it . . . or let us see it in a dream!”
The kings conducted many religious ceremonies in their capital, Hattusas.
Ringed by massive defensive walls and stone towers, it featured huge palaces aligned
along straight, gravel-paved streets. Sculptures of animals, warriors, and, especially,
the royal rulers decorated public spaces. Hittite kings maintained their rule by forg-
ing personal alliances — cemented by marriages and oaths of loyalty — with the noble
families of the kingdom.
These rulers aggressively employed their troops to expand their power. In peri-
ods when ties between kings and nobles remained strong and the kingdom therefore
preserved its unity, they launched far-reaching military campaigns. In 1595 b.c.e.,
for example, the royal army raided as far southeast as Babylon in Mesopotamia,
destroying that kingdom. Although Hittite craftsmen did smelt iron, from which
they made ceremonial implements, scholars no longer accept the idea that the king-
dom owed its success in war to a special knowledge of making weapons from iron.
Weapons made from iron did not become common in the Mediterranean world until
well after 1200 b.c.e. — at the end of the Hittite kingdom. The Hittite army excelled
in the use of chariots, a tactic that gave it an edge on the battlefield.
The economic strength of the Hittite kingdom came from control over long-
distance trade routes for raw materials, especially metals. The Hittites dominated the
lucrative trade moving between the Mediterranean coast and inland northern Syria,
despite the New Kingdom pharaohs’ resistance against Hittite expansion to the south
toward the Mediterranean coast and the benefits that access to the sea brought. In
the bloody battle of Kadesh, around 1274 b.c.e., the Hittites fought the Egyptians to
a standstill in Syria, leading to a political stalemate in the eastern Mediterranean.
Fear of neighboring Assyria eventually led the Hittite king to negotiate with his
Egyptian rival, and the two war-weary kingdoms became allies sixteen years after
the battle of Kadesh by agreeing to a treaty that is a landmark in the history of
international diplomacy. In it, the two monarchs pledged to be “at peace and brothers
forever.” The alliance lasted, and thirteen years later the Hittite king gave his daugh-
ter in marriage to his Egyptian “brother.”
The Minoans, 2200–1400 b.c.e.

Study of early Greek civilization traditionally begins with the people today known
as Minoans, who inhabited Crete and other islands in the Aegean Sea by the late third
millennium b.c.e. The word Minoan comes from the archaeologist Arthur Evans
(1851–1941), who was searching the island for traces of King Minos, famous in
Greek myth for building the first great navy and keeping the half-human/half-bull
Minotaur in a labyrinth at his palace. Scholars today, however, are not sure whether
to count the Minoans as the earliest Greeks because they are uncertain whether the
Minoan language, written in a script called Linear A, was related to Greek or belongs
to another linguistic tradition. If research confirms that Minoan was a member of
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
Palace at Knossos
The Minoans on the island of Crete
and neighboring islands in the Medi-
terranean Sea south of mainland
Greece constructed large, multilevel
buildings called palaces containing
many rooms, corridors, worship
spaces, and porches. They housed
royal families, servants, administra-
tors, and managers of enormous
storage complexes. The walls were
decorated with colorful paintings
showing diverse scenes of nature,
elaborately dressed people, and cer-
emonies. Urban settlements grew up
around these palaces. The palace at
Knossos is the largest known. It con-
trolled a fertile agricultural area that
provided the rulers with a luxurious
lifestyle. (DEA / A. VERGANI / De Agostini
Editore / age footstock.)
the Indo-European family of languages (the ancestor of many languages, including

Greek, Latin, and, much later, English), then, based on the criterion of language,
Minoans can be seen as the earliest Greeks. In any case, Minoans’ interactions with
the mainland deeply influenced later Greek civilization.
By around 2200 b.c.e., Minoans on Crete and nearby islands had created a
palace society, a name pointing to its sprawling multichambered buildings housing
not only the rulers, their families, and their servants but also the political, economic,
and religious administrative offices of the state. Minoan rulers combined the func-
tions of ruler and priest, dominating both politics and religion. The palaces seem to
have been independent, with no single Minoan community imposing unity on the
others. The general population clustered around each palace in houses adjacent to
one another; some of these settlements reached the size and density of small cities.
The Cretan site Knossos is the most famous such palace complex. Other, smaller
settlements dotted outlying areas of the island, especially on the coast. The Minoans’
numerous ports supported extensive international trade, above all with the Egyptians
and the Hittites.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
The most surprising feature of Minoan communities is their lack of strong
defensive walls. Palaces, towns, and even isolated country houses had no fortifica-
tions. The remains of the newer palaces — such as the one at Knossos, with its hun-
dreds of rooms in five stories, indoor plumbing, and colorful scenes painted on the
walls — have led some historians to the controversial conclusion that Minoans
avoided war among themselves, despite their having no single central authority over
their independent settlements. Others object to this vision of peaceful Minoans as
mistaken, arguing that the most powerful Minoans on Crete dominated some neigh-
boring islands. Recent discoveries of tombs on Crete have revealed weapons caches,
and a find of bones cut by knives has even raised the possibility of human sacri-
fice. The prominence of women in palace frescoes and the numerous figurines of
large-breasted goddesses found on Minoan sites have also prompted speculation that
women dominated Minoan society, but no texts so far discovered have verified this.
Minoan art certainly depicts women prominently and respectfully, but the same is
true of other civilizations of the time controlled by men. More research is needed to
resolve the controversies concerning gender roles in Minoan civilization.
Scholars agree, however, that the development of Mediterranean polyculture —
the cultivation of olives, grapes, and grains in a single, interrelated agricultural
system — greatly increased the health and wealth of Minoan society. This innovation
made the most efficient use of a farmer’s labor by combining crops that required
intense work at different seasons. This system of farming, which still characterizes
Mediterranean agriculture, had two major consequences. First, the combination of
crops provided a healthy way of eating (the “Mediterranean diet”), which in turn
stimulated population growth. Second, agriculture became both more diversified and
more specialized, increasing production of the valuable products olive oil and wine.
Agricultural surpluses on Crete and nearby islands spurred the growth of special-
ized crafts. To store and transport surplus food, Minoan artisans manufactured huge
storage jars (the size of a modern refrigerator) and in the process created another
specialized industry. Craft workers, producing sophisticated goods using time-
consuming techniques, no longer had time to grow their own food or make the
things, such as clothes and lamps, they needed for everyday life. Instead, they
exchanged the products they made for food and other goods. In this way, Minoan
society experienced increasing economic interdependence.
The vast storage areas in their palaces suggest that the Minoan rulers, like some
Mesopotamian kings before them, controlled their society’s exchanges through a
redistributive economic system. The Knossos palace, for example, held hundreds of
gigantic jars capable of storing 240,000 gallons of olive oil and wine. Bowls, cups,
and dippers crammed storerooms nearby. Palace officials would have decided how
much each farmer or craft producer had to contribute to the palace storehouse and
how much of those contributions would then be redistributed to each person in the
community for basic subsistence or as an extra reward. In this way, people sent the
products of their labor to the central authority, which redistributed them according
to its own priorities.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
The Mycenaeans, 1800–1000 b.c.e.

Ancestors of the Greeks had moved into the mainland region of Greece by perhaps
8000 b.c.e., yet the first civilization definitely identified as Greek because of its Indo-
European language arose only in the early second millennium b.c.e. These first
Greeks are called Mycenaeans, a name derived from the hilltop site of Mycenae,
famous for its many-roomed palace, rich graves, and massive fortification walls.
Located in the Peloponnese (the large peninsula forming southern Greece, Map 1.3),
Mycenae dominated its local area, but no one settlement ever ruled all of Bronze
Age Greece. Instead, the independent communities of Mycenaean civilization vied
with one another in a fierce competition for natural resources and territory.
The nineteenth-century German millionaire Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890)
was the first to discover treasure-filled graves at Mycenae. The burial objects revealed
a warrior culture organized in independent settlements and ruled by aggressive
N
Aegean
W E Sea
S
Gulf o ANATOLIA
f Cor Gla
inth
GREECE Athens
Mycenae
Ionian
PELOPONNESE
Sea CYCLADES IS.
Pylos
Thera
0 50 100 miles
0 50 100 kilometers
Knossos
Mycenaean civilization Crete
Minoan civilization Mediterranean Sea
MAP 1.3 Greece and the Aegean Sea, 1500 b.c.e.

A varied landscape of mountains, islands, and seas defined the geography of Greece. The dis-
tances between settlements were mostly short, but rough terrain and seasonally stormy sailing
made travel a chore. The distance from the mainland to the largest island in this region, Crete,
where Minoan civilization arose, was long enough to keep Cretans isolated from the wars of
most of later Greek history.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
kings. Constructed as stone-lined shafts, the graves contained entombed dead who
had taken hordes of valuables with them: golden jewelry, including heavy necklaces
loaded with pendants; gold and silver vessels; bronze weapons decorated with scenes
of wild animals inlaid in precious metals; and delicately painted pottery.
In his excitement at finding treasure, Schliemann proudly announced that he
had found the grave of Agamemnon, the legendary king who commanded the Greek
army against Troy, a city in northwestern Anatolia, in the Trojan War. Homer, Greece’s
first and most famous poet, immortalized this war in his epic poem The Iliad. Archae-
ologists now know the shaft graves date to around 1700–1600 b.c.e., long before the
Trojan War could have taken place. Schliemann, who paid for his own excavation at
Troy to prove to skeptics that the city had really existed, was wrong on this point, but
his discoveries provided the most spectacular evidence for mainland Greece’s earliest
civilization.
Since the hilly terrain of Greece had little fertile land but many useful ports,
settlements tended to spring up near the coast. Mycenaean rulers enriched them-
selves by dominating local farmers, conducting naval raids, and participating in sea-
borne trade. Palace records inscribed on clay tablets reveal that the Mycenaeans
operated under a redistributive economy. On the tablets scribes made detailed lists
of goods received and goods paid out, recording everything from chariots to livestock,
landholdings, personnel, and perfumes, even broken equipment taken out of service.
Like the Minoans, the Mycenaeans did not use writing to record the oral literature
that scholars believe they created.
Tholos tombs — massive underground burial chambers built in beehive shapes
with closely fitted stones — reveal that some Mycenaeans had become very rich by
about 1500 b.c.e. The architectural details of these tombs and the style of the burial
goods placed in them testify to the far-flung expeditions for trade and war that
Mycenaean rulers conducted throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Above all, how-
ever, their many decorative patterns clearly inspired by Minoan art indicate a close
connection with Minoan civilization.
Underwater archaeology has revealed the influence of international commerce
during this period in promoting cultural interaction as a by-product of trade. Divers
have discovered, for example, that a late-fourteenth-century b.c.e. shipwreck off Ulu-
burun in Turkey carried a mixed cargo and varied personal possessions from many
locations in the eastern Mediterranean, including Canaan, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt,
and Babylon. The variety confirms that merchants and consumers involved in this
sort of long-distance trade were exposed directly to the goods produced by others
and indirectly to their ideas.
The sea brought the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations into close contact, but
they remained different in significant ways. The Mycenaeans spoke Greek and made
burnt offerings to the gods; the Minoans did neither. The Minoans extended their
religious worship outside their centers, establishing sacred places in caves, on moun-
taintops, and in country villas, while the mainlanders concentrated the worship of their
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
gods inside their walled communities. When the Mycenaeans started building palaces
in the fourteenth century b.c.e., they (unlike the palace-society Minoans) designed
them around megarons — rooms with prominent ceremonial hearths and thrones for
the rulers. Some Mycenaean palaces had more than one megaron, which could soar
two stories high with columns to support a roof above the second-floor balconies.
Documents found in the palace at Knossos reveal that by around 1400 b.c.e. the
Mycenaeans had acquired dominance over Crete, possibly in a war over commerce
in the Mediterranean. The documents were tablets written in Linear B, a pictographic
script based on Linear A (which scholars still cannot fully decipher). The twentieth-
century architect Michael Ventris (1922–1956) proved that Linear B was used to
write not Minoan, but Greek. Because the Linear B tablets date from before the final
destruction of Knossos in about 1370 b.c.e., they show that the palace administration
had been keeping its records in this foreign language for some time and therefore
that Mycenaeans were controlling Crete well before the end of Minoan civilization.
By the middle of the fourteenth century b.c.e., then, the Mycenaeans had displaced
the Minoans as the Aegean region’s preeminent civilization.
By the time Mycenaeans took over Crete, war at home and abroad was the prin-
cipal concern of well-off Mycenaean men, a tradition that they passed on to later Greek
civilization. Contents of Bronze Age tombs in Greece reveal that no wealthy man
went to his grave without his war equipment. Armor and weapons were so central
to a Mycenaean man’s identity that he could not do without them, even in death.
Warriors rode into battle on revolutionary transport — lightweight two-wheeled
chariots pulled by horses. These expensive vehicles, perhaps introduced by Indo-
Europeans migrating from Central Asia, first appeared in various Mediterranean and
Decorated Dagger from Mycenae

The hilltop fortress and palace at Mycenae was the capital of Bronze Age Greece’s most
famous kingdom. The picture of a lion hunt inlaid in gold and silver on this sixteenth-century
B.C.E. dagger expressed how wealthy Mycenaean men saw their roles in society: as courageous
hunters and warriors overcoming the hostile forces of nature. The nine-inch blade was found
in a circle of graves inside Mycenae’s walls, where the highest-ranking people were buried with
their treasures as evidence of their status. (National Archeological Museum, Athens, Greece / De Agostini
Picture Library / Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Near Eastern societies not long after 2000 b.c.e.; the first picture of such a chariot
in the Aegean region occurs on a Mycenaean grave marker from about 1500 b.c.e.
Wealthy people evidently desired this new and costly equipment not only for war
but also as proof of their social status.
The Mycenaeans seem to have spent more on war than on religion. In any case,
they did not construct any giant religious buildings like Mesopotamia’s ziggurats or
Egypt’s pyramids. Their most important deities were male gods concerned with war.
The names of gods found in the Linear B tablets reveal that Mycenaeans passed down
many divinities to the Greeks of later times, such as Dionysus, the god of wine.
The Violent End to Early Western Civilization, 1200–1000 b.c.e.

A state of political equilibrium, in which kings corresponded with one another and
traders traveled all over the area, characterized the Mediterranean and Near Eastern
world around 1300 b.c.e. Within a century, however, violence and, perhaps, climate
change had destroyed or weakened almost every major political state in the region,
including Egypt, some kingdoms of Mesopotamia, and the Hittite and Mycenaean
kingdoms. Neither the civilizations united under a single central authority nor the
ones with independent states survived. This period of international violence from
about 1200 to 1000 b.c.e. remains one of the most difficult puzzles in the history of
Western civilization.
Recent research on fossilized pollen suggests that a prolonged period of severe
drought around this time weakened the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean
region by drastically reducing agricultural food production. Egyptian and Hittite
records also reveal destructive military conflict. They document many foreign attacks
in this period, especially from the sea. According to one inscription, in about
1190 b.c.e. a warrior pharaoh defeated a powerful coalition of seaborne invaders
from the north, who had fought their way to the edge of Egypt. These Sea Peoples,
as historians call them, were made up of many different groups operating separately.
No single, unified group of peoples originated the tidal wave of violence starting
around 1200 b.c.e. Rather, many different bands devastated the region. A chain
reaction of attacks and flights in a recurring and expanding cycle put even more
bands on the move. Some were mercenary soldiers who had deserted the rulers who
had employed them; some were raiders by profession. Many may have been Greeks.
The story of the Trojan War probably recalls this period of repeated violent attacks
from abroad: it portrays an army from Greece crossing the Aegean Sea to attack and
plunder Troy and the surrounding coastal region. The attacks also reached far inland.
As a result, the Babylonian kingdom collapsed, the Assyrians were confined to their
homeland, and much of western Asia and Syria was devastated.
It remains mysterious how so many attackers could be so successful over such
a long time, but the consequences for the eastern Mediterranean region are clear.
The once mighty Hittite kingdom fell around 1200 b.c.e., when raiders cut off its
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
trade routes for raw materials. Invaders razed its capital city, Hattusas, which never
revived. Egypt’s New Kingdom turned back the Sea Peoples after a tremendous mili-
tary effort, but the raiders destroyed the Egyptian long-distance trade network. By
the end of the New Kingdom, around 1081 b.c.e., Egypt had shrunk to its original
territorial core along the Nile’s banks. These problems ruined the Egyptian state’s
credit. For example, when an eleventh-century b.c.e. Theban temple official traveled
to Phoenicia to buy cedar for a ceremonial boat, the city’s ruler demanded cash in
advance. Although the Egyptian monarchy hung on, power struggles between pha-
raohs and priests, made worse by frequent attacks from abroad, prevented the re-
establishment of centralized authority. No Egyptian dynasty ever again became an
expansionist international power.
In Greece, homegrown conflict apparently generated a tipping point for Myce-
naean civilization at the time when the Sea Peoples became a threat. The Mycenaeans
reached the zenith of their power around 1400–1250 b.c.e. The enormous domed
tomb at Mycenae, called the Treasury of Atreus, testifies to the riches of this period.
The tomb’s elaborately decorated front and soaring roof reveal the pride and wealth
of the Mycenaean warrior princes. The last phase of the extensive palace at Pylos on
the west coast of the Peloponnese also dates from this time. It boasted vivid wall
paintings, storerooms bursting with food, and a royal bathroom with a built-in tub
and intricate plumbing. But these prosperous Mycenaeans did not escape the wide-
spread violence that began around 1200 b.c.e. Linear B tablets record the disposition
of troops to the coast to guard the palace at Pylos from raids from the sea. The
palace inhabitants of eastern Greece constructed defensive walls so massive that the
later Greeks said giants had built them. These fortifications would have protected
coastal palaces against seafaring attackers, who could have been either outsiders or
Greeks. The wall around the inland palace at Gla in central Greece, however, which
foreign raiders could not easily reach, confirms that Mycenaean communities also
had to defend themselves against other Mycenaean communities.
The internal conflict probably did more damage to Mycenaean civilization than the
raids of the Sea Peoples. Major earthquakes also struck at this time, spreading further
destruction among the Mycenaeans. Archaeology offers no evidence for the ancient
tradition that Dorian Greeks invading from the north caused this damage. Rather, near-
constant civil war by jealous local Mycenaean rulers overburdened the complicated
administrative balancing system necessary for the palaces’ redistributive economies
and hindered recovery from earthquake damage. The violence killed many Mycenae-
ans, and the disappearance of the palace-based redistributive economy put many others
on the road to starvation. The rulers’ loss of power left most Greeks with no organized
way to defend or feed themselves and forced
them not only to wander abroad in search
REVIEW QUESTION How did war determine
of new places to settle but also to learn to the fate of early Western civilization in Anatolia,
farm. Like people from the earliest times, Crete, and Greece?
they had to move to build a better life.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Conclusion
The best way to create a meaningful definition of Western civilization is to study
its history, which begins in Mesopotamia and Egypt; early societies there influenced
the later civilization of Greece. Cities first arose in Mesopotamia around 4000 to
3000 b.c.e. Hierarchy had characterized society from the very beginning, but it,
along with patriarchy, grew more prominent once civilization, larger populations,
and political states with centralized authority became widespread.
Trade and war were constants, both aiming in different ways at profit and glory.
Indirectly, they often generated cultural interaction by putting civilizations into close
contact. Technological innovation was also a prominent characteristic of this long
period. The invention of metallurgy, monumental architecture, mathematics, and
alphabetic writing greatly affected people’s lives. Religion was at the center of society;
people believed that the gods demanded everyone, from king to worker, to display
just and righteous conduct. But not even their faith could protect the people of the
early civilizations of the Mediterranean from the destruction inflicted by the Sea
Peoples and from their own internal conflicts in a period of prolonged violence.
Neither hierarchy nor central authority could preserve their prosperity, and a Dark
Age began around 1000 b.c.e.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 37
Da
Hittite homeland
Black Sea
CAU Egyptian homeland
CAS
US Babylonian kingdom
MT
S.
Mycenaean Greece
GREECE . Movements of Sea Peoples
Troy
sR
H aly
ANATOLIA .
TS
Gla Caspian
Athens
Mycenae M Sea
S
RU
T AU
M
ES
Pylos
Ti g
O
Ebla sR Nineveh
ri
O
.
TA
SYRIA ASSYRIA
M
Crete PHOENICIA
IA
Cyprus Eup
hra
ZA
Medi tes KASSITE GR
terran R. KINGDOM
OS
ean Sea Akkad? MT
Babylon S.
CANAAN/
PALESTINE
BABYLONIA Presumed
ancient coastline
Ur
Memphis
SINAI ARABIAN
LOWER PENINSULA DESERT
EGYPT
Tell
SAHARA DESERT el-Amarna
Pe
rs
N ia
nG
Re
Ni
u lf
d
le
Sea
R.
W E Thebes 0 200 400 miles
S UPPER 0 200 400 kilometers

EGYPT
MAPPING THE WEST The Violent End to Early Western Civilization, 1200–1000 b.c.e.
Bands of wandering warriors and raiders set the eastern Mediterranean aflame at the end of
the Bronze Age. This violence displaced many people and ended the power of the Egyptian,
Hittite, and Mycenaean kingdoms. Even some of the Near Eastern states well inland from the
eastern Mediterranean coast felt the effects of this period of unrest, whose causes remain
mysterious. The Mediterranean Sea was a two-edged sword for the early civilizations that grew
up around and near it: as a highway for transporting goods and ideas, it was a benefit; as an
easy access corridor for attackers, it was a danger. The raids of the Sea Peoples smashed the
prosperity of the eastern Mediterranean region around 1200–1000 B.C.E. and set in motion the
forces that led to the next step in our story, the reestablishment of civilization in Greece. Inter-
nal conflict among Mycenaean rulers turned the regional unrest of those centuries into a local
catastrophe; fighting each other for dominance, they so weakened their monarchies that their
societies could not recover from the effects of battles and earthquakes.
Chapter 1 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
civilization (p. 3) polytheism (p. 10) wisdom literature (p. 22)
hierarchy (p. 4) cuneiform (p. 11) palace society (p. 29)
hunter-gatherers (p. 5) empire (p. 12) Mediterranean polyculture
city-state (p. 8) Hammurabi (p. 14) (p. 30)
patriarchy (p. 10) hieroglyphic (p. 19) Linear B (p. 33)
redistributive economy (p. 10) Maat (p. 20) Sea Peoples (p. 34)
Review Questions
1. How did life change for people in and nearby Mesopotamia, first after the Neolithic
Revolution and then when they began to live in cities?
2. How did religion guide the lives of both rulers and ordinary people in ancient Egypt?
3. How did war determine the fate of early Western civilization in Anatolia, Crete, and
Greece?
Making Connections
1. Compare and contrast how the environmental factors in Mesopotamia and Egypt affected
the emergence of the world’s first civilizations.
2. What were the advantages and disadvantages of living in a unified country under a single
central authority compared to living in a region with separate city-states?
3. Which were more important in influencing the development of early Western civilization:
the intentional or the unintentional consequences of change?
Suggested References
The combination of archaeological and linguistic research informs scholarship on the history of
the ancient Near East, Egypt, and Greece. New discoveries and new ideas both help historians
achieve a clearer understanding of these earliest societies of Western civilization.
Bertman, Stephen. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. 2003.
Bryce, Trevor. Life and Society in the Hittite World. 2004.
——— The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. 2009.
*Chavalas, Mark W., ed. The Ancient Near East. Historical Sources in Translation. 2006.
Cline, Eric H. 1171 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed. 2010.
Crouch, Carly L. War and Ethics in the Ancient Near East. 2009.
*Dalley, Stephanie, trans. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others.
1991.
Ikram, Salima. Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. 2010.
Mieroop, Marc Van De. King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography. 2005.
Partridge, Robert B. Fighting Pharaohs: Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Egypt. 2002.
Podany, Amanda H. Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near
East. 2010.
*Primary source.
38
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Chapter 1 Review 39
Important Events
50,000–45,000 B.C.E. Homo sapiens migrate from Africa into southwest Asia and
Europe
10,000–8000 B.C.E. Neolithic Revolution in Fertile Crescent and Sahara
4000–3000 B.C.E. Mesopotamians invent writing and establish first cities
4000–1000 B.C.E. Bronze Age in southwestern Asia, Egypt, and Europe
3050 B.C.E. Narmer (Menes) unites Upper and Lower Egypt into one
kingdom
2687–2190 B.C.E. Old Kingdom in Egypt
2350 B.C.E. King Sargon of Akkad establishes world’s first empire
2300–2200 B.C.E. Enheduanna, princess of Akkad, composes poetry
2200 B.C.E. Minoans build their first palaces
2061–1665 B.C.E. Middle Kingdom in Egypt
1792–1750 B.C.E. Hammurabi rules Babylon and issues his law code
1569–1081 B.C.E. New Kingdom in Egypt
1400 B.C.E. Mycenaeans build their first palaces in Greece and take over
Minoan Crete
1200–1000 B.C.E. Period of violence ends many kingdoms
Consider three events: Mesopotamians invent writing and establish first cities (4000–
3000 B.C.E.), King Sargon of Akkad establishes the world’s first empire in Akkadia
(2350 B.C.E.), and Enheduanna composes poetry (2300–2200 B.C.E.). How might the
invention of writing have promoted the growth of stronger city-states and the first empire?
How might the creation of the Akkadian Empire have fostered the development of
literature?
Sanders, N. K. The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, 1250–1150 B.C. Rev. ed.
1985.
Scarre, Chris. The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies. 2009.
*Simpson, William Kelly, ed. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. An Anthology of Stories, Instructions,
and Poetry. 3rd ed. 2003.
Szapakowska, Kasia. Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Recreating Lahun. 2008.
Tyldesley, Joyce. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh. 1998.
Near East Empires and the
2
Reemergence of Civilization
in Greece
1000–500 b.c.e.
I
n The Iliad, the eighth-century b.c.e. Greek poet Homer narrates bloody
tales of the Trojan War. The story is rich with legends born from Greek and Near
Eastern traditions, such as that of the Greek hero Bellerophon. Driven from his
home by a false charge of sexual assault, Bellerophon has to serve as an enforcer for
a foreign king, fighting his most dangerous
Black-Figure Vase from Corinth enemies. In his most famous combat, Bel-
This vase was made in Corinth about lerophon is pitted against “the Chimera, an
600 B.C.E., painted in the so-called inhuman freak created by the gods, horrible
black-figure style, in which artists with its lion’s head, goat’s body, and dragon’s
carved details into the dark-baked clay. tail, breathing fire all the time.” Bellerophon
In the late sixth century B.C.E., this style
triumphs by mounting the winged horse
gave way to red-figure, in which artists
painted details in black on a reddish Pegasus and swooping down on the Chimera
background instead of engraving them; with an aerial attack. To reward such hero-
the result was finer detail (compare this ics, the king gives Bellerophon his daughter
vase painting with that on page 58). in marriage and half his kingdom.
The animals and mythical creatures
Homer’s story provides evidence for the
on the vase shown here follow Near
Eastern models, which inspired Archaic
intercultural contact between the Near East
Age Greek artists to put people and and Greece that helped Greek civilization
animals into their designs again after reemerge after 1000 b.c.e. Both the Chimera
their absence during the Dark Age. and the winged beast painted on the vase
Why do you think the artist depicted from Corinth shown in the chapter-opening
the animal at the lower right with two
illustration were creatures from Near Eastern
bodies but only one head? (© The Trust-
ees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY.) myth that Greeks adapted. Greece’s geogra-
phy allowed it many ports, which promoted
contacts by sea through trade, travel, and
war with the Near East. From 1000 to 500 b.c.e., these contacts — combined with
the Greeks’ value of competitive individual excellence, their sense of a communal
identity, and their belief that people in general were responsible for maintaining
41
42 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
justice and the goodwill of the gods toward the community — aided Greeks in re-
inventing their civilization.
Western peoples’ desire for trade and cross-cultural contact increased as condi-
tions improved after 1000 b.c.e. The Near East, which retained monarchy as its
traditional form of government, recovered more quickly than Greece. Near Eastern
kings extracted surpluses from subject populations to fund their palaces and armies.
They also pursued new conquests to win glory, exploit the labor of conquered
peoples, seize raw materials, and conduct long-distance trade.
During Greece’s initial recovery from poverty and depopulation from 1000 to
750 b.c.e., new political and social traditions arose that rejected the rule of kings.
In this period, Greeks maintained trade and cross-cultural contact with the Near
East. Their mythology, as in Homer, and their art, as on the Corinthian vase, reveal
that Greeks imported ideas and technology from that part of the world. By the eighth
century b.c.e., Greeks had begun to create their own kind of city-state, the polis.
The polis was a radical innovation because it made citizenship — not subjection to
kings — the basis for society and politics, and included the poor as citizens. Women
in the polis had legal, though not political, rights; slaves still had neither. With the
exception of occasional tyrannies, Greek city-states governed themselves by having
male citizens share political power. In some places, small groups of upper-class men
dominated, but in other city-states the polis shared power among all free men, even
the poor, eventually creating the world’s first democracies. The Greeks’ invention of
democratic politics, limited though it might have been by modern standards, stands
as a landmark in the history of Western civilization.
New ways of belief and thought also developed in the Near East and Greece
that deeply influenced Western civilization. In religion, the Persians developed beliefs
that saw human life as a struggle between
good and evil, and the Israelites evolved
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the forms of
their monotheism. In philosophy, the
political and social organization that Greece
developed after 1000 B.C.E. differ from those
Greeks began to use reason and logic to
of the Near East? replace mythological explanations of
nature.
From Dark Age to Empire in the Near East, 1000–500 b.c.e.

The widespread violence in 1200–1000 b.c.e. had damaged many communities and
populations in the eastern Mediterranean. Historians have traditionally used the term
Dark Age to refer to the times following the period of violence, both because eco-
nomic conditions were so gloomy for so many people and because the surviving
evidence is so limited.
By 900 b.c.e., the Neo-Assyrian Empire had emerged in Mesopotamia. It inspired
first the Babylonians and then the Persians to form empires after Assyrian power
collapsed. By comparison, the Israelites had little military power, but they established
a new path for civilization during this period by changing their religion. They devel-
[
1000–500 b.c.e.
] From Dark Age to Empire in the Near East, 1000–500 b.c.e. 43
oped monotheism and produced the Hebrew Bible (as it is known today), later called
the Old Testament by Christians.
The New Empire of Assyria, 900–600 b.c.e.

By 900 b.c.e., Assyrian armies had punched westward all the way to the Mediterra-
nean coast. The Neo-Assyrian kings conquered Babylon and then Egypt. Foot soldiers
were the Assyrians’ main strike force. They deployed siege towers and battering rams,
while chariots carried archers. Foreign wars brought in revenues to supplement agri-
culture, herding, and long-distance trade.
Neo-Assyrian kings treated conquered peoples brutally. Those allowed to stay
in their homelands had to make annual payments to the Assyrians. The kings also
deported many defeated people to Assyria for work on huge building projects. One
unexpected consequence of this policy was the undermining of the kings’ native lan-
guage: so many Aramaeans, for example, were deported from Canaan to Assyria that
Aramaic had largely replaced Assyrian as the land’s everyday language by the eighth
century b.c.e.
Neo-Assyrian men displayed their status and masculinity in waging war and
in hunting wild animals. The king hunted lions to demonstrate his vigor and power
and thus his capacity to rule. Practical technology and knowledge also mattered to
the kings. One boasted that he invented new irrigation equipment and a novel method
of metal casting. Another one proclaimed, “I have read complicated texts, whose
versions in Sumerian are obscure and in Akkadian hard to understand. I do research
on the cuneiform texts on stone from before the Flood.” Women of the social elite
could become literate, but they were excluded from the male dominions of war and
hunting.
Public religion reflected the prominence of war in Assyrian culture: the cult of
Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, glorified warfare. The Neo-Assyrian rulers’ desire
to demonstrate their respect for the gods motivated them to build huge temples. These
shrines’ staffs of priests and slaves grew so large that the revenues from temple lands
were insufficient; the kings had to supply extra funds from the spoils of conquest.
The Neo-Assyrian kings’ harsh rule and demand for revenue made their own
people, especially the social elite, resentful. Rebellions therefore became common, and
a seventh-century b.c.e. revolt fatally weakened the kingdom. The Medes, an Iranian
people, and the Chaldeans, a Semitic people who had driven the Assyrians from
Babylonia, combined forces to defeat the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 600–539 b.c.e.

The Chaldeans seized the lion’s share of territory. Originating among semi-nomadic
herders along the Persian Gulf, the Chaldeans had by 600 b.c.e. established the Neo-
Babylonian Empire. The Neo-Babylonians increased the splendor of Babylon, rebuild-
ing the great temple of Marduk, the chief god, and constructing an elaborate city gate
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
dedicated to the goddess Ishtar. Blue-glazed bricks and lions molded in yellow, red,
and white decorated the gate’s walls, which soared thirty-six feet high.
The Neo-Babylonians preserved much Mesopotamian literature, such as the Epic
of Gilgamesh. They also created many new works of prose and poetry, which the
educated minority would often read aloud publicly to the illiterate. Particularly pop-
ular were fables, proverbs, essays, and prophecies teaching morality and proper
behavior. This so-called wisdom literature, a tradition going back at least to the
Egyptian Old Kingdom, was a Near Eastern tradition that was also prominent in the
religious writings of the Israelites.
The Neo-Babylonians passed their knowledge to others outside their region.
Their advances in astronomy became so influential that the Greeks later used the
word Chaldean to mean “astronomer.” The primary motivation for observing the
stars was the belief that the gods communicated their will to humans through natural
phenomena like celestial movements and eclipses. (Other such phenomena included
abnormal births, patterns of smoke curling upward from a fire, and the trails of ants.)
The Persian Empire, 557–500 b.c.e.

Cyrus (r. c. 557–530 b.c.e.) founded the Persian Empire in what is today Iran through
his skills as a general and a diplomat who saw respect for others’ religious practices
as good imperial policy. He conquered Babylon in 539 b.c.e. Cyrus won support by
proclaiming himself the restorer of traditional religion.
Cyrus’s successors expanded Persian rule on the same principles of military
strength and cultural tolerance. At its height, the Persian Empire extended from
Anatolia (today Turkey), the eastern Mediterranean coast, and Egypt on the west to
present-day Pakistan on the east (Map 2.1). Believing they had a divine right to rule
everyone in the world, Persian kings continually tried to expand their empire.
Everything about the king emphasized his magnificence. His robes of purple
outshone everyone else’s; only he could step on the red carpets spread for him; his
servants held their hands before their mouths so that he would not have to breathe
the same air as they. As in other Near Eastern royal art, the Persian king was shown
as larger than any other person in the sculpture adorning his immense palace at
Persepolis. To display his concern for his loyal subjects as well as the gigantic scale
of his resources, the king provided meals for fifteen thousand nobles and other guests
every day — although he ate hidden from their view. The king punished criminals
by mutilating their bodies and executing their families.
So long as his subjects — numbering in the millions and of many different
ethnicities — remained peaceful, the king let them live and worship as they pleased.
The empire’s satraps (regional governors) ruled enormous territories with little interfer-
ence from the king. In this decentralized system, the governors’ duties included keep-
ing order, enrolling troops when needed, and sending revenues to the royal treasury.
Darius I (r. 522–486 b.c.e.) extended Persian power eastward to the western
edge of India and westward to Thrace, northeast of Greece, creating the Near East’s
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
N Aral
Sea
D a nube R .
W E
Black Sea
S
Cas
CA
THRACE UC
pian
AS
US
Sea
Aegean
Sea
ANATOLIA
L. Van L. Urmia
GREECE
Harran
Crete
NEO- MEDIA
Cyprus BABYLONIA
Ti g
ANT
Mediterranean Sea
ri s
.
Eu
R
LEV
ph
Babylon
rat
Jerusalem
es
R.
Memphis
Persepolis
R.
PERSIA
us
Pe
nd
rsi I
a n
EGYPT Gu
lf
Thebes
Re
R.
d
le
Ni
Sea
Arabian Sea
Persian homeland, c. 550 B.C.E.

0 200 400 miles
Persian Empire under Darius I, 490 B.C.E.
MAP 2.1 Expansion of the Persian Empire, c. 550–490 b.c.e.

Cyrus founded the Persian Empire, which his successors expanded to be even larger than the
Neo-Assyrian Empire that it replaced. The Persian kings made war outward from their inland
center to gain coastal possessions for access to seaborne trade and naval bases. By late in
the reign of Darius I, the Persian Empire had expanded eastward as far as the western edge
of India, while to the west it reached Thrace, the eastern edge of Europe. Unlike their imperial
predecessors, the Persian kings won their subjects’ loyalty with tolerance of local customs and
religion, although they treated rebels harshly.
greatest empire. Darius assigned each region taxes payable in precious metals, grain,
horses, and slaves. Royal roads and a courier system provided communication among
the far-flung provincial centers. The Greek historian Herodotus reported that neither
snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness slowed the couriers from completing their
routes as swiftly as possible.
Persian kings ruled as the agents of Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Persia.
Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, made Ahura Mazda the center of its devotion and
took its doctrines from the teachings of the legendary prophet Zarathustra. Zara-
thustra taught that Ahura Mazda demanded purity from his worshippers and helped
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
The Great King of Persia

Like their Assyrian predecessors, the Persian kings decorated their palaces with large relief
sculptures emphasizing royal dignity and success. This one from Persepolis shows officials
and petitioners giving the king proper respect when entering his presence. To symbolize their
elevated status, the king and his son, who stands behind the throne, are shown larger than
everyone else, as is done in other Near Eastern royal art. Do you think the way the sculptors
portrayed the figures from the side is more or less artistic than the technique used by the
Egyptian painters in the image from the Book of the Dead on page 2? Why? (Courtesy of the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.)
those who lived truthfully and justly. The most important doctrine of Zoroastrianism
was moral dualism, which saw the world as a battlefield between the divine forces
of good and evil. Ahura Mazda, the embodiment of good and light, struggled against
the evil darkness represented by the Satan-like figure Ahriman. Human beings had
to choose between the way of the truth and the way of the lie, between purity and
impurity. In Persian religion only those judged righteous after death made it across
“the bridge of separation” to heaven and avoided falling from its narrow span into
hell. Persian religion’s emphasis on ethical behavior and on a supreme god had a
lasting influence on others, especially the Israelites.
The Israelites, Origins to 539 b.c.e.

The Israelites never rivaled the political and military power of the great empires
in the Near East. Their influence on Western civilization comes from their religion,
Judaism. It originally reflected influences from the Israelites’ polytheistic neighbors
in Canaan (ancient Palestine), but the Israelites’ development of monotheism became
a turning point in the history of religions.
The Israelites’ scripture, the Hebrew Bible, deeply affected not only Judaism but
also Christianity and, later, Islam. No source provides definitive evidence for the his-
torical background of the Israelites. According to the Bible’s account, Abraham and
[
1000–500 b.c.e.
his followers migrated from the Mesopotamian city of Ur to Canaan, perhaps around
1900 b.c.e. Traditionally believed to have been divided into twelve tribes, the Isra-
elites never formed a political state in this period. The Canaanites remained the
political and military power in the region.
Abraham’s grandson Jacob, the story continues, moved to Egypt when his son
Joseph brought his family there to escape famine. Joseph had previously used his
intelligence and charisma to rise to an important position in the Egyptian adminis-
tration. In fact, Israelites had probably drifted into Egypt during the seventeenth or
sixteenth century b.c.e. as part of the movement of peoples there under Hyksos rule.
By the thirteenth century b.c.e., the pharaohs had forced the Israelite men into slave-
labor gangs.
According to the biblical Book of Exodus, the Israelite deity, Yahweh, instructed
Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt against the will of the pharaoh,
perhaps around the mid-thirteenth century b.c.e. Yahweh sent ten plagues to compel
the Egyptian king to free the Israelites, but he still tried to recapture them during
their flight. Yahweh therefore miraculously parted the sea to allow them to escape
eastward; the water swirled back together and drowned the pharaoh’s army as it tried
to follow.
Next in the biblical narrative comes the crucial event in the history of the Isra-
elites: the formalizing of a contractual agreement (a covenant) between them and
their deity, who revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai in the desert northeast
of Egypt. This contract between the Israelites and Yahweh specified that, in return
for their worshipping him exclusively as their only god and living by his laws, Yahweh
would make them his chosen people and lead them into a promised land of safety
and prosperity. The form of the covenant with Yahweh followed the ancient Near
Eastern tradition of treaties between a superior and subordinates, but its content
differed from that of other ancient Near Eastern religions because it made Yahweh
the exclusive deity of his people.
This binding agreement demanded human obedience to divine law and prom-
ised punishment for unrighteousness. Yahweh described himself to Moses as “com-
passionate and gracious, patient, ever constant and true . . . forgiving wickedness,
rebellion, and sin,” yet he also declared that he was “one who punishes sons and grand-
sons to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ iniquity” (Exod. 34:6–7).
The Hebrew Bible sets forth the religious and moral code the Israelites had to
follow. The Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, called the Pentateuch by
Christians) recorded laws for righteous living. Most famous are the Ten Command-
ments, which required Israelites to worship Yahweh exclusively; make no idols; keep
from misusing Yahweh’s name; honor their parents; refrain from work on the seventh
day of the week (the Sabbath); and abstain from murder, adultery, theft, lying, and
covetousness. Many of the Israelites’ laws shared the traditional form and content of
earlier Mesopotamian laws, such as those of Hammurabi. Like his code, Israelite law
protected the lower classes and people without power, including strangers, widows,
and orphans.
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
Israelite law and thus Israelite justice differed significantly from their Mesopo-
tamian precedent, however, in applying the same rules and punishments to everyone
regardless of social rank. Israelite law also eliminated eye-for-an-eye punishment — a
Mesopotamian tradition ordering, for example, that a rapist’s wife be raped, or that
the son of a builder be killed if his father’s negligent work caused the death of some-
one else’s son. Crimes against property did not carry the death penalty, as in other
Near Eastern societies. Israelite laws also protected slaves against flagrant mistreat-
ment. Slaves who lost an eye or a tooth from a beating were to be freed. Like free
people, slaves enjoyed the right to rest on the Sabbath. Israelite women and children,
however, had fewer legal rights than men did.
According to the Bible, the Israelites who fled from Egypt with Moses made their
way back to Canaan, joining their relatives who had remained there and somehow
carving out separate territories for themselves. The twelve Israelite tribes remained
politically distinct under the direction of separate leaders, called judges, until the
eleventh century b.c.e., when according to tradition their first monarchy emerged.
Their monotheism gradually developed over the succeeding centuries.
Controversy rages about the accuracy of the biblical account, which reports that
the Israelites created a monarchy in the late eleventh century b.c.e. when Saul became
the Israelites’ first king. His successors David (r. 1010–970 b.c.e.) and Solomon (r. c. 961–
922 b.c.e.) brought the Israelite kingdom to the height of its prosperity. The kingdom’s
wealth, based on international commerce, supported the great temple that Solomon
built in Jerusalem as the house of Yahweh. The temple, richly decorated with gold
leaf, and the daily animal sacrifices to God that priests performed on the altar there
became the center of the Israelites’ religion.
After Solomon’s death, the monarchy split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north
and Judah in the south. The Assyrians destroyed Israel in 722 b.c.e. and deported
its population to Assyria. In 597 b.c.e., the Babylonians conquered Judah and cap-
tured its capital, Jerusalem. In 586 b.c.e., they destroyed the temple to Yahweh and
banished the Israelite leaders, along with much of the population, to Babylon. In
exile the Israelites learned about Persian religion. Zoroastrianism and Judaism came
to share ideas, such as the existence of God and Satan, angels and demons, God’s day
of judgment, and the arrival of a messiah (an “anointed one,” that is, a divinely cho-
sen leader with special powers).
When the Persian king Cyrus overthrew the Babylonians in 539 b.c.e., he per-
mitted the Israelites to return to their part of Canaan. The Bible proclaimed Cyrus
a messiah of the Israelites chosen by Yahweh as his “shepherd . . . to accomplish all
his purpose” in restoring his people to their previous home (Isa. 44:28–45:1). This
region was called Yehud, from the name of the southern Israelite kingdom, Judah.
From this geographical term came the word Jew, a designation for the Israelites after
their Babylonian exile. Cyrus allowed them to rebuild their main temple in Jerusalem
and to practice their religion.
Jewish prophets, both men and women, preached that their defeats were divine
punishment for neglecting the Sinai covenant and mistreating their poor. Some
[1000–500 b.c.e.
Goddess Figurines from Judah

These figurines perhaps represent Astarte, a goddess of Canaan, or related female deities.
Archaeologists have found many small statues of this kind in private houses in Judah. They
appear to date from about 800 to 600 B.C.E. Israelites probably kept them in their homes as
religious objects promoting fertility and prosperity. The Israelites’ prophets fiercely condemned
the worship of images such as these as part of their support of the development of mono-
theism and the abandonment of polytheism, the long-established type of religion in the ancient
world. (Astarte Figurines, Judah / The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel / Bridgeman Images.)
prophets also predicted the end of the present world following a great crisis, a judg-
ment by Yahweh, and salvation leading to a new and better world. This apocalypti-
cism (“uncovering,” or revelation), recalling Babylonian prophetic wisdom literature,
would later provide the worldview of Christianity.
Jewish leaders developed complex religious laws to maintain ritual and ethical
purity. Marrying non-Jews and working on the Sabbath were forbidden. Fathers had
legal power over the household, subject to intervention by the male elders of the
community; women gained honor as mothers. Only men could initiate divorce pro-
ceedings. Jews had to pay taxes and offerings to support and honor the sanctuary of
Yahweh, and they had to forgive debts every seventh year.
Gradually, Jews created their monotheism by accepting that Yahweh was the only
god and that they had to obey his laws. Jews retained their identity by following this
religion regardless of their personal fate or their geographical location. Therefore,
Jews who did not return to their homeland could maintain their Jewish identity by
following Jewish law while living among foreigners. In this way, the Diaspora (“dis-
persion of population”) came to characterize the history of the Jewish people.
Israelite monotheism made the preservation and understanding of a sacred text,
the Hebrew Bible, the center of religious life. Making scripture the focus of religion
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
proved the most crucial development for the history not only of Judaism but also of
Christianity and Islam, because these later religions made their own sacred texts —
the Christian Bible and the Qur’an, respectively — the centers of their belief and
practice. Through the continuing vitality of Judaism and its impact on the doctrines
of Christianity and Islam, the early Jews
passed on ideas — chiefly monotheism and
REVIEW QUESTION In what ways was religion
the notion of a covenant bestowing a
important in the Near East from c. 1000 B.C.E. divinely ordained destiny on a people if
to c. 500 B.C.E.? they obey divine will — whose effects have
endured to this day.
The Reemergence of Greek Civilization, 1000–750 b.c.e.

The period of violence in 1200–1000 b.c.e. destroyed the prosperous large settlements
of the Greeks and erased their knowledge of how to write. They therefore had to
remake their civilization in Greece’s Dark Age (c. 1000–750 b.c.e.). Trade, cultural
interaction, and technological innovation led to recovery: contact with the Near East
promoted intellectual, artistic, and economic revival, while the introduction of met-
allurgy for making iron made farming more efficient. As conditions improved, a
social elite distinguished by wealth and the competitive pursuit of individual excel-
lence replaced the hierarchy of Mycenaean times. In the eighth century b.c.e., com-
munal values helped create a radically new form of political organization in which
central authority was based on citizenship.
The Greek Dark Age

Greeks apparently lost their knowledge of writing when Mycenaean civilization fell.
The Linear B script they had used was probably known only by a few scribes, who
used writing to track the redistribution of goods. When the Mycenaean palaces col-
lapsed, scribes and writing disappeared. Only oral transmission kept Greek cultural
traditions alive.
Compared with their forebears, Greeks in the early Dark Age cultivated much
less land and had many fewer settlements. There was no redistributive economy. The
number of ships carrying Greek adventurers, raiders, and traders dwindled. Most
people scratched out an existence as herders, shepherds, and subsistence farmers
bunched in tiny settlements as small as twenty people. As agriculture declined, more
Greeks than ever before made their living by herding animals. In this transient life-
style, people built only simple huts and kept few possessions. Unlike their Bronze
Age ancestors, Greeks in the Dark Age had no monumental architecture. They also
stopped painting people and animals on their ceramics (their principal art form),
instead putting only abstract designs on their pots.
[
1000–500 b.c.e.
] The Reemergence of Greek Civilization, 1000–750 b.c.e. 51
The Greek Dark Age, 1000–750 B.C.E.
1000 B.C.E. Almost all important Mycenaean sites except Athens are destroyed
by now
1000–900 B.C.E. Greatest depopulation and economic loss
900–800 B.C.E. Early revival of population and agriculture; beginning use of iron tools
and weapons
800 B.C.E. Greek trading contacts are initiated with Al Mina in Syria
776 B.C.E. First Olympic Games are held
775 B.C.E. Euboeans from Greece establish trading post on island in the Bay of
Naples
750 B.C.E. Homeric poetry is recorded in writing after Greeks learn to write again;
Hesiod composes his poetry
Dark Age Greece did, however, retain a small but wealthy social elite. On the
island of Euboea, for example, archaeologists have discovered the tenth-century b.c.e.
grave of a couple who took such enormous riches with them to the next world that
the woman’s body was covered in gold ornaments. They had done well in the compe-
tition for prestige and wealth; most people of the time were, by comparison, desper-
ately poor.
Geography allowed the Greeks to continue seaborne trade with the civilizations
of the eastern Mediterranean even during their Dark Age. Trade promoted cultural
interaction, and the Greeks learned to write again about 800 b.c.e., adopting and
adapting the alphabet from the Phoenicians, seafaring traders from Canaan. Near
Eastern art inspired Greeks to resume the production of ceramics with figural designs
(as on the Corinthian vase on page 40). Seaborne commerce encouraged better-off
Greeks to produce agricultural surpluses and goods they could trade for luxuries
such as gold jewelry and gems from Egypt and Syria.
Most important, trade brought the new technology of iron metallurgy. Greeks
learned this skill through their eastern trade contacts and mined their own iron ore,
which was common in Greece. Iron eventually replaced bronze in agricultural tools,
swords, and spear points. (The Greeks still used bronze for shields and armor, how-
ever, because it was easier to shape into thin, curved pieces.) The iron tools’ lower
cost allowed more people to acquire them. Because iron is harder than bronze, imple-
ments kept their sharp edges longer. Better and more plentiful farming implements
of iron helped increase food production, which sustained population growth. In this
way, technology imported from the Near East improved people’s chances for survival
and thus helped Greece recover from the Dark Age’s depopulation.
With the Mycenaean rulers gone, leadership became an open competition in
Dark Age Greece. Individuals who proved themselves excellent in action, words, cha-
risma, and religious knowledge joined the social elite, enjoying higher prestige and
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
authority in society. Excellence — aretê in Greek — was earned by competing. Men
competed with others for aretê as warriors and persuasive public speakers. Women
won their highest aretê by managing a household of children, slaves, and storerooms.
Members of the elite accumulated wealth by controlling agricultural land, which
people of lower status worked for them as tenants or slaves.
The Iliad and The Odyssey, the eighth-century b.c.e. poems of Homer, reflect
the social elite’s ideals. Homer was the last in a long line of poets who, influenced
by Near Eastern mythology, had been singing these stories for centuries, orally trans-
mitting cultural values from one generation to the next. In telling the story of the
Greek army in the Trojan War, The Iliad focuses on the greatest Greek warrior, Achil-
les, who proves his aretê by choosing to die in battle rather than accept the gods’
offer to return home safely but without glory. The Odyssey recounts not only the
hero Odysseus’s ten-year adventure sailing home after the fall of Troy but also the
struggle of his wife, Penelope, to protect their household from the schemes of rivals.
Homer reveals that the white-hot emotions inflamed by the competition for
excellence could provoke a disturbing level of inhumanity. Achilles, in preparing to
duel Hector, the prince of Troy, brutally rejects the Trojan’s proposal that the winner
return the loser’s corpse to his family and friends: “Do wolves and lambs agree to
cooperate? No, they hate each other to the roots of their being.” The victor, Achilles,
mutilates Hector’s body. When Hecuba, the queen of Troy and Hector’s mother, sees
this outrage, she bitterly shouts, “I wish I could sink my teeth into his liver to eat it
raw.” The endings of Homer’s poems suggest that the gods could sometimes help
people achieve reconciliation after violent conflict, but human suffering in his stories
shows that the pursuit of excellence is painful.
The Values of the Olympic Games

Greece had recovered enough population and prosperity by the eighth century b.c.e.
to begin creating new forms of social and political organization. The most vivid
evidence is the founding of the Olympic Games, traditionally dated to 776 b.c.e. This
international religious festival showcased the competitive value of aretê.
Every four years, the games took place in a huge sanctuary dedicated to Zeus,
the king of the gods, at Olympia, in the northwestern Peloponnese. Male athletes
from elite families vied in sports, imitating the aretê needed for war: running, wres-
tling, jumping, and throwing. Horse and chariot racing were added to the program
later, but the main event remained a two-hundred-yard sprint, the stadion (hence
our word stadium). The athletes competed as individuals, not on national teams.
Winners received only a garland made from wild olive leaves to symbolize the pres-
tige of victory.
The Olympics illustrate Greek notions of proper behavior for each gender:
crowds of men flocked to the games, but women were prohibited on pain of death.
Women had their own separate Olympic festival on a different date in honor of Hera,
queen of the gods. Only unmarried women could compete. In later times, professional
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] The Reemergence of Greek Civilization, 1000–750 b.c.e. 53
Athletic Competition
Greek vase painters often showed male athletes in action or training, perhaps in part because
athletes were customers who would buy pottery with such scenes. As in this painting of an
Athenian foot race from around 530 B.C.E., the athletes were usually shown nude, which was
how they competed, revealing their superb physical condition and strong musculature. Being in
excellent shape was a man’s ideal for several reasons: it was regarded as beautiful, it enabled
him to compete for individual glory in athletic contests, and it allowed him to fulfill his commu-
nity responsibility by fighting as a well-conditioned soldier in the city-state’s citizen militia. Why
do you think the figure at the far left does not have a full beard? (Euphiletos Painter [sixth century
B.C.E.], Panathenaic prize amphora, c. 530 B.C.E. Reverse. Terracotta, h. 24½ in. [62.2 cm]. Archaic Greek, Attic.
Rogers Fund, 1914. [14.130.12]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A. Image copyright © The Metro-
politan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.)
athletes dominated the Olympics, earning their living from appearance fees and
prizes at games held throughout the Greek world.
Once every four years an international truce of several weeks was declared so
that competitors and fans from all Greek communities could safely travel to and from
Olympia. The games were open to any socially elite Greek male. These rules repre-
sented beginning steps toward a concept of collective Greek identity. The Olympics
helped channel the competition for individual excellence into a new context of social
cooperation and community values, essential preconditions for the creation of
Greece’s new political form, the city-state ruled by citizens.
Homer, Hesiod, and Divine Justice in Greek Myth

The Greeks’ belief in divine justice inspired them to develop the cooperative val-
ues that remade their civilization. This idea came not from scripture — Greeks had
none — but from poetry that told myths about the gods and goddesses and their
relationships to humans. Different myths often provided different lessons, teaching
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
that human beings could not expect to have a clear understanding of the gods and
had to make choices by themselves about how to live.
Homer’s poems reveal that the gods had plans for human existence but did not
guarantee justice. Bellerophon, for example, the hero whose brave efforts won him
a princess bride and a kingdom, ended up losing everything. He became, in Homer’s
words, “hated by the gods and wandering the land alone, eating his heart out, a refu-
gee fleeing from the haunts of men.” The poem gives no explanation for this tragedy.
Hesiod’s poetry from the eighth century b.c.e., by contrast, reveals how other
myths describing divine support for justice contributed to the Greek feeling of com-
munity. Hesiod’s vivid stories, which originated in Near Eastern creation myths,
show that deities experienced struggle, sorrow, and violence but that the divine order
of the universe included a concern for justice.
Hesiod’s epic poem Theogony (whose title means “genealogy of the gods”)
recounted the birth of the race of gods — including Sky and numerous others — from
the intercourse of primeval Chaos and Earth. Hesiod explained that when Sky began
to imprison his siblings, Earth persuaded her fiercest son, Kronos, to overthrow him
violently because “Sky first schemed to do shameful things.” When Kronos later
began to swallow his own children to avoid sharing power with them, his wife, Rhea
(who was also his sister), had their son Zeus violently force his father from power.
In Works and Days, Hesiod’s poem on conditions in his own time, he identified
Zeus as the source of justice in human affairs: “Zeus commanded that fishes and
wild beasts and birds should eat each other, for they have no justice; but to human
beings he has given justice, which is far the best.” People were responsible for admin-
istering justice, and in the eighth century b.c.e. this meant the male social elite. They
controlled their family members and household servants. Hesiod insisted that a
leader should demonstrate aretê by employing persuasion instead of force: “When
his people in their assembly get on the wrong track, he gently sets matters right,
persuading them with soft words.”
Hesiod complained that many elite leaders in his time failed to exercise their
power in this way, instead creating conflict between themselves and the peasants — free
proprietors of small farms owning a slave or two, oxen to work their fields, and a
limited amount of goods acquired by trad-
ing the surplus of their crops. Peasants’ out-
REVIEW QUESTION What factors proved
most important in the Greek recovery from rage at unjust treatment helped push the
the troubles of the Dark Age? gradual movement toward a new form of
social and political organization in Greece.
The Creation of the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e.

The Archaic Age (c. 750–500 b.c.e.) saw the creation of the Greek city-state — the
polis — an independent community of citizens inhabiting a city and the countryside
around it. Greece’s geography, dominated by mountains and islands, promoted the
creation of hundreds of independent city-states around the Aegean Sea. From there,
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] The Creation of the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 55
Greeks dispersed around the Mediterranean to settle hundreds more trading com-
munities that often grew into new city-states. Individuals’ drive for profit from trade,
especially in raw materials, and for free farmland probably started this process of
founding new settlements.
Though it took varying forms, the Greek polis differed from the Mesopotamian
city-state primarily in being a community of citizens making laws and administering
justice among themselves instead of being the subjects of a king. Another difference
was that poor citizens of Greek city-states enjoyed a rough legal and political equality
with the rich. Not different, however, were the subordination of women and the
subjugation of slaves.
The Physical Environment of the Greek City-State

Culturally, Greeks identified with one another because they spoke the same language
and worshipped the same gods. Still, the ancient Greeks never unified into a single
political state. Mountains separated independent and often mutually hostile Greek
communities. Because few city-states had enough farmland to support many people,
most of them had populations of only several hundred to several thousand. A few,
prosperous from international trade, grew to have a hundred thousand or more
inhabitants.
Long-distance transportation in Greece overwhelmingly occurred by sea. Land
travel was slow and expensive because roads were mostly just dirt paths. The most
plentiful resource was timber from the mountains for building houses and ships.
Deposits of metal ore were scattered throughout Greek territory, as were clays suit-
able for pottery and sculpture. Various quarries of fine stone such as marble provided
materials for special buildings and works of art.
Only 20 to 30 percent of Greece’s mountainous terrain could be farmed, making
it impossible to raise large herds of cattle and horses. Pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens
were the common livestock. Because the amount of annual precipitation varied
greatly, farming was a precarious business of boom and bust. People preferred to eat
wheat, but since that grain was expensive to cultivate, the cereal staple of the Greek
diet became barley. Wine grapes and olives were the other most important crops.
Trade and “Colonization,” 800–580 b.c.e.

Greece’s jagged coastline made sea travel practical: almost every community lay within
forty miles of the Mediterranean Sea. But seaborne commerce faced dangers from
pirates and, especially, storms. As Hesiod commented, merchants took to the sea
“because an income means life to poor mortals, but it is a terrible fate to die among
the waves.”
The Odyssey describes the basic strategy of Greek long-distance trade in com-
modities, when the goddess Athena appears disguised as a metal trader: “I am
here . . . with my ship and crew on our way across the wine-dark sea to foreign lands
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
in search of copper; I am carrying iron now.” By 800 b.c.e., the Mediterranean
swarmed with entrepreneurs of many nationalities. The Phoenicians established
settlements as far west as Spain’s Atlantic coast to gain access to inland mines there.
Their North African settlement at Carthage (modern Tunis) would become one of
the Mediterranean’s most powerful cities in later times.
The scale of trade soared near the end of the Dark Age: archaeologists have
found only two tenth-century b.c.e. Greek pots that were carried abroad, but eighth-
century pottery has turned up at more than eighty foreign sites. By 750 b.c.e., Greeks
were settling far from home, sometimes living in others’ settlements, especially those
of the Phoenicians, and sometimes establishing trading posts of their own, as the
Euboeans did on an island in the Bay of Naples. Everywhere they traded with the
local populations, such as the Etruscans in central Italy, who imported large amounts
of Greek goods. Traders were not the only Greeks to emigrate. As the population
expanded following the Dark Age, a shortage of farmland in Greece drove some poor
farmers abroad to find fields they could work. Apparently only males left home on
trading and land-hunting expeditions, so they had to find wives wherever they
settled, either through peaceful negotiation or by kidnapping.
By about 580 b.c.e., Greek settlements had spread westward to Spain, present-
day southern France, southern Italy, and Sicily; southward to North Africa; and east-
ward to the Black Sea coast (Map. 2.2). The settlements in southern Italy and Sicily,
such as Naples and Syracuse, eventually became so large and powerful that this
region was called Magna Graecia (“Great Greece”).
A Greek trading station had sprung up in Syria by 800 b.c.e., and in the seventh
century b.c.e. the Egyptians permitted Greek merchants to settle in a coastal town.
These close contacts with eastern Mediterranean peoples paid cultural as well as
economic dividends. Near Eastern art inspired Greeks to reintroduce figures into
their painting and provided models for statues that stood stiffly and stared straight
ahead. When the improving economy of the later Archaic Age allowed Greeks again
to afford monumental architecture in stone, their rectangular temples on platforms
with columns reflected Egyptian architectural designs.
Historians have traditionally called the Greeks’ settlement process in this era
colonization, but recent research questions this term’s accuracy because the word
colonization implies the process by which modern European governments officially
installed dependent settlements and regimes abroad. The evidence for these Greek
settlements suggests rather that private entrepreneurship created most of them. Offi-
cial state involvement was minimal, at least in the beginning.
Citizenship and Freedom in the Greek City-State

The creation of the polis filled the political vacuum left by Mycenaean civilization’s
fall. The Greek city-state was unique because it was based on the concept of citizen-
ship for all its free inhabitants, rejected monarchy as its central authority, and made
justice the responsibility of the citizens. Moreover, except in tyrannies, in which one
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
Danub
eR
.
N
ATLANTIC
OCEAN W E
S
Black Sea
BALKAN
PENINSULA
Naples
Pithecusae
Athens
Corinth Ti
gr
is R
Carthage Syracuse Sparta Al Mina
Strait of
.
Gibraltar
Me
dite Byblos Eu
rran p
ean Sea
hr
at
Tyre
es
R.
Greek city-states, c. 750 B.C.E. Greek shipping Naucratis
routes
Phoenicia, c. 750 B.C.E.
Phoenician shipping
Coast and settlements routes
Ni l
under Greek influence
Re
eR
0 250 500 miles
dS
.
Coast and settlements
ea
under Phoenician influence
MAP 2.2 Phoenician and Greek Expansion, 750–500 b.c.e.

The Phoenicians were early explorers and settlers of the western Mediterranean. By 800 B.C.E.,
they had already founded the city of Carthage, which would become the main commercial power
in the region. During the Archaic Age, groups of adventurous Greeks followed the Phoenicians’
lead and settled all around the Mediterranean, hoping to improve their economic prospects by
trade and farming. Sometimes they moved into previously established Phoenician settlements;
sometimes they founded their own. Some Greek city-states established formal ties with new
settlements or sent out their own expeditions to try to establish loyal colonies. Where did Phoe-
nicians predominantly settle, and where did Greeks?
man seized control of the city-state, at least some degree of shared governing was
normal.
Power sharing reached its widest form in democratic Greek city-states. The most
famous ancient analyst of Greek politics and society, the philosopher Aristotle (384–
322 b.c.e.), argued, “Humans are beings who by nature live in a city-state.” Anyone
who existed outside such a community, Aristotle remarked, must be either a simple
fool or superhuman. The polis’s innovation in making shared power the basis of gov-
ernment did not immediately change the course of history — monarchy later became
once again the most common form of government in ancient Western civilization —
but it was important as proof that power sharing was a workable system of political
organization.
Greek city-states were officially religious communities. As well as worshipping
many deities, each city-state honored a particular god or goddess as its special pro-
tector, such as Athena at Athens. Different communities could choose the same deity:
Sparta, Athens’s chief rival in later times, also chose Athena as its defender. Greeks
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
A Greek Woman at an Altar
This red-figure vase painting (contrast the black-figure
vase on page 40) from the center of a large drinking
cup shows a woman in rich clothing pouring a liba-
tion to the gods onto a flaming altar. In her other
arm, she carries a religious object that has
not been securely identified. This scene illus-
trates the most important and frequent role
of women in Greek public life: participating
in religious ceremonies, both at home and
in community festivals. Greek women (and
men) commonly wore sandals; why do
you think they are usually depicted without
shoes in vase paintings? (Attributed to Makron
[painter] and Hieron [potter], [Greek, from Athens],
Kylix [Drinking Vessel], detail, Tondo: Woman Sacrificing
at an Altar, c. 490–480 B.C.E., wheel-thrown, slip-decorated
earthenware, red-figure technique, h. 47⁄16 in. [11.3 cm].
Toledo Museum of Art [Toledo, Ohio]. Purchased with funds
from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
[1972.55].)
envisioned the twelve most important gods banqueting atop Mount Olympus, the
highest peak in mainland Greece. Zeus headed this pantheon; the others were Hera,
his wife; Aphrodite, goddess of love; Apollo, sun god; Ares, war god; Artemis, moon
goddess; Athena, goddess of wisdom and war; Demeter, earth goddess; Dionysus,
god of pleasure, wine, and disorder; Hephaestus, fire god; Hermes, messenger god;
and Poseidon, sea god. The Greeks believed that their gods occasionally experienced
temporary pain or sadness but were immune to permanent suffering because they
were immortal.
Greek religion’s core beliefs were that humans must honor the gods to thank them
for blessings received and to receive more blessings in return, and that the gods sent
both good and bad into the world. Gods could punish offenders by sending disasters
such as floods, famines, earthquakes, epidemic diseases, and defeats in battle. The
relationship between gods and humans generated sorrow as well as joy, and only a
limited hope for favored treatment in this life and in the underworld after death even
for the gods’ favorites. Ordinary Greeks did not expect the gods to take them to a
paradise at some future time when evil forces would be eliminated forever. An inscrip-
tion on a seventh-century b.c.e. bronze statuette sums up the reciprocity that charac-
terized Greek religious ideas: “Mantiklos gave this from his share to [the god Apollo]
the Far Darter of the Silver Bow; now you, Apollo, do something for me in return.”
Mythology hinted at the gods’ expectations of proper human behavior. For
example, gods demanded hospitality for strangers and proper burial for family mem-
bers. Other acts such as performing a sacrifice improperly, violating the sanctity of
a temple area, or breaking an oath or sworn agreement counted as disrespect for the
[1000–500 b.c.e.
gods. Humans had to police most crimes themselves. Homicide was such a serious
offense, however, that the gods were thought to punish it by casting a miasma (ritual
contamination) on the murderer and on all those around. Unless the members of
the affected group purified themselves by punishing the murderer, they could all
expect to suffer divine punishment, such as bad harvests or disease.
Oracles, dreams, divination, and the interpretations of prophets provided clues
about what humans might have done to anger the gods. The most important oracle
was at Delphi, in central Greece, where a priestess in a trance provided Apollo’s
answers — in the form of riddles that had to be interpreted — to questions posed by
city-states as well as individuals.
City-states honored gods by sacrificing animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, and
pigs; decorating their sanctuaries with works of art; and celebrating festivals with
songs, dances, prayers, and processions. Both city-states and individuals worshipped
each god and goddess through a cult, a set of official, publicly funded religious
activities overseen by priests and priestesses. People prayed, sang hymns of praise,
offered sacrifices, and presented gifts at the deity’s sanctuary. In these holy places a
person could honor and thank the deities for blessings and beg them for relief when
misfortune struck the community or the individual. People could also offer sacrifices
at home with the household gathered around; sometimes the family’s slaves were
allowed to participate.
Priests and priestesses chosen from the citizen body performed the sacrifices of
public cults; they did not use their positions to influence political or social matters.
They were not guardians of correct religious thinking because Greek polytheism had
no scripture or uniform set of beliefs and practices. It required its worshippers only
to support the community’s local rituals and to avoid religious pollution.
The concept of citizenship in the Greek city-state meant free people agreeing
to form a political community that was a partnership of privileges and duties in
common affairs under the rule of law. Citizenship was a remarkable political concept
because, even in Greek city-states organized as tyrannies or oligarchies (rule by a
small group), it meant a basic level of political equality among citizens. Most impor-
tant, it carried the expectation of equal treatment under the law for male citizens
regardless of their social status or wealth. The degree of power sharing varied. In
oligarchic city-states, small groups from the social elite or even a single family could
dominate the process of legislating. Women had the protection of the law, but they
were barred from participation in politics on the grounds that female judgment was
inferior to male. Regulations governing sexual behavior and control of property were
stricter for women than for men.
In democratic city-states, all free adult male citizens shared in governing by
attending and voting in a political assembly, where the laws and policies of the com-
munity were decided, and by serving on juries. Citizens did not enjoy perfect poli-
tical equality. The right to hold office, for example, could be restricted to citizens
possessing a certain amount of property. Equality prevailed most strongly in the
justice system, in which all male citizens were treated the same, regardless of wealth
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
or status. Making equality of male citizens the principle for the reorganization of
Greek society and politics in the Archaic Age was a radical innovation. The polis —
with its emphasis on equal protection of the laws for rich and poor alike — remained
the preeminent form of political and social organization in Greece until the begin-
ning of Roman control six centuries later.
How the poor originally gained the privileges of citizenship remains a mystery.
The population increase in the late Dark Age and the Archaic Age was greatest
among the poor. These families raised more children to help farm more land, which
had been vacant after the depopulation brought on by the worst of the Dark Age.
There was no precedent in Western civilization for extending even limited political
and legal equality to the poor.
Historians have customarily believed that a hoplite revolu-
tion was the reason for expanded political rights. A hoplite was
an infantryman who wore metal body armor and attacked with
a thrusting spear. Hoplites formed the basis of the citizen mili-
tias that defended Greek city-states. Staying in line and working
together were the secrets to successful hoplite tactics. In the
eighth century b.c.e., a growing number of men became pros-
perous enough to buy metal weapons and train as hoplites,
especially because the use of iron had made such weapons more
readily available.
According to the hoplite revolution theory, these new
hoplites — feeling that they should enjoy political rights in
exchange for buying their own equipment and training hard —
forced the social elite to share political power by threatening to
refuse to fight, which would have crippled military defense. This
interpretation correctly assumes that the hoplites had the power
to demand and receive a voice in politics but ignores that hoplites
were not poor. Furthermore, archaeology shows that not many
men were wealthy enough to afford hoplite armor until the middle
of the seventh century b.c.e., well after the earliest city-states had
emerged. How then did poor men, too, win political rights?
The most likely explanation is that the poor earned respect
by fighting to defend the community, just as hoplites did. Fight-
Grave Monument of a Greek Warrior

This inscribed flat pillar stood above the grave of a Greek warrior from
Athens who died in the late sixth century B.C.E. An inscription preserves
his name for future generations to remember: Aristion. The sculpture
shows him with the muscular build that Greek hoplites (heavily
armed infantry) worked to develop so that they could fight effec-
tively while wearing metal armor. He holds the thrusting spear
that was a hoplite’s main battle weapon. (© AISA / Everett
Collection.)
[
1000–500 b.c.e.
ing as lightly armed troops, poor men could disrupt an enemy’s line by slinging rocks
and shooting arrows. It is also possible that tyrants — sole rulers who seized power
for their families in some city-states — boosted the status of poor men. Tyrants may
have granted greater political rights to poor men as a means of gathering popular
support.
The growth of freedom and equality for citizens in Greece produced a corre-
sponding expansion of slavery, as free citizens protected their status by establishing
clear distinctions between themselves and slaves. Many slaves were war captives.
Pirates or raiders also seized people from non-Greek regions to sell into slavery. Rich
families prized educated Greek-speaking slaves, who could tutor their children (no
public schools existed yet).
City-states as well as individuals owned slaves. Publicly owned slaves enjoyed
limited independence, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Ath-
ens, for example, special slaves were trained to detect counterfeit coinage. Temple
slaves belonged to the deity of the sanctuary, for whom they worked as servants.
Slaves made up about one-third of the total population in some city-states by
the fifth century b.c.e. They became cheap enough that even middle-class people
could afford one or two. Still, small landowners and their families continued to do
much work themselves. Not even wealthy Greek landowners acquired large numbers
of agricultural slaves because maintaining gangs of hundreds of enslaved workers
year-round was too expensive. Most crops required short periods of intense labor
punctuated by long stretches of inactivity, and owners did not want to feed slaves
who had no work.
Slaves did all kinds of jobs. Household slaves, often women, cleaned, cooked,
fetched water from public fountains, helped the wife with the weaving, watched the
children, accompanied the husband as he did the marketing, and performed other
domestic chores. Neither female nor male slaves could refuse if their masters
demanded sexual favors. Owners often labored alongside their slaves in small manu-
facturing businesses and on farms. Slaves toiling in the narrow, landslide-prone tun-
nels of Greece’s silver and gold mines had the most dangerous work.
Since slaves existed as property, not people, owners could legally beat or even
kill them. But injuring or executing slaves made no economic sense — the master
would have been damaging or destroying his own property. Under the best condi-
tions, household workers could live free of violent punishment. They sometimes
were allowed to join their owners’ families on excursions and attend religious rituals.
However, without families of their own, without property, and without legal or politi-
cal rights, slaves remained alienated from regular society. Sometimes owners freed
their slaves, and some promised freedom at a future date to encourage their slaves to
work hard. Those slaves who gained their freedom did not become citizens in Greek
city-states but instead mixed into the population of noncitizens officially allowed to
live in the community.
Greek slaves rarely rebelled on a large scale, except in Sparta, because they were
usually of too many different origins and nationalities and too scattered to organize.
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
No Greeks called for the abolition of slavery. The expansion of slavery in the Archaic
Age reduced more and more people to a state of absolute dependence.
Although only free men had the right to participate in city-state politics and to
vote, free women counted as citizens legally, socially, and religiously. Citizenship gave
women security and status because it guaranteed them access to the justice system
and a respected role in a cult. Free women had legal protection against being kid-
napped for sale into slavery and access to the courts in disputes over property,
although they usually had to have a man speak for them. The traditional paternalism
of Greek society required that all women have male guardians to regulate their lives
and safeguard their interests (as defined by men). Before a woman’s marriage, her
father served as her legal guardian; after marriage, her husband took over that duty.
The expansion of slavery added new responsibilities for women. While their hus-
bands farmed, participated in politics, and met with their male friends, well-off wives
managed the household: raising the children, supervising the preservation and prep-
aration of food, keeping the family’s financial accounts, weaving fabric for clothing,
directing the work of the slaves, and tending them when they were ill. Poor women
worked outside the home, laboring in the fields or selling produce and small goods
such as ribbons and trinkets in the market. Women’s labor ensured the family’s eco-
nomic self-sufficiency and allowed male citizens the time to participate in public life.
Women’s religious functions gave them prestige and freedom of movement.
Women left the home to attend funerals, state festivals, and public rituals. They had
access, for example, to the initiation rites of the popular cult of Demeter at Eleusis,
near Athens. Women had control over cults reserved exclusively for them and also
performed important duties in other official cults. In fifth-century b.c.e. Athens, for
example, women officiated as priestesses for more than forty different deities, with
benefits including salaries paid by the state.
Marriages were arranged, and everyone was expected to marry. A woman’s guard-
ian would often engage her to another man’s son while she was still a child, perhaps
as young as five. The engagement was a public event conducted in the presence of
witnesses. The guardian on this occasion repeated the statement that expressed the
primary aim of the marriage: “I give you this woman for the plowing [procreation]
of legitimate children.” The wedding took place when the girl was in her early teens
and the groom ten to fifteen years older.
A legal wedding consisted of the bride moving to her husband’s dwelling; the
procession to his house served as the ceremony. The bride’s father bestowed on her
a dowry (a certain amount of family property a daughter received at marriage); if she
was wealthy, this could include land yielding an income as well as personal posses-
sions that formed part of her new household’s assets and could be inherited by her
children. The husband was legally obliged to preserve the dowry, use it to support
his wife and their children, and return it in case of a divorce.
Except in certain cases in Sparta, monogamy was the rule, as was a nuclear fam-
ily (husband, wife, and children living together without other relatives in the same
house). Citizen men, married or not, were free to have sexual relations with slaves,
[1000–500 b.c.e.
A Bride’s Preparation
This special piece of pottery was designed to fit over a woman’s thigh to protect it while she sat
down to spin wool. As a woman’s tool, it appropriately carried a picture from a woman’s life: a
bride being helped to prepare for her wedding by her family, friends, and servants. The inscrip-
tions indicate that this fifth-century B.C.E. piece shows the mythological bride Alcestis, famous
for sacrificing herself to save her husband and then being rescued from Death by the hero Hera-
cles. (onos or epinetron, painted terracotta by Diosphos, Greece, Greek Civilization, 5th Century B.C. / De Agostini
Picture Library / G. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
foreign concubines, female prostitutes, or willing pre-adult citizen males. Citizen

women, single or married, had no such freedom. Sex between a wife and anyone
other than her husband carried harsh penalties for both parties.
Greek citizen men placed Greek citizen women under their guardianship both
to regulate marriage and procreation and to maintain family property. According to
Greek mythology, women were a necessary evil. Zeus supposedly ordered the cre-
ation of the first woman, Pandora, as a punishment for men in retaliation against
Prometheus, who had stolen fire from Zeus and given it to humans. To see what was
in a container that had come as a gift from the gods, Pandora lifted its lid and acci-
dentally released into a previously trouble-free world the evils that had been locked
inside. When she finally slammed the lid back down, only hope still remained in
the container. Hesiod described women as “big trouble” but thought any man who
refused to marry to escape the “troublesome deeds of women” would come to
“destructive old age” alone, with no heirs. In other words, a man needed a wife so
that he could father children who would
later care for him and preserve the family
REVIEW QUESTION How did the physical,
property after his death. This paternalistic
social, and intellectual conditions of life in
attitude allowed Greek men to control the Archaic Age promote the emergence of
human reproduction and consequently the the Greek city-state?
distribution of property.
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
New Directions for the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e.
Greek city-states developed three forms of social and political organization based on
citizenship: oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy. Sparta provided Greece’s most famous
example of an oligarchy, in which a small number of men dominated policymaking
in an assembly of male citizens. For a time Corinth had the best-known tyranny,
in which one man seized control of the city-state, ruling it for the advantage of his
family and loyal supporters, while acknowledging the citizenship of all — thereby
distinguishing a tyrant from a king, who ruled over subjects. Athens developed
Greece’s best-known democracy.
Greeks in the Archaic Age also created new forms of artistic expression and new
ways of thought. In this period they developed innovative ways of using reason to
understand the physical world, their relations to it, and their relationships with one
another. This intellectual innovation laid the foundation for the gradual emergence
of scientific thought and logic in Western civilization.
Oligarchy in the City-State of Sparta, 700–500 b.c.e.

Sparta organized its society for military readiness. This oligarchic city-state devel-
oped the mightiest infantry force in Greece during the Archaic Age. Its citizens were
famous for their militaristic self-discipline. Sparta’s urban center nestled in an easily
defended valley on the Peloponnesian peninsula twenty-five miles from the Mediter-
ranean coast. This separation from the sea kept the Spartans focused on being a land
power.
The Spartan oligarchy included three components of rule. First came the two
hereditary, prestigious military leaders called kings, who served as the state’s religious
heads and the generals of its army. Despite their title, they were not monarchs but
just one part of the ruling oligarchy. The second part was a council of twenty-eight
men over sixty years old (the elders), and the third part consisted of five annually
elected officials called ephors (“overseers”), who made policy and enforced the laws.
In principle, legislation had to be approved by
an assembly of all Sparta’s free adult males, who
Gulf
Achaea
of C
orin
th
were called “The Alike” to stress their common
Ist
hm
us
status and purpose. The assembly had only limited
Corinth
Olympia power to amend the proposals put before it, how-
Arcadia
ever, and the council would withdraw a proposal
PELOPONNESE
when the assembly’s reaction proved negative.
Ion
Messenia Sparta Spartan society demanded strict obedience to all

ian
Laconia laws. When the ephors took office, they issued an

Se
official proclamation to Sparta’s males: “Shave your

a
mustache and obey the laws.” Unlike other Greeks,

0 25 50 miles
Sanctuary
0 25 50 kilometers
the Spartans never wrote down their laws. Instead,
they preserved their system with a unique, highly
Sparta and Corinth, 750–500 b.c.e. structured way of life. All Spartan citizens were
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] New Directions for the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 65
expected to put service to their city-state before personal concerns because their state’s
survival was continually threatened by its own economic foundation: the great mass
of Greek slaves, called helots, who did almost all the work for Spartan citizens.
A helot was a slave owned by the Spartan city-state. Helots were Greeks cap-
tured in neighboring parts of Greece that the Spartans defeated in war. Most helots
lived in Messenia, to the west, which Sparta had conquered by around 700 b.c.e.
The helots outnumbered Sparta’s free citizens. Harshly treated by their Spartan mas-
ters, helots constantly looked for chances to revolt.
Helots had some family life because they were expected to produce children
to maintain their population, and they could own some personal possessions and
practice their religion. They labored as farmers and household slaves so that Spartan
citizens would not have to do nonmilitary work. Spartan men wore their hair very
long to show they were warriors rather than laborers.
Helots lived under the constant threat of officially approved violence by Spartan
citizens. Every year the ephors formally declared war between Sparta and the helots,
allowing any Spartan to kill a helot without legal penalty or fear of offending the
gods. By beating the helots frequently, forcing them to get drunk in public as an
object lesson to young Spartans, and humiliating them by making them wear dog-
skin caps, the Spartans emphasized their slaves’ “otherness.” In this way Spartans
created a justification for their harsh abuse of fellow Greeks. A later Athenian
observed, “Sparta is the home of the freest of the Greeks, and of the most enslaved.”
With helots to work the fields, male citizens could devote themselves full-time
to preparation for war, training to protect their state from both hostile neighbors
and its own slaves. Boys lived at home until their seventh year, when they were sent
to live in barracks with other males until they were thirty. They spent most of their
time exercising, hunting, practicing with weapons, and learning Spartan values by
listening to tales of bravery and heroism at shared meals, where adult males in
groups of about fifteen usually ate instead of at home. Discipline was strict, and the
boys were purposely underfed so that they would learn stealth tactics by stealing
food. If they were caught, punishment and disgrace followed immediately. One
famous Spartan tale reported that a boy hid a stolen fox under his clothing and let
the panicked animal rip out his insides rather than allow himself to be detected in
the theft. A Spartan male who could not survive the tough training was publicly
disgraced and denied the status of being an Alike.
Spending so much time in shared quarters schooled Sparta’s young men in their
society’s values. The community took the place of a Spartan boy’s family when he
was growing up and remained his main social environment even after he reached
adulthood. There he learned to call all older men “Father,” to emphasize that his
primary loyalty was to the group instead of his biological family. This way of life
trained him for the one honorable occupation for Spartan men: obedient soldier. A
seventh-century b.c.e. poet expressed the Spartan male ideal: “Know that it is good
for the city-state and the whole people when a man takes his place in the front row
of warriors and stands his ground without flinching.”
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
An adolescent boy’s life often involved what in today’s terminology would
be called a homosexual relationship, although the ancient concepts of heterosexual-
ity and homosexuality do not match modern notions. An older male would choose
a teenager as a special favorite, in many cases engaging him in sexual relations.
Their bond was meant to make each ready to die for the other in battle. Numerous
Greek city-states included this form of sexuality among their customs, although
some thought it disgraceful and made it illegal. The Athenian author Xenophon
(c. 430–355 b.c.e.) wrote a work on the Spartan way of life denying that sex with
boys existed there because he thought it a stain on the Spartans’ reputation for
virtue. However, other sources testify that such relationships did exist in Sparta and
elsewhere.
In such relationships the elder partner (the “lover”) was supposed to help edu-
cate the young man (the “beloved”) in politics and community values, and not just
exploit him for physical pleasure. Once they became adults, beloveds were expected
to find a wife to start a family; they could also at that point become the “lover” of
an adolescent “beloved.” Sex between adult males was considered disgraceful, as was
sex between females of all ages (at least according to men).
Spartan women were known throughout the Greek world for their personal
freedom. Since their husbands were so rarely at home, women totally controlled the
households, which included servants, daughters, and sons who had not yet left for
their communal training. Consequently, Spartan women exercised even more power
at home than did women elsewhere in Greece. They could own property, including
land. Wives were expected to stay phys-
ically fit so that they could bear
healthy children to keep up the pop-
ulation. They were also expected to
drum Spartan values into their chil-
dren. One mother became legendary
for handing her son his shield on the eve of
battle and sternly telling him, “Come back with
it or [lying dead] on it.”
Bronze Sculpture of a Spartan Youth

This sculpted handle of a bronze water jar from sixth-century
B.C.E. Sparta shows a young male holding two lions by the tail
on his shoulders. That spectacular pose portrayed the fearless-
ness and control over fierce nature that Sparta expected of its
citizens. His hair is long in the self-conscious style of Spartan
warriors, who prided themselves on not having the short hair
that was common for laborers. (Greek, Archaic, about 540 B.C.E. Place
of manufacture: Greece, Laconia, Sparta. Bronze. H. 12.8 cm [51 ⁄16 in.].
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum purchase with funds donated by
contributions, 85.515. Photograph © 2015 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)
[1000–500 b.c.e.
Demographics determined Sparta’s long-term fate. The population of Sparta was

never large. Adult males — who made up the army — numbered between eight and
ten thousand in the Archaic period. Over time, the problem of producing enough
children to keep the Spartan army from shrinking became desperate, probably because
losses in war far outnumbered births and regulations on the timing of intercourse
in marriage had the opposite of the intended effect, reducing instead of increasing
fertility. Men became legally required to marry, with bachelors punished by fines and
public ridicule. A woman could legitimately have children by a man other than her
husband, if all three agreed.
Because the Spartans’ survival depended on the exploitation of enslaved Greeks,
they believed changes in their way of life must be avoided because any change might
make them vulnerable to internal revolts. Some Greeks criticized the Spartan way of
life as repressive and monotonous, but the Spartans’ discipline and respect for their
laws also gained them widespread admiration.
Tyranny in the City-State of Corinth, 657–585 b.c.e.

In some city-states, competition among the social elite became so bitter that a single
family would suppress all its rivals and establish itself in rule. The family’s leader thus
became a tyrant, a dictator who gained political dominance by force. Tyrants usually
rallied support by promising support for poor citizens, such as public employment
schemes. Since few tyrants successfully passed their dominance on to their heirs,
tyrannies tended to be short-lived.
Tyrants usually preserved their city-states’ existing laws and political institutions.
If a city-state had an assembly, for example, the tyrant would allow it to continue to
meet, expecting it to follow his direction. Although today the word tyrant indicates
a brutal or unwanted leader, tyrants in Archaic Greece did not always fit that descrip-
tion. Ordinary Greeks evaluated tyrants according to their behavior, opposing the
ruthless and violent ones but accepting the fair and generous ones.
The most famous early tyranny arose at Corinth in 657 b.c.e., when the family
of Cypselus rebelled against the city’s harsh oligarchic leadership. Corinth’s location
on the isthmus controlling land access to the Peloponnese and a huge amount of
seaborne trade made it the most prosperous city-state of the Archaic Age. Cypselus
“became one of the most admired of Corinth’s citizens because he was courageous,
prudent, and helpful to the people, unlike the oligarchs in power, who were insolent
and violent,” according to a later historian. Cypselus’s son succeeded him at his death
in 625 b.c.e. and aggressively continued Corinth’s economic expansion by founding
colonies to increase trade. He also pursued commercial contacts with Egypt. Unlike
his father, the son lost popular support by ruling harshly. He held on to power until
his death in 585 b.c.e., but the hostility he had provoked soon led to the overthrow
of his own heir. The social elite, to prevent tyranny, then installed an oligarchic
government based on a board of officials and a council.
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
Democracy in the City-State of Athens, 632–500 b.c.e.
Athens, located at the southeastern corner of central Greece, became the most famous
of the democratic city-states because its government gave political rights to the greatest
number of people; financed magnificent temples and public buildings; and, in the fifth
century b.c.e., became militarily strong enough to force numerous other city-states to
follow Athenian leadership in a maritime empire. Athenian democracy did not reach
its full development until the mid-fifth century b.c.e., but its first steps in the Archaic
Age allowed all male citizens to participate in making laws and administering justice.
Athens’s early development of a large middle class was a crucial factor in open-
ing this new path for Western civilization. The Athenian population apparently
expanded at a phenomenal rate when economic conditions improved rapidly from
about 800 to 700 b.c.e. The ready availability of good farmland in Athenian territory
and opportunities for seaborne trade allowed many families to improve their stand-
ing. These hardworking entrepreneurs felt that their self-won economic success
entitled them to a say in government. The democratic unity forged by the Athenian
masses was evident as early as 632 b.c.e., when the people rallied to block an elite
Athenian’s attempt to install a tyranny.
By the seventh century b.c.e., all freeborn adult Athenian male citizens had the
right to vote on public matters in the assembly. They also elected officials called
archons, who ran the judicial system by rendering verdicts in disputes and criminal
accusations. Members of the elite dominated these offices; because archons received
no pay, poor men could not afford to serve.
An extended economic crisis beginning in the late seventh century b.c.e. almost
destroyed Athens’s infant democracy. The first attempt to solve the crisis was the
emergency appointment around 621 b.c.e. of a man named Draco to revise the
laws. Draco’s changes, which made death the penalty for even minor crimes, proved
too harsh to work. Later Greeks said Draco (whose harshness inspired the word
draconian) had written his laws in blood, not ink. By 600 b.c.e., economic conditions
had become so terrible that poor farmers had to borrow constantly from richer
neighbors and deeply mortgage their land. As the crisis grew worse, impoverished
citizens were sold into slavery to pay off debts.
Desperate, Athenians appointed another emergency official in 594 b.c.e., a war
hero named Solon. To head off violence, Solon gave both rich and poor something
of what they wanted, a compromise called the “shaking off of obligations.” He canceled
private debts, which helped the poor but displeased the rich; he decided not to redis-
tribute land, which pleased the wealthy but disappointed the poor. He banned selling
citizens into slavery to settle debts and liberated citizens who had become slaves in
this way. His elimination of debt slavery was a significant recognition of citizen rights.
Solon balanced political power between rich and poor by reordering Athens’s
traditional ranking of citizens into four groups. Most important, he made the top-
ranking group depend solely on income, not birth. This change eliminated inherited
aristocracy at Athens. The groupings did not affect a man’s treatment at law, only
[1000–500 b.c.e.
his eligibility for government office. The higher a man’s ranking, the higher the post
to which he could be elected, but higher also was the contribution he was expected
to make to the community with his service and his money. Men at the poorest level,
called laborers, were not eligible for any office. Solon did, however, confirm the
laborers’ right to vote in the legislative assembly. His classification scheme was con-
sistent with democratic principles because it allowed for upward social mobility: a
man who increased his income could move up the scale of eligibility for office.
The creation of a smaller council to prepare the agenda for the assembly was a crucial
development in making Athenian democracy efficient. Four hundred council members
were chosen annually from the adult male citizenry by lottery — the most democratic
method possible — which prevented the social elite from capturing too many seats.
Solon’s two reforms in the judicial system promoted democratic principles of equal-
ity. First, he directed that any male citizen could start a prosecution on behalf of any
crime victim. Second, he gave people the right to appeal an archon’s judgment to the
assembly. With these two measures, Solon empowered ordinary citizens in the admin-
istration of justice. Characteristically, he balanced these democratic reforms by granting
broader powers to the Areopagus Council (“council that meets on the hill of the god
of war Ares”). This select body, limited to ex-archons, held great power because its
members judged the most important cases — accusations against archons themselves.
Solon’s reforms extended power through the citizen body and created a system
of law that applied more equally than before to all the community’s free men. A critic
once challenged Solon, “Do you actually believe your fellow citizens’ injustice and
greed can be kept in check this way? Written laws are more like spiders’ webs than
anything else: they tie up the weak and the small fry who get stuck in them, but the
rich and the powerful tear them to shreds.” Solon replied that communal values ensure
the rule of law: “People abide by their agreements when neither side has anything to
gain by breaking them. I am writing laws for the Athenians in such a way that they
will clearly see it is to everyone’s advantage to obey the laws rather than to break them.”
Some elite Athenians wanted oligarchy and therefore bitterly disagreed with
Solon. The unrest they caused opened the door to tyranny at Athens. Peisistratus,
helped by his upper-class friends and the poor whose interests he championed, made
himself tyrant in 546 b.c.e. Like the Corinthian tyrants, he promoted the economic,
cultural, and architectural development of Athens and bought the masses’ support.
He helped poorer men, for example, by hiring them to build roads, a huge temple
to Zeus, and fountains to increase the supply of drinking water. He boosted Athens’s
economy and its image by minting new coins stamped with Athena’s owl (a symbol
of the goddess of wisdom; see the illustration on page 115) and organizing a great
annual festival honoring the god Dionysus that attracted people from near and far
to see its musical and dramatic performances.
Peisistratus’s eldest son, Hippias, ruled harshly and was denounced as unjust by
a rival elite family. These rivals convinced the Spartans, the self-proclaimed cham-
pions of Greek freedom, to “liberate” Athens from tyranny by expelling Hippias and
his family in 510 b.c.e.
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
Peisistratus’s support of ordinary people evidently had the unintended conse-
quence of making them think that they deserved political equality. Tyranny at Athens
thus opened the way to the most important step in developing Athenian democracy,
the reforms of Cleisthenes. A member of the social elite, Cleisthenes found himself
losing against rivals for election to office in 508 b.c.e. He turned his electoral cam-
paign around by offering more political participation to the masses; he called his
program “equality through law.” Ordinary people so strongly favored his plan that
they spontaneously rallied to repel a Spartan army that Cleisthenes’ bitterest rival
had convinced Sparta’s leaders to send to block his reforms.
By about 500 b.c.e., Cleisthenes had engineered direct participation in Athens’s
democracy by as many adult male citizens as possible. First he created constituent units
for the city-state’s new political organization by grouping country villages and urban
neighborhoods into units called demes. The demes chose council members annually
by lottery in proportion to the size of their populations. To allow for greater partici-
pation, Solon’s Council of Four Hundred was expanded to five hundred members.
Finally, Cleisthenes required candidates for public office to be spread widely through-
out the demes.
The creation of demes suggests that Greek democratic notions stemmed from
traditions of small-community life, in which each man was entitled to his say in run-
ning local affairs and had to persuade — not force — others to agree. It took another
fifty years of political struggle, however, before Athenian democracy reached its full
development with the democratization of its judicial system.
New Ways of Thought and Expression in Greece, 630–500 b.c.e.

The idea that persuasion, rather than force or status, should drive political decisions
matched the spirit of intellectual change rippling through Greece in the late Archaic
Age. In city-states all over the Greek world, artists, poets, and philosophers pursued
new ways of thought and new forms of expression. Through their contacts with the
Near East, the Greeks encountered traditions to learn from and alter for their own
purposes. By the sixth century b.c.e., Greeks were introducing innovations of their
own into art. In ceramics, painters experimented with different clays and colors to
depict vivid scenes from mythology and daily life. Sculptors gave their statues bal-
anced poses and calm, smiling faces.
Building on the Near Eastern tradition of poetry expressing personal emotions,
Greeks created a new poetic form. This poetry, which sprang from popular song,
was performed to the accompaniment of a lyre (a kind of harp) and thus called lyric
poetry. Greek lyric poems were short, rhythmic, and diverse in subject. Lyric poets
wrote songs both for choruses and for individual performers. Choral poems honored
gods on public occasions, celebrated famous events in a city-state’s history, praised
victors in athletic contests, and enlivened weddings.
Solo lyric poems generated controversy because they valued individual expres-
sion and opinion over conventional views. Solon wrote poems justifying his reforms.
[1000–500 b.c.e.
Other poets criticized traditional values, such as strength in war. Sappho, a lyric poet
from Lesbos born about 630 b.c.e. and famous for her poems on love, wrote, “Some
would say the most beautiful thing on our dark earth is an army of cavalry, others
of infantry, others of ships, but I say it’s whatever a person loves.” In this poem
Sappho was expressing her longing for a woman she loved, who was now far away.
Archilochus of Paros, who probably lived in the early seventh century b.c.e., became
famous for poems mocking militarism, lamenting friends lost at sea, and regretting
love affairs gone wrong. He became infamous for his lines about throwing away his
shield in battle so that he could run away to save his life: “Oh, the hell with it; I can
get another one just as good.” When he taunted a family in verse after the father had
ended Archilochus’s affair with one of his daughters, the power of his ridicule report-
edly caused the father and his two daughters to commit suicide.
The study of philosophy (“love of wisdom”) began in the seventh and sixth cen-
turies b.c.e. when some Greek thinkers created prose writing to express their innovative
Hoplite Shield
This detail from a painting on an Archaic-Age Greek vase shows warriors carrying the large circu-
lar shields and long thrusting spears characteristic of Greek heavy infantry (hoplites). To make
the warriors look more heroic, they are shown without the torso armor that they wore in battle.
Shields were composites of metal, wood, and hide, with a decoration on the outer side to
express the warrior’s pride. Hoplites held their heavy shields by putting their left arm through
one strap in the middle of the reverse side and grasping another one at the edge. They kept
their shields in place as protection when lined up in the battle line next to their fellow soldiers,
but they could also swing them around as weapons in close combat. (Detail of a Corinthian vase,
c. 600 B.C.E. [terracotta] / Louvre, Paris, France / Peter Willi / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
ideas, above all their new explanations of the human
world and its relation to the gods. Some also com-
posed poetry to explain their theories. Most of these
Aegean philosophers lived in Ionia, on Anatolia’s western
Sea Lesbos coast, where they came in contact with Near Eastern
knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, and myth.
GREECE Chios
IONIA Because there were no formal schools, philosophers
Colophon
Athens Samos communicated their ideas by teaching privately and
Paros Miletus giving public lectures. People who studied with
these philosophers or heard their presentations
0 50 100 miles
helped spread the new ideas.
0 50 100 kilometers Rhodes Working from Babylonian discoveries about the
regular movements of the stars and planets, Ionian
Ionia and the Aegean,
philosophers such as Thales (c. 625–545 b.c.e.) and
750–500 b.c.e.
Anaximander (c. 610–540 b.c.e.), both of Miletus,
reached the revolutionary conclusion that unchanging laws of nature (rather than
gods’ wishes) governed the universe. Pythagoras, who emigrated from the island of
Samos to the Greek city-state Croton in southern Italy about 530 b.c.e., taught that
numerical relationships explained the world. He began the Greek study of high-level
mathematics and the numerical aspects of musical harmony.
Ionian philosophers insisted that natural phenomena were neither random nor
arbitrary. They applied the word cosmos — meaning “an orderly arrangement that is
beautiful” — to the universe. The cosmos included not only the motions of heavenly
bodies but also the weather, the growth of plants and animals, and human health.
Because the universe was ordered, it was knowable; because it was knowable, thought
and research could explain it. Philosophers therefore looked for the first or universal
cause of all things, a quest that scientists still pursue. These first philosophers believed
they needed to give reasons for their conclusions and to persuade others by argu-
ments based on evidence. That is, they believed in logic. This new way of thought,
called rationalism, became the foundation for the study of science and philosophy.
This rule-based view of the causes of events and physical phenomena contrasted
sharply with the traditional mythological view. Many people had difficulty accepting
such a startling change in their understanding of the world, and the older tradition
of explaining events as the work of deities lived on alongside the new approach.
The early Greek philosophers deeply influenced later times by being the first
to clearly separate scientific thinking from myth and religion. Their idea that people
must give reasons to justify their beliefs, rather than simply make assertions that
others must accept without evidence, was their most important achievement. This
insistence on rationalism, coupled with the belief that the world could be understood
as something other than the plaything of the gods, gave people hope that they could
improve their lives through their own efforts. Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570–
c. 478 b.c.e.) concluded, “The gods have not revealed all things from the beginning
to mortals, but, by seeking, human beings find out, in time, what is better.” This
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 73
saying expressed the value Archaic Age

philosophers gave to intellectual freedom, REVIEW QUESTION What were the main
corresponding to the value that citizens differences among the various forms of
gave to political freedom in the city-state. government in the Greek city-states?
Conclusion
After its Dark Age, the Near East revived its traditional pattern of social and political
organization: empire under a strong central authority. The Neo-Assyrians, the Neo-
Babylonians, and the Persians succeeded one another as imperial powers. The moral
dualism of Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, influenced later religions. The Israelites’
development of monotheism based on scripture changed the course of religious his-
tory in Western civilization.
Greece’s recovery from its Dark Age produced a new form of political and social
organization: the polis, a city-state based on citizenship and shared governance. The
growing population of the Archaic Age developed a communal sense of identity,
Dn
ie p
Danub N er
eR R.
re R. .
Loi SCYTHIANS
W E
ATLANTIC P S
L IL
LY S
OCEAN CELTS A R IA
Marseille ETRUSCANS NS SARMATIANS
(Massila)
BALK Black Sea
Eb AN
ro
R
Corsica Rome MT
. S
.
Naples Taras
IBERO-CELTS Pithecusae GREECE A N ATO L I A
Sardinia Troy
Lefkandi Sardis PERSIAN EMPIRE
Corinth Athens Miletus Ti
Hippo
gr
Cádiz Sicily
is R
Syracuse Sparta
Strait of Carthage
.
Al Mina
Gibraltar Me Knossos Rhodes
dite
r r a n Crete
Eu
Cyprus ph
ean S r
CIA
Byblos a te
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N ORTH A F RICA Cyrene Tyre
NI
Babylon
OE
PH
Naucratis
EG Y P T
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Greek settlements 0 250 500 miles

.
dS
Phoenician settlements
ea
MAPPING THE WEST Mediterranean Civilizations, c. 500 b.c.e.

At the end of the sixth century B.C.E., the Persian Empire was by far the most powerful civiliza-
tion touching the Mediterranean. Its riches and its unity gave it resources that no Phoenician or
Greek city could match. The Phoenicians dominated economically in the western Mediterranean,
while the Greek city-states in Sicily and southern Italy rivaled the power of those in the heart-
land. In Italy, the Etruscans were the most powerful civilization; the Romans were still a small
community struggling to replace monarchy with a republic.
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
personal freedom, and justice administered by citizens. The degree of power shar-
ing varied in the Greek city-states. Some, like Sparta, were oligarchies; in others, like
Corinth, rule was by tyranny. Over time, Athens developed the most extensive democ-
racy, in which political power extended to all male citizens.
Greeks in the Archaic Age also developed new methods of artistic expression
and new ways of thought. Building on Near Eastern traditions, Greek poets created
lyric poetry to express personal emotion. Greek philosophers argued that laws of
nature controlled the universe and that humans could discover these laws through
reason and research, thereby establishing rationalism as the conceptual basis for sci-
ence and philosophy.
Chapter 2 Review
Cyrus (p. 44) Homer (p. 52) Solon (p. 68)
moral dualism (p. 46) polis (p. 54) demes (p. 70)
Torah (p. 47) cult (p. 59) Sappho (p. 71)
Diaspora (p. 49) hoplite (p. 60) rationalism (p. 72)
aretê (p. 52) helot (p. 65)
Review Questions
1. In what ways was religion important in the Near East from c. 1000 B.C.E. to c. 500 B.C.E.?
2. What factors proved most important in the Greek recovery from the troubles of the Dark Age?
3. How did the physical, social, and intellectual conditions of life in the Archaic Age promote
the emergence of the Greek city-state?
4. What were the main differences among the various forms of government in the Greek
city-states?
Making Connections
1. What characteristics made the Greek city-state differ in political and social organization
from the Near Eastern city-state?
2. How were the ideas of the Ionian philosophers different from mythic traditions?
3. To what extent were the most important changes in Western civilization in this period
intentional or unintentional?
Scholars today emphasize the importance of contact and intercultural influence among different
peoples around the Mediterranean in helping us understand the history of the region as it
recovered from the economic troubles and depopulation of the Dark Age.
[1000–500 b.c.e.
Important Events
1000–750 B.C.E. Greece experiences Dark Age

900 B.C.E. Neo-Assyrian Empire emerges
800 B.C.E. Greeks learn to write with an alphabet
776 B.C.E. Olympic Games are founded in Greece
750 B.C.E. Greeks begin to create the polis
700 B.C.E. Spartans conquer Messenia, enslave its inhabitants as helots
700–500 B.C.E. Ionian philosophers develop rationalism
657 B.C.E. Cypselus becomes tyrant in Corinth
630 B.C.E. The lyric poet Sappho is born
597 and 586 B.C.E. Israelites are exiled to Babylon
594 B.C.E. Solon’s reforms promote early democracy in Athens
546–510 B.C.E. Peisistratus’s family rules Athens as tyrants
539 B.C.E. Persian king Cyrus captures Babylon, permits Israelites to return
to Canaan
508–500 B.C.E. Cleisthenes’s reforms extend democracy in Athens
Consider three events: Ionian philosophers develop rationalism (700–500 B.C.E.), the
lyric poet Sappho is born (630 B.C.E.), and Solon’s reforms promote early democracy in
Athens (594 B.C.E.). How did the development of the Greek city-state (polis) encourage
new modes of thinking and expression in science, philosophy, and literature?
Ancient Olympic Games: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/

*Barnes, Jonathan. Early Greek Philosophy. Rev. ed. 2002.
*Boyce, Mary, trans. Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism. 1990.
Bright, John. A History of Israel. 4th ed. 2000.
Brosius, Maria. The Persians. New ed. 2006.
Bryce, Trevor. Life and Society in the Hittite World. 2004.
*Dalley, Stephanie, trans. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others.
Rev. ed. 2009.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Amihai Mazar. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and
the History of Early Israel. Ed. Brian B. Schmidt. 2007.
Hurwitt, Jeffrey M. The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100–480 B.C. 1985.
Kugel, James. The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible. 2003.
Lewis, John. Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens. 2008.
*Malandra, William W. An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion: Readings from the Avesta and
the Achaemenid Inscriptions. 1983.
Martin, Thomas R. Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times. 2nd ed. 2013.
Osborne, Robin. Greece in the Making, 1200–479 B.C. 2nd ed. 2009.
Shapiro, H. A. The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece. 2007.
*Primary source.
The Greek Golden Age
3
c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
I
n 507 b.c.e., Athens feared an attack from Sparta (its more powerful rival) and
therefore sent ambassadors to the Persian king Darius I (r. 522–486 b.c.e.) to ask
for help. Athens and Sparta so mistrusted each other that the Athenians chose to
appeal to a foreign superpower for help against fellow Greeks. Darius’s representative
asked, “But who in the world are these people and where do they live that they are
begging for an alliance with the Persians?” Even so, the Persian king offered the Athe-
nians help on his standard terms: that they acknowledge his superiority. Darius was
eager to make more Greek city-states his subjects because their trade and growing
wealth made them desirable prizes. The Athenian democratic assembly rejected his offer.
This incident reveals why war domi-
nated Greece’s history throughout the fifth
Greek against Persian in century b.c.e., first with Greeks fighting
Hand-to-Hand Combat (detail)
Persians and then with Greeks fighting
This red-figure painting appears on the
interior of a Greek wine cup. Painted
Greeks. Conflicting interests and misun-
about 480 B.C.E. (during the Persian derstandings between Persia and Greece
Wars), it shows a Greek hoplite (armored at the start of the century ignited a great
infantryman) striking a Persian warrior conflict: the Persian Wars (499–479 b.c.e.),
in hand-to-hand combat with swords. which culminated with Persia invading
The Greek has lost his principal weapon,
mainland Greece. Some Greek states tem-
a spear, and the Persian can no longer
shoot his, the bow and arrow. The Greek porarily laid aside their competition and
artist has designed the painting to united to defeat the Persians, surprising
express multiple messages: the Per- the world. In victory, however, they lost
sian’s colorful outfit with sleeves and their unity and fought one another. Despite
pants stresses the “otherness” of the
nearly constant warfare, fifth-century b.c.e.
enemy in Greek eyes, and the soldiers’
serene expressions at such a desperate
Greeks (especially in Athens) created their
moment dignify the horror of killing in most famous innovations in architec-
war. Greek warriors often had heroic sym- ture, art, and theater. This Golden Age,
bols painted on their shields, such as as historians later named it, is the first
the winged horse Pegasus, an allusion part of the period called the Classical Age
to the brave exploits of Bellerophon.
(The Triptolemos Painter / © National Museums
of Greece, which lasted from around
of Scotland / Bridgeman Images.) 500 b.c.e. to the death of Alexander the
Great in 323 b.c.e.
77
78 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
New ideas in education and philosophy that were deeply controversial in the
fifth century b.c.e. have had a lasting influence on Western civilization. The contro-
versies arose because many people saw the changes as attacks on ancient traditions,
especially religion; they feared the gods would punish their communities for aban-
doning ancestral beliefs. Political change also characterized the Athenian Golden
Age. First, Athenian citizens made their city-state government more democratic than
ever. Second, Athens grew internationally powerful by using its navy to establish rule
over other Greeks in a system dubbed “empire” by modern scholars. This naval
power also promoted seaborne trade, and profits from rule and trade brought Athens
enormous prosperity. Athens’s citizens voted to use their revenues to finance new
public buildings, art, and competitive theater festivals, and to pay for poorer men to
serve as officials and jurors in an expanded democratic government.
The Golden Age ended when Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian
War (431–404 b.c.e.) and the Athenians
CHAPTER FOCUS Did war bring more benefit
then fought a brief but bloody civil war
or more harm — politically, socially, and intellec- (404–403 b.c.e.). The Peloponnesian War
tually — to Golden Age Athens? and its aftermath bankrupted and divided
Athens.
Wars between Persia and Greece, 499–479 b.c.e.

The Athenian ambassadors in 507 b.c.e. agreed to the Persian requirement for an
alliance: presenting tokens of earth and water to acknowledge submission to the Per-
sian king. However, the Athenian assembly failed to inform King Darius that it had
rejected his terms; he continued to believe that Athens had agreed to obey him in
return for support. This misunderstanding planted the seed for two Persian attacks
on Greece. Since the Persian Empire far outweighed the Greek city-states in soldiers
and money, the conflict pitted the equivalent of a huge bear against a pack of under-
sized dogs.
From the Ionian Revolt to the Battle of Marathon, 499–490 b.c.e.

In 499 b.c.e., the Greek city-states in Ionia rebelled against their Persian-installed
tyrants. The Athenians sent troops because they saw the Ionians as close kin. By
494 b.c.e., a Persian counterattack had crushed the revolt (Map 3.1). Darius exploded
in anger when he learned that the Athenians had helped the Ionian rebels. He even
ordered a slave to repeat three times at every meal, “Lord, remember the Athenians.”
In 490 b.c.e., Darius sent a force to punish Athens and install a puppet tyrant.
The Athenians confronted the invaders at the town of Marathon, on their coast. The
Athenian soldiers were stunned by the Persians’ strange garb — colorful pants instead
of the short tunics and bare legs that Greeks regarded as proper dress (see the chapter-
opening photo) — but the Greek commanders had their infantry charge the enemy
at a dead run. The soldiers in their heavy armor clanked across the plain through a
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Wars between Persia and Greece, 499–479 b.c.e. 79
TH R AC E
MACEDONIA Hellespont
Propontis
Thasos
Canal dug
by Persians
Lemnos
Corcyra Lesbos
THESSALY Aegean
Thermopylae Sea ANATOLIA
480 B.C.E.
Boeotia Eretria Lydia
Sardis
Chios 498 B.C.E.
Ion
Plataea Thebes Marathon
ia
479 B.C.E. 490 B.C.E.
Attica
Athens
Samos Ephesus
Olympia Corinth Salamis Mt. Mycale
480 B.C.E. 479 B.C.E.
Troizen Miletus
494 B.C.E. Caria
PELOPONNESE
CYCLADES IS.
Sparta
Laconia
Greek states allied against Persia

Persian Empire Cythera
Rhodes
States capitulating to Persia Mediterranean Sea
or remaining neutral
N
Areas of Ionian revolt, 499–494 B.C.E.
Route of Ionian Greek city-states’ W E
rebel army in 498 B.C.E.
Crete S
Route of expedition sent
by Darius in 490 B.C.E.
Route of Xerxes’ army in 480 B.C.E.
Route of Xerxes’ navy in 480 B.C.E. 0 50 100 miles
Battle 0 50 100 kilometers
MAP 3.1 The Persian Wars, 499–479 b.c.e.

Following the example of King Cyrus (r. 557–530 B.C.E.), who founded the Persian Empire, his
successors on the throne expanded the empire eastward and westward. King Darius I invaded
Thrace more than fifteen years before the conflict against the Greeks that we call the Persian
Wars. The Persians’ unexpected defeat in Greece put an end to their attempt to extend their
power into Europe.
hail of Persian arrows. In the hand-to-hand combat, the Greek hoplites used their
long spears to overwhelm the Persian infantry.
The Athenian infantry then hurried the twenty-six miles to Athens to guard the
city against the Persian navy. (Today’s marathon races commemorate the legend of
a runner speeding ahead to announce the victory, and then dropping dead.) Their
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
A Signet of Persia’s King Darius

Like other kings in the ancient Mediterranean region, the Persian king hunted lions to show his
courage and his ability to overcome nature’s threats. In this scene from a signet, used to
impress the royal seal into wet clay to verify documents, Darius I shoots arrows from a chariot
driven for him by a charioteer. He is depicted wearing his crown so that his status as ruler
would be obvious. The symbol of Ahura Mazda, the chief god of Persian religion, hovers in the
sky to indicate that the king enjoys divine favor. (The British Museum, London, UK / akg-images.)
unexpected success strengthened the Athenians’ sense of community. When a rich

strike was made in Athens’s publicly owned silver mines in 483 b.c.e., a far-sighted
leader named Themistocles (c. 524–c. 460 b.c.e.) convinced the assembly to spend the
money on doubling the size of the navy instead of on distributing it to the citizens.
The Great Persian Invasion, 480–479 b.c.e.

Themistocles’ foresight proved valuable when Darius’s son Xerxes I (r. 486–465 b.c.e.)
assembled an immense force to avenge his father’s defeat by invading Greece and add-
ing the mainland city-states to the many lands paying him taxes. So huge was Xerxes’
army, the Greeks claimed, that when the invasion began in 480 b.c.e. it took seven days
and seven nights for it to cross the strip of sea between Asia and Europe. Thirty-one
Greek city-states (out of hundreds) allied to defend their political freedom.
Their coalition represented only a small sample of the Greek world. The allies
desperately wanted the major Greek city-states in Italy and Sicily to join the coalition
because they were rich naval powers, but they refused. Syracuse, for example, the most
powerful Greek state at the time, controlled a regional empire built on agriculture
in Sicily’s plains and seaborne commerce through its harbors serving the Mediter-
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 b.c.e. 81
ranean’s western trading routes. The tyrant ruling Syracuse rejected the allies’ appeal
for help because he was fighting his own war against Carthage, a Phoenician city in
North Africa, over control of the profitable trade routes.
The Greek allies chose Sparta as their leader because of its military excellence. The
Spartans demonstrated their courage in 480 b.c.e. when three hundred of their infantry
(and a few thousand other fighters) blocked Xerxes’ army for several days at the pass
called Thermopylae in central Greece. Told the Persian archers were so numerous that
their arrows darkened the sun, one Spartan reportedly remarked, “That’s good news;
we’ll get to fight in the shade.” They did — to the death. Their tomb’s memorial pro-
claimed, “Go tell the Spartans that we lie buried here obedient to their orders.”
When the Persians marched south, the Athenians, knowing they could not
defend the city, evacuated their residents to the Peloponnese region rather than sur-
render. The Persians then burned Athens. Themistocles and his political rival Aris-
tides (c. 530–c. 468 b.c.e.) cooperated to convince the other city-states’ generals to
fight a naval battle. Themistocles tricked the Persian king into attacking the Greek
fleet in the narrow channel between the island of Salamis and the west coast of
Athens, where Xerxes could not send all his fleet (twice the size of the Greeks’) into
battle simultaneously. The heavier Greek warships won the battle by ramming the
flimsier Persian craft. The battle of Salamis induced Xerxes to return home. In
479 b.c.e., the Spartans commanded victories over the Persian land forces.
The Greeks won their battles against the Persians because their generals had better
strategic foresight, their soldiers had stronger weapons, and their warships were more
effective. Above all, the Greeks won the war because enough of them took the inno-
vative step of uniting to fight together to keep their independence. Because the Greek
forces included both the social elites and the
poorer men who rowed the warships, their REVIEW QUESTION How did the Greeks over-
success showed that rich and poor Greeks come the dangers of the Persian invasions?
alike treasured political freedom.
Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 b.c.e.

Victory fractured the Greek alliance because the allies resented the Spartans’ harsh-
ness and the Athenians now competed with them to lead Greece. This competition
created the Athenian Empire. The growth of Athens’s power inspired its citizens to
broaden their democracy and spend vast amounts to fund officials and jurors, public
buildings, art, and religious festivals.
The Establishment of the Athenian Empire

Sparta and Athens built up separate alliances to strengthen their own positions, believ-
ing that their security depended on winning a competition for power. Sparta led strong
infantry forces from the Peloponnese region, and its ally Corinth had a sizable navy.
The Spartan alliance had an assembly to decide policy, but Sparta dominated.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
Athens allied with city-states in northern Greece, on the islands of the Aegean
Sea, and along the Ionian coast — the places most threatened by Persia. This alliance,
the Delian League, was built on naval power. It began as a democratic alliance, but
Athens soon controlled it because the allies allowed the Athenians to command
and to set the financing arrangements for the league’s fleet. At its height, the league
included some three hundred city-states. Each paid dues according to its size; Athens
determined how the dues were spent. Larger city-states paid their dues by sending
triremes — warships propelled by 170 rowers on three levels and equipped with a
battering ram at the bow (Figure 3.1) — complete with trained crews and their pay.
Smaller states could share in building one ship or contribute money instead of ships
and crews.
FIGURE 3.1 Triremes, the Foremost Classical Greek Warships

Innovations in military technology and training propelled a naval arms race in the fifth century
B.C.E. when Greek shipbuilders designed larger and faster ramming ships powered by 170 row-
ers seated in three rows, each above the other. (See the line illustration of the rowers from
behind.) Called triremes, these ships were expensive to build and required extensive crew train-
ing. Only wealthy and populous city-states such as Athens could afford to build and man large
fleets of triremes. The relief sculpture found on the Athenian acropolis and dating from about
400 B.C.E. gives a glimpse of what a trireme looked like from the side when being rowed into
battle. (Sails were used for power only when the ship was not in combat.) (Acropolis Museum,
Athens / Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
Over time, more and more Delian League members voluntarily paid cash because
it was easier. Athens then used this money to construct triremes and pay men to
row them; oarsmen who brought a slave to row alongside them earned double pay.
Drawn primarily from the poorest citizens, rowers gained both income and political
influence in Athenian democracy because the navy became the city-state’s main
force. These benefits made poor citizens eager to expand Athens’s power over other
Greeks. The increase in Athenian naval power thus promoted the development of a
wider democracy at home, but it undermined the democracy of the Delian League.
The Athenian assembly could use the league fleet to force disobedient allies to
pay cash dues. Athens’s dominance of the Delian League has led historians to use
the label Athenian Empire. By about 460 b.c.e., the Delian League’s fleet had expelled
all Persian garrisons from northern Greece and driven the enemy fleet from the
Aegean Sea. This sweep eliminated the Persian threat for the next fifty years.
Military success made Athens prosperous by bringing in spoils and cash dues
from the Delian League and making seaborne trade safe. The prosperity benefited
rich and poor alike — the poor rowers earned good pay, while elite commanders
enhanced their chances for election to high office by spending their spoils from war
on public festivals and buildings. In this way, the democracy of Golden Age Athens
supported what modern scholars often label imperialism.
Radical Democracy and Pericles’ Leadership, 461–431 b.c.e.

In the late 460s b.c.e., the trireme rowers decided that in their own interest they
should make Athens’s court system as democratic as its legislative assembly, in which
all free adult male citizens could already participate. They wanted to be free of unfair
verdicts rendered by the elite in legal cases. Hoping to win popular support for elec-
tion to high office, members of the elite pushed this judicial reform, which was
accomplished in 461 b.c.e. Pericles (c. 495–429 b.c.e.), a member of one of Athens’s
most distinguished families, became Golden Age Athens’s dominant politician by
spearheading reforms to democratize its judicial system and provide pay for many
public offices.
Historians have labeled the changes to Athenian democracy in the 460s and
450s b.c.e. radical (“from the roots”) because the new system gave direct political and
judicial power to all adult male citizens (the “roots” of democracy, in the Greek view).
The government consisted of the assembly, the Council of Five Hundred chosen annu-
ally by lottery, the Council of the Areopagus of ex-archons serving for life, an execu-
tive board of ten “generals” elected annually, nine archons chosen by lottery, hundreds
of other annual minor officials (most chosen by lottery), and the court system.
Athens’s radical democracy balanced two competing goals: (1) participation by
as many ordinary male citizens as possible in direct (not representative) democracy
with term limits on service in office and (2) selective leadership by elite citizens. To
achieve the second goal, the highest-level officials were elected and received no pay.
A successful general could be reelected indefinitely.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
The changes in the judicial system did the most to create radical democracy.
Previously, archons (high officials in the city-state) and the ex-archons serving in the
Council of the Areopagus, who tended to be members of the elite, had decided most
legal cases. As with Cleisthenes (see Chapter 2), reform took place when an elite
man proposed it to support ordinary men’s political rights and simultaneously win
their votes against his rivals: in 461 b.c.e., Ephialtes won popular support by getting
the assembly to establish a new system that took away jurisdiction from the archons
and gave it to courts manned by citizen jurors. To make it more democratic and
prevent bribery, jurors were selected by lottery from male citizens over thirty years
old. They received pay to serve on juries numbering from several hundred to several
thousand members. No judges or lawyers existed, and jurors voted by secret ballot
after hearing speeches from the persons involved. As in the assembly, a majority vote
decided matters; no appeals of verdicts were allowed.
In Athenian radical democracy the majority could overrule the legal protec-
tions for individuals. In ostracism, all male citizens could cast a ballot on which they
scratched the name of one man they thought should be exiled for ten years. If at least
six thousand ballots were cast, the man whose name appeared on the greatest num-
ber was expelled from Athens. He suffered no other penalty; his family and property
remained undisturbed. Usually a man was ostracized because a majority feared he
would overthrow the democracy to rule as a tyrant. There was no guarantee of voters’
motives in an ostracism, as a story about Aristides illustrates. He was nicknamed “the
Just” because he had proved himself so fair-minded in setting the original level of
dues for Delian League members. On the day of an ostracism, an illiterate citizen
handed him a pottery fragment and asked him to scratch a name on it:
“Certainly,” said Aristides. “What name shall I write?” “Aristides,” replied the
man. “All right,” said Aristides as he inscribed his own name, “but why do
you want to ostracize Aristides? What has he done to you?” “Oh, nothing.
I don’t even know him,” the man muttered. “I just can’t stand hearing every-
body refer to him as ‘the Just.’ ”
True or not, this tale demonstrates that most Athenians believed the right way to
support democracy was to trust a majority vote.
Some socially elite citizens bitterly criticized Athens’s democracy for giving
political power to the poor. These critics insisted that oligarchy — the rule of the
few — was morally superior to radical democracy because they believed that the poor
lacked the education and moral values needed for leadership and would use their
majority rule to strip the rich of their wealth by making them provide benefits to
poorer citizens.
Pericles convinced the assembly to pass reforms to strengthen citizens’ equality,
making him the most influential leader of his era. He introduced pay for the offices
filled by lottery and for jury ser vice so that the poor could serve as well as the
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
wealthy. In 451 b.c.e., Pericles sponsored a law restricting citizenship to those whose
mother and father were both Athenian by birth. Previously, wealthy men had often
married foreign women from elite families. This change both increased the status of
Athenian women, rich or poor, as potential mothers of citizens and made Athenian
citizenship more valuable by reducing the number of people eligible for its legal and
financial benefits. Thousands had their citizenship revoked.
Pericles also convinced the assembly to launch naval campaigns when war with
Sparta broke out in the 450s b.c.e. The assembly was so eager to compete for power
and plunder against other Greeks and against Persians in the eastern Mediterranean
that it voted for up to three major expeditions at once. These efforts slowed in the
late 450s b.c.e. after a large naval force sent to aid an Egyptian rebellion against Per-
sian rule suffered a horrendous defeat, losing tens of thousands of oarsmen. In 446–
445 b.c.e., Pericles arranged a peace treaty with Sparta for thirty years, to preserve
Athenian control of the Delian League.
The Urban Landscape in Athens

Golden Age Athens prospered from Delian League dues, war spoils, and profits and
taxes from seaborne trade. Its artisans produced goods traded far and wide; the Etrus-
cans in central Italy, for example, imported countless painted vases. All these activi-
ties boosted Athens to its greatest prosperity.
Athenians spent their public resources on pay for citizens participating in its
democracy and on public buildings, art, and religious festivals. In private life, rich
urban dwellers splurged on luxury goods influenced by Persian designs, but most
houses remained modest and plain. Archaeology at the city of Olynthus in northeast-
ern Greece has revealed typical homes grouping bedrooms, storerooms, and dining
rooms around open-air courtyards. Poor city residents rented small apartments. Toi-
lets consisted of pots indoors and a pit outside the front door. The city paid collectors
to dump the waste in the countryside.
Generals won votes by spending their spoils on public running tracks, shade trees,
and buildings. The super-rich commander Cimon (c. 510–c. 450 b.c.e.), for example,
paid for the Painted Stoa to be built on the edge of Athens’s agora, the central market
square. There, shoppers could admire the building’s paintings of Cimon’s family’s
military achievements. This sort of contribution was voluntary, but the laws required
wealthy citizens to pay for festivals and warship equipment. This financial obligation
on the rich was essential because Athens, as usual in ancient Greece, had no regular
property or income taxes.
On Athens’s acropolis (the rocky hill at the city’s center, Map 3.2), Pericles had
the two most famous buildings of Golden Age Athens erected during the 440s and
430s b.c.e.: a mammoth gateway and an enormous marble temple of Athena called the
Parthenon (“virgin goddess’s house”). These two buildings cost more than the equiv-
alent of a billion dollars, a phenomenal sum for a Greek city-state. Pericles’ political
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
s
be
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0 2 miles Agora
Acropolis
0 2 kilometers
W all
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N. L ll
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ong
S. L
ll
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ale
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MAP 3.2 Fifth-Century b.c.e. Athens

The urban center of Athens, with the agora and acropolis at its heart, measured about one
square mile; it was surrounded by a stone wall with a circuit of some four miles. Gates guarded
by towers and various smaller entries allowed traffic in and out of the city. Much of the Athe-
nian population lived in the many demes (villages) of the surrounding countryside. Most of the
city’s water supply came from wells and springs inside the walls, but, unlike some Greek cities,
Athens also had water piped in from outside. The Long Walls provided a protected corridor con-
necting the city to its harbor at Piraeus, where the Athenian navy was anchored and grain was
imported to feed the people.
rivals slammed him for spending too much public money on the project and diverting
Delian League funds to beautify Athens; recent research suggests this accusation was
false and that the buildings were financed by Athens’s own revenues.
The Parthenon is the foremost symbol of Athens’s Golden Age. It honored
Athena, the city’s chief deity. Inside the temple, a gold-and-ivory statue nearly forty
feet high depicted the goddess in armor, holding a six-foot-tall statue of Nike, the
goddess of victory.
Like all other Greek temples, the Parthenon was a divinity’s residence, not a hall
for worshippers. Its design was standard: a rectangular box on a raised platform lined
with columns, a plan probably taken from Egypt. The Parthenon’s soaring columns
fenced in a porch surrounding the interior chamber. They were carved in the simple
style called Doric, in contrast to the more elaborate Ionic and Corinthian styles
(Figure 3.2).
The Parthenon’s massive size and innovative style proclaimed the self-confidence
of Golden Age Athens and its competitive drive to build a monument more spec-
tacular than any other in Greece. Constructed from twenty thousand tons of local
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
DORIC IONIC CORINTHIAN
FIGURE 3.2 Styles of Greek Capitals

The Greeks decorated the capitals, or tops, of columns in these three styles to fit the different
architectural “canons” (their word for precise mathematical systems of proportions) that they
devised for designing buildings. These styles were much imitated in later times, as on many
U.S. state capitols and the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
marble, the temple stretched 230 feet long and 100 feet wide. Its complex architecture
demonstrated the Athenian ambition to use human skill to improve nature: because
perfectly rectilinear architecture appears curved to the human eye, subtle curves and
inclines were built into the Parthenon to produce an illusion of completely straight
lines and emphasize its massiveness.
The Parthenon’s many sculptures communicated confident messages: the gods
ensure triumph over the forces of chaos, and Athenians enjoy the gods’ goodwill more
than anyone else. The sculptures in each pediment (the triangular space atop the
columns at either end of the temple) portrayed Athena as the city-state’s benefactor.
The metopes (panels sculpted in relief above the outer columns around all four sides)
portrayed victories over hostile centaurs (creatures with the body of a horse but torso
and head of a man) and other enemies of civilization. Most strikingly of all, a frieze
(a continuous band of figures carved in relief) ran around the top of the walls inside
the porch and was painted in bright colors to make it more visible. The Parthenon’s
frieze was special because usually only Ionic-style buildings had one. The frieze
showed Athenian men, women, and children parading before the gods, the proces-
sion shown in motion like the pictures in a graphic novel today.
No other Greeks had ever adorned a temple with representations of themselves.
The Parthenon staked a claim of unique closeness between the city-state and the gods,
reflecting the Athenians’ confidence after helping turn back the Persians, achieving
leadership of a powerful naval alliance, and accumulating great wealth. Their success,
the Athenians believed, proved that the gods were on their side, and their fabulous
buildings displayed their gratitude.
Like the unique Parthenon frieze, the innovations that Golden Age artists made
in representing the human body shattered tradition. By the time of the Persian Wars,
Greek sculptors had begun replacing the stiffly balanced style of Archaic Age statues
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
The Acropolis of Athens

Most Greek city-states, including Athens, sprang up around a prominent rocky hill, called an
acropolis (“height of the city”). The summit of the acropolis usually housed sanctuaries for the
city’s protective deities and could serve as a fortress for the population during an enemy attack.
Athens’s acropolis boasted several elaborately decorated marble temples honoring the god-
dess Athena; the largest one was the Parthenon, seen here from its west (back) side. Recent
research suggests that the ruins of a temple burned by the Persians when they captured Athens
in 480 B.C.E. remained in place right next to the Parthenon. The Athenians left its charred remains
to remind themselves of the sacrifices they had made in defending their freedom. (The walls in
the lower foreground are from a theater built in Roman times.) (akg-images.)
with statues in motion in new poses. This style of movement in stone expressed an
energetic balancing of competing forces, echoing radical democracy’s principles.
Sculptors began carving anatomically realistic but perfect-looking bodies, sug-
gesting that humans could be confident about achieving beauty and perfection.
Female statues now displayed the shape of the curves underneath clothing, while male
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 89
ones showed athletic muscles. The faces showed a more relaxed and self-confident
look in place of the rigid smiles of Archaic Age statues.
Freestanding Golden Age statues, whether paid for with private or government
funds, were erected to be seen by the public. Privately commissioned statues of gods
were placed in sanctuaries as symbols of devotion. Wealthy families paid for stat-
ues of their deceased relatives, especially
if they had died young in war, to be placed REVIEW QUESTION What factors produced
above their graves as memorials of their political change in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens?
excellence and signs of the family’s social
status.
Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age

Golden Age Athens’s prosperity and international contacts created unprecedented
innovations in architecture, art, drama, education, and philosophy, but the drive to
innovate conflicted with traditional ways. In keeping with tradition, women were
expected to limit their public role to participation in religious ceremonies. The new
ideas of philosophers and teachers called Sophists and the Athenian philosopher
Socrates’ views on personal morality and responsibility caused many people to fear
that the gods would become angry at the community. The development of publicly
funded drama festivals reflected the clash between innovation and tradition; their
tragic and comic plays examined problems in city-state life.
Religious Tradition in a Period of Change

Greeks maintained religious tradition as protection against life’s dangers. They par-
ticipated in the city-state’s sacrifices and festivals, and they also worshipped privately.
Each public and private cult had its own rituals, from large-animal sacrifices to offer-
ings of fruits, vegetables, and small cakes. State-funded sacrifices of large animals
gathered the community to reaffirm its ties to the divine world and to feast on the
roasted meat of the sacrificed beast. For poor people, the free food provided at reli-
gious festivals might be the only meat they ever tasted.
The biggest festivals featured parades and contests in music, dancing, poetry,
and athletics. Laborers’ contracts specified how many days off they received to attend
such ceremonies. Some festivals were for women only, such as the three-day festival
for married women in honor of Demeter, goddess of agriculture and fertility.
Families marked significant events such as birth, marriage, and death with
prayers, rituals, and sacrifices. They honored their ancestors with offerings made at
their tombs, consulted seers about the meanings of dreams and omens, and paid
magicians for spells to improve their love lives or curses to harm their enemies. Hero
cults included rituals performed at the tomb of an extraordinarily famous man or
woman. Heroes’ remains were thought to retain special power to provide oracles, heal
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
sickness, and protect the army. The strongman Herakles (or Hercules, as the Romans
spelled his name) had cults all over the Greek world because his superhuman reputa-
tion gave him international appeal. Mystery cults initiated members into “secret
knowledge” about the divine and human worlds. Initiates believed that they gained
divine protection from the cult’s god or gods.
The Athenian mystery cult of Demeter and her daughter Persephone offered
hope for protection on earth and in the afterlife. The cult’s central rite was the Mys-
teries, a series of initiation ceremonies. So important were these Mysteries that an
international truce — as with the Olympic Games — allowed people to travel from
distant places to attend them. The Mysteries were open to any free Greek-speaking
individuals — women and men, adults and children — if they were clear of ritual
pollution (for example, if they had not committed sacrilege, been convicted of mur-
der, or had recent contact with a corpse or blood from a birth). Some slaves who
worked in the sanctuary were also eligible to participate. The main stage of initiation
took more than a week. A sixth-century b.c.e. poem explained the initiation’s ben-
efits: “Richly blessed is the mortal who has seen these rites; but whoever is not an
initiate and has no share in them, that one never has an equal portion after death,
down in the gloomy darkness.”
Women, Slaves, and Metics

Women, slaves, and metics (foreigners granted permanent residence status in return
for taxes and military service) made up the majority of Athens’s population, but they
lacked political rights. Citizen women enjoyed legal privileges and social status, earn-
ing respect through their family roles and religious activities. Upper-class women
managed their households, visited female friends, and participated in religious cults.
Poor women worked as small-scale merchants, crafts producers, and agricultural
laborers. Slaves and metics performed a variety of jobs in agriculture and commerce.
Bearing children in marriage earned women public and family status. Men were
expected to respect and support their wives. Childbirth was dangerous under the
medical conditions of the time. In Medea, a play of 431 b.c.e. by Euripides (c. 480–
406 b.c.e.), the heroine shouts in anger at her husband, who has selfishly betrayed
her: “People say that we women lead a safe life at home, while men have to go to
war. What fools they are! I would much rather fight in battle three times than give
birth to a child even once.”
Wives were partners with their husbands in owning and managing the house-
hold’s property to help the family thrive. Rich women acquired property, including
land — the most valued possession in Greek society because it could be farmed or
rented out for income — through inheritance and dowry. A husband often had to put
up valuable land of his own as collateral to guarantee repayment to his wife of the
amount of her dowry if he squandered it.
Like fathers, mothers were expected to hand down property to their children to
keep it in the family through male heirs, since only sons could maintain their father’s
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
Vase Painting of Women Fetching Water (detail)

This vase painting shows women filling water jugs at a public fountain to take back to their
homes. Both freeborn and slave women fetched water for their households, as few Greek
homes had running water. Cities built attractive fountain houses such as this one, which dis-
pensed fresh water from springs or piped it in through small aqueducts (compare the large
Roman aqueduct on page 157). Women often gathered at fountains for conversation with
people from outside their household. (Black-figure water jar [hydria] with women at the fountain, Attica,
Athens, Archaic Period, c. 520 B.C. [ceramic], Priam Painter [fl. c. 530–510 B.C.] / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
Massachusetts, USA / William Francis Warden Fund / Bridgeman Images.)
family line; married daughters became members of their husband’s family. The goal
of keeping property in the possession of male heirs shows up most clearly in Athe-
nian law about heiresses (daughters whose fathers died without any sons, which
happened in about one of every five families): the closest male relative of the heiress’s
father — her official guardian after her father’s death — was required to marry her.
The goal was to produce a son to inherit the father’s property. This rule applied
regardless of whether either party was already married (unless the heiress had sons);
the heiress and the male relative were both supposed to divorce their present spouses
and marry each other. In real life, however, people often used legal technicalities to
get around this requirement so that they could remain with their chosen partners.
Tradition restricted women’s freedom of movement to protect them, men said,
from seducers and rapists. Men wanted to ensure that their family property went
only to their biological children. Well-off city women were expected to avoid contact
with male strangers. Modern research has discredited the idea that Greek homes had
a defined “women’s quarter” to which women were confined. Rather, women were
granted privacy in certain rooms. In their homes women would spin wool for cloth-
ing, converse with visiting friends, direct their children, supervise the slaves, and
present opinions on everything, including politics, to their male relatives. Poor women
had to leave the house, usually a crowded rental apartment, to sell bread, vegetables,
simple clothing, or trinkets they had made.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
An elite woman left home for religious festivals, funerals, childbirths at the
houses of relatives and friends, and shopping. Often her husband escorted her, but
sometimes she took only a slave, setting her own itinerary. Most upper-class women
probably viewed their limited contact with men as a badge of superior social status.
For example, a pale complexion, from staying inside much of the time, was much
admired as a sign of an enviable life of leisure and wealth.
Women who bore legitimate children gained increased respect and freedom, as
an Athenian man explained in his speech defending himself for having killed his
wife’s lover:
After my marriage, I at first didn’t interfere with my wife very much, but
neither did I allow her too much independence. I kept an eye on her. . . .
But after she had a baby, I started to trust her more and put her in charge
of all my things, believing we now had the closest of relationships.
Bearing male children brought a woman special honor because sons meant security.
Sons could appear in court to support their parents in lawsuits and protect them in
the streets of Athens, which for most of its history had no regular police force. By
law, sons were required to support elderly parents.
Some women escaped traditional restrictions by working as a hetaira (“compan-
ion”). Hetairas, usually foreigners, were unmarried, physically attractive, witty in
speech, and skilled in music and poetry. Men hired them to entertain at a sympo-
sium (a drinking party to which wives were not invited). Their skill at clever teasing
and joking with men gave hetairas a freedom of speech denied to “proper” women.
Hetairas nevertheless lacked the social status and respectability that wives and moth-
ers possessed.
Sometimes hetairas also sold sex for a high price, and they could control their
own sexuality by choosing their clients. Athenian men (but not women) could buy
sex as they pleased without legal hindrance. Men (but not women) could also have
sex freely with female or male slaves, who could not refuse their masters.
The most skilled hetairas earned enough to live in luxury on their own. The
most famous hetaira in Athens was Aspasia from Miletus, who became Pericles’
lover and bore him a son. She dazzled men with her brilliant talk and wide knowl-
edge. Pericles fell so deeply in love with her that he wanted to marry her, despite
his own law of 451 b.c.e. restricting citizenship to the children of two Athenian
parents.
Great riches also freed a woman from tradition. The most outspoken rich Athe-
nian woman was Elpinike. She once publicly criticized Pericles by sarcastically remark-
ing in front of a group of women who were praising him for an attack on a rebellious
Delian League ally, “This really is wonderful, Pericles. . . . You have caused the loss
of many good citizens, not in battle against Phoenicians or Persians . . . but in sup-
pressing an allied city of fellow Greeks.”
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
Slaves and metics were considered outsiders. Both individuals and the city-state
owned slaves, who could be purchased from traders or bred in the household. Some
people picked up unwanted newborns abandoned by their parents (in an accepted
practice called infant exposure) and raised them as slaves. Athens’s commercial growth
increased the demand for slaves, who in Pericles’ time made up around 100,000 of
the city-state’s total of perhaps 250,000 inhabitants. Slaves worked in homes, on
farms, and in crafts shops; rowed alongside their owners in the navy; and toiled
in Athens’s dangerous silver mines. Unlike those in Sparta, slaves in Athens almost
never rebelled, probably because they originated from too many different places to
be able to unite.
Golden Age Athens’s wealth and cultural activities attracted many metics from
all around the Mediterranean. By the late fifth century b.c.e., metics constituted per-
haps 50,000 to 75,000 of the estimated 150,000 free men, women, and children in
the city-state. Metics paid for the privilege of living and working in Athens through
a special foreigners’ tax and army service, but they did not become citizens.
Innovative Ideas in Education, Philosophy, History, and Medicine

Thinkers in the Greek Golden Age developed innovative ideas in education, philoso-
phy, history, and medicine. These innovations deeply upset some people, who feared
that such departures from tradition would undermine society, especially in religion,
thereby provoking punishment from angry gods. However, the changes opened the
way to the development of scientific study as an enduring characteristic of Western
civilization.
Education and philosophy provided the hottest battles between tradition and
innovation. Parents had traditionally controlled their children’s education, which
occurred in the home and included hired tutors (there were no public schools).
Controversy erupted when men known as Sophists appeared in the mid-fifth cen-
tury b.c.e. and offered, for pay, classes to young males on nontraditional philosophy
and religious doctrines as well as new techniques for public speaking. Some philoso-
phers’ ideas challenged traditional religious views. The philosopher Socrates’ views
on personal morality provoked another fierce controversy. In history, innovators cre-
ated novel models of interpretation to help in understanding human experience; in
medicine, they developed a scientific method to help in understanding the body.
Disagreement over whether these intellectual changes were dangerous for Athe-
nian society added to the political tension that had arisen at Athens by the 430s b.c.e.
concerning Athens’s harsh treatment of its own allies and its economic sanctions
against Sparta’s allies. Athenians connected philosophic ideas about the nature of jus-
tice with their decisions about the city-state’s domestic and foreign policy, while also
worrying about the attitude of the gods toward the community.
Wealthy families sent their sons to private teachers to learn to read, write, play
a musical instrument or sing, and to develop athletic skills. Physical training was
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
Vase Painting of a Symposium

Upper-class Greek men often spent their evenings at a symposium, a drinking party that always
included much conversation and usually featured music and entertainers. Wives were not
included. The discussions could range widely, from literature to politics to philosophy. The man
on the right is about to fling the dregs of his wine, playing a messy game called kottabos. The
nudity of the female musician indicates she is a hired prostitute. (Detail, Foundry Painter / Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, UK / photo © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK / Art Resource, NY.)
considered vital because it made men’s bodies handsome and prepared them to fight
in the militia (they could be summoned to war anytime between ages eighteen and
sixty). Men exercised nude every day in gymnasia, public open-air facilities paid for
by wealthy families. The daughters of wealthy families usually received instruction
at home from educated slaves. Young girls learned reading, writing, and arithmetic
to be able to help their future husbands by managing the household.
Poor girls and boys learned a trade and perhaps a little reading, writing, and
calculating by assisting their parents in their daily work or by serving as appren-
tices to skilled craft workers. Most people probably were weak readers, but they could
always find someone to read written texts aloud. Oral communication remained cen-
tral to Greek life, in political speeches, songs, plays, and stories about the past.
Prosperous young men learned to participate in public life by observing their
fathers, uncles, and other older men as they debated in the Council of Five Hundred
and the assembly, served in public office, and spoke in court. Often an older man
would choose an adolescent boy as his special favorite to educate. The teenager would
learn about public life by spending time with the older man. During the day the boy
would listen to his mentor talking politics in the agora, help him perform his duties
in public office, and work out with him in a gymnasium. They would spend their
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
evenings at a symposium, whose agenda could range from serious political and
philosophical discussion to riotous partying.
This older mentor/younger favorite relationship could lead to sexual relations
between the youth and the older (married) male. Sex between mentors and favorites
was considered acceptable in elite circles in many city-states, including Athens,
Sparta, and Thebes. Other city-states banned this behavior because they believed that
it reflected an adult man’s shameful inability to control his lustful desires.
By the time radical democracy emerged in Athens, young men could obtain higher
education in a new way: paying expensive professional teachers called Sophists
(“men of wisdom”). Sophists challenged tradition by teaching new skills of persuasion
in speaking and new ways of thinking based on rational arguments. Sophists became
notorious for using complex reasoning to make what many people considered decep-
tive arguments.
By 450 b.c.e., Athens was attracting Sophists from around the Greek world.
These entrepreneurs competed with one another to pull in pupils who could pay the
hefty tuitions they charged. Sophists strove for excellence by offering specialized
training in rhetoric — the skill of speaking persuasively. Every ambitious man wanted
rhetorical training because it promised power in Athens’s assembly, councils, and
courts. The Sophists alarmed those who feared their teachings would destroy the
tradition that preserved democracy. Speakers trained by silver-tongued Sophists,
they believed, might be able to mislead the assembly while promoting their personal
interests.
The most notorious Sophist was Protagoras (c. 490–c. 420 b.c.e.), a contemporary
of Pericles. Emigrating to Athens from Abdera, in northern Greece, around 450 b.c.e.,
Protagoras expressed views on the nature of truth and morality that outraged many
Athenians. He argued that there could be no absolute standard of truth because every
issue had two irreconcilable sides. For example, if one person feeling a breeze thinks
it warm but another person thinks it cool, neither judgment can be absolutely correct
because the wind simply is warm to one and cool to the other. Protagoras summed
up this subjectivism — the belief that there is no absolute reality behind and inde-
pendent of appearances — in his work Truth: “The human being is the measure of
all things, of the things that are that they are, and of the things that are not that they
are not.”
The subjectivism of Protagoras and other Sophists contained two main ideas:
(1) human institutions and values are only matters of nomos (“statute law, tradition,
or convention”) and not creations of physis (“nature”), and (2) since truth is subjec-
tive, speakers should be able to argue either side of a question with equal persuasive-
ness and rationality. The first view implied that traditional human institutions were
arbitrary and changing rather than natural and permanent, while the second seemed
to many people to make questions of right and wrong irrelevant.
The Sophists’ critics accused them of teaching moral relativism and threatening
the shared public values of the democratic city-state. Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386 b.c.e.),
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
author of comic plays, satirized Sophists for harming Athens by instructing students
in persuasive techniques “to make the weaker argument the stronger.” Protagoras,
for one, energetically responded that his doctrines were not hostile to democracy,
arguing that every person had a natural capability for excellence and that human
society depended on the rule of law based on a sense of justice. Members of a com-
munity, he explained, must be persuaded to obey the laws, not because laws were
based on absolute truth, which did not exist, but because rationally it was advanta-
geous for everyone to be law-abiding. A thief, for example, who might claim that
stealing was a part of nature, would have to be persuaded by reason that a man-made
law forbidding theft was to his advantage because it protected his own property and
the community in which he, like all humans, had to live to survive.
Even more disturbing to Athenians than the Sophists’ ideas about truth were
their ideas about religion. Protagoras angered people with his agnosticism (the belief
that supernatural phenomena are unknowable): “Whether the gods exist I cannot
discover, nor what their form is like, for there are many impediments to knowledge,
[such as] the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.” He upset those
who thought he was saying that conventional religion had no meaning. They worried
that his words would provoke divine anger against the community where he now
lived.
Other fifth-century b.c.e. philosophers and thinkers also proposed controver-
sial new scientific theories about the nature of the cosmos and the origin of religion.
A philosopher friend of Pericles, for example, argued that the sun was a lump of
flaming rock, not a god. Another philosopher invented an atomic theory of matter
to explain how change was constant in the universe. Everything, he argued, consisted
of tiny, invisible particles in eternal motion. Their random collisions caused them to
combine and recombine in an infinite variety of forms, with no divine purpose guid-
ing their collisions and combinations. These ideas seemed to invalidate traditional
religion, which explained events as governed by the gods’ will. Even more provocative
was a play written by the wealthy aristocrat Critias that denounced religion as a
clever but false system invented by powerful men to fool ordinary people into obey-
ing moral standards through fear of divine punishment.
Many poorer citizens saw the Sophists and the philosophers as threats to Athe-
nian democracy because only wealthy men could afford their classes or spend time
conversing with them, thereby gaining yet more advantages by learning to speak
persuasively in the assembly’s debates or in court speeches. Moral relativism and the
physical explanation of the universe also struck many Athenians as dangerous: they
feared such teachings would destroy the gods’ goodwill toward their city-state. These
ideas so infuriated some Athenians that in the 430s b.c.e. they sponsored a law
allowing citizens to bring charges of impiety against “those who fail to respect divine
things or teach theories about the cosmos.” Not even Pericles could prevent his
philosopher friend from being convicted on this charge and expelled from Athens.
Socrates (469–399 b.c.e.), the most famous philosopher of the Golden Age,
became well-known during this troubled time of the 430s, when people were anxious
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
not just about new ways of thinking but also about war with Sparta. Socrates devoted
his life to questioning people about their beliefs, but he insisted he was not a Sophist
because he took no pay. Above all, he rejected the view that justice in fact amounted
to power over others. Insisting that true justice was always better than injustice, he
created an emphasis on ethics (the study of ideal human values and moral duties)
in Greek philosophy.
Socrates lived an eccentric life attracting constant attention. Sporting a stomach
that he called “a bit too big to be convenient,” he wore the same cheap cloak sum-
mer and winter and always went barefoot no matter how cold the weather. His physi-
cal stamina — including both his tirelessness as a soldier and his ability to outdrink
anyone — was legendary. He lived in poverty and disdained material possessions,
though he supported a wife and several children by accepting gifts from wealthy
admirers.
Socrates spent his time in conversations all over Athens: participating in sym-
posia, strolling in the agora, or watching young men exercise in a gymnasium.
He wrote nothing. Our knowledge of his ideas comes from others’ writings, espe-
cially those of his famous follower Plato (c. 428–348 b.c.e.). Plato portrays Socrates
as a relentless questioner of his fellow citizens, foreign friends, and leading Sophists.
Socrates pushed his conversational partners to examine their basic assumptions
about life. Giving few answers, Socrates never directly instructed anyone. Instead, he
led people to draw conclusions in response to his probing questions and refutations
of their unexamined beliefs. Today this procedure is called the Socratic method.
Socrates frequently outraged people because his method made them feel igno-
rant and baffled. His questions forced them to admit that they did not in fact know
what they had assumed they knew very well. Even more painful to them was Socrates’
fiercely argued view that the way they lived their lives — pursuing success in politics
or business or art — was merely an excuse for avoiding the hard work of understand-
ing and developing genuine aretê (“excellence”). Socrates insisted that he was igno-
rant of the definition of excellence and what was best for human beings, but that his
wisdom consisted of knowing that he did not know. He vowed he wanted to improve,
not undermine, people’s ethical beliefs, even though, as a friend put it, a conversation
with Socrates made a man feel numb — as if a jellyfish had stung him.
Socrates especially wanted to use reasoning to discover universal, objective stan-
dards for individual ethics. He attacked the Sophists for their relativistic claim that
conventional standards of right and wrong were merely “the chains that handcuff
nature.” This view, he protested, equated human happiness with power and “getting
more.”
Socrates insisted that the only way to achieve true happiness was to behave
according to a universal, transcendent standard of just behavior that people could
understand rationally. He argued that just behavior and excellence were identical to
knowledge, and that true knowledge of justice would inevitably lead people to choose
good over evil. They would therefore have truly happy lives, regardless of how rich
or poor they were. Since Socrates believed that ethical knowledge was all a person
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
needed for the good life, he argued that no one knowingly behaved unjustly and that
behaving justly was always in the individual’s interest. It was simply ignorant to believe
that the best life was the life of unlimited power to pursue whatever one desired.
The most desirable human life was concerned with excellence and guided by reason,
not by dreams of personal gain.
Though very different from the Sophists’ doctrines, Socrates’ ideas proved just
as disturbing to the masses because they rejected the Athenians’ traditional way of
life. His ridicule of commonly accepted ideas about the importance of wealth and
public success angered many people. Unhappiest of all were the fathers whose sons,
after listening to Socrates’ questions reduce someone to utter bewilderment, came
home to try the same technique on their parents, employing the Socratic method to
criticize their parents’ values as old-fashioned and worthless. Men who experienced
this reversal of the traditional educational hierarchy — the father was supposed to
educate the son — felt that Socrates was undermining the stability of society by mak-
ing young men question Athenian traditions. Socrates evidently did not teach women,
but Plato portrays him as ready to learn from exceptional women, such as Pericles’
companion Aspasia.
The worry that Socrates’ ideas presented a danger to conventional society inspired
Aristophanes to write his comedy The Clouds (423 b.c.e.). This play portrays Socrates
as a cynical Sophist who, for a fee, offers instruction in Protagoras’s technique of
making the weaker argument the stronger. When Socrates’ school transforms a youth
into a public speaker arguing persuasively that a son has the right to beat his parents,
his father burns the place down. None of these plot details was real, but people did
have a genuine fear that Socrates’ radical views on individual morality endangered
the city-state’s traditional practices.
Just as the Sophists and Socrates antagonized many people with their new ideas,
the men who first wrote Greek history created controversy because they took a criti-
cal attitude in their descriptions of the past. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 485–
425 b.c.e.) and Thucydides of Athens (c. 455–399 b.c.e.) became Greece’s most
famous historians and established Western civilization’s tradition of writing history.
The fifth-century b.c.e.’s unprecedented events — a coalition Greek victory over the
world’s greatest power and then the longest war ever between Greeks — inspired
them to create history as a subject based on strenuous research. They explained that
they wrote histories because they wanted people to remember the past and to under-
stand why wars had taken place.
Herodotus’s long, groundbreaking work The Histories (“Inquiries” in Greek)
explained the Persian Wars as a clash between the cultures of the East and West.
A typically competitive Greek intellectual, Herodotus — who by Roman times had
become known as the Father of History — made the justifiable claim that he sur-
passed all those who had previously recorded the past by taking an in-depth and
investigative approach to evidence, examining the culture of non-Greeks as well as
Greeks, and expressing explicit and implicit judgments about people’s actions.
Because Herodotus recognized the necessity (and the delight) of studying other cul-
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
tures with respect, he pushed his inquiries deep into the past, looking for long-
standing cultural differences to help explain the Persian-Greek conflict. He showed
that Greeks and non-Greeks were equally capable of good and evil. Unlike poets and
playwrights, he focused on human psychology and interactions, not the gods, as the
driving forces in history.
Thucydides innovated — and competed with Herodotus — by writing contempo-
rary history and creating the kind of analysis of power that today underlies political
science. His History of the Peloponnesian War made power politics, not divine inter-
vention, history’s primary force. Deeply affected by the war’s brutality, Thucydides
used his experiences as a politician and failed military commander (he was exiled
for losing a key outpost) to make his narrative vivid and frank in describing human
moral failings. His insistence that historians should energetically seek out the most
reliable sources and evaluate their testimony with objectivity set a high standard
for later writers. Like Herodotus, he challenged tradition by revealing that Greek
history included not just glorious achievements but also some share of shameful acts
(such as the Athenian punishment of the Melians in the Peloponnesian War — see
page 106).
Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 b.c.e.) of Cos, a contemporary of Thucydides, chal-
lenged tradition by grounding medical diagnosis and treatment in clinical observa-
tion. His fame continues today in the oath bearing his name (the Hippocratic Oath),
which doctors swear at the beginning of their professional careers. Previously, medi-
cine had depended on magic and ritual. People believed that evil spirits caused dis-
eases, and various cults offered healing to patients through divine intervention.
Competing to refute these earlier doctors’ theories, Hippocrates insisted that only
physical factors caused illnesses. He may have been the author of the view, dominant
in later medicine, that four humors (fluids) made up the human body: blood, phlegm,
black bile, and yellow bile. Health depended on keeping the proper balance among
them; being healthy was to be “in good humor.” This system for understanding the
body corresponded to the division of the inanimate world into four elements: earth,
air, fire, and water.
Hippocrates taught that the physician’s most important duty was to base his
knowledge on careful observation of patients and their response to different treat-
ments. Clinical experience, not abstract theory or religious belief, was the proper
foundation for establishing effective cures. By putting his innovative ideas and prac-
tices to the test in competition with those of traditional medicine, Hippocrates estab-
lished the truth of his principle, which later became a cornerstone of scientific
medicine.
The Development of Greek Tragedy

Ideas about the problematic relationship between gods and humans inspired Golden
Age Athens’s most prominent cultural innovation: tragic drama. Plays called trage-
dies were presented over three days at the major annual festival of the god Dionysus
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
in a contest for playwrights, reflecting the competitive spirit of Greek life. Tragedies
presented shocking stories involving fierce conflict among powerful men and women,
usually from myth but occasionally from recent history. The plots involved themes
relevant to controversial issues in contemporary Athens. Therefore, these plays stim-
ulated their large audiences to consider the dangers to their democracy from igno-
rance, arrogance, and violence. Golden Age playwrights explored topics ranging from
the roots of good and evil to the nature of individual freedom and responsibility
in the family and the political community. As with other ancient texts, most Greek
tragedies have not survived: only thirty-three still exist of the hundreds that were
produced at Athens.
Public revenues and mandatory contributions by the rich paid for Athenian
dramas. The competition in this public art took place at an annual religious festival
honoring the god Dionysus, with an official choosing three authors from a pool of
applicants. Each of the finalists presented four plays during the festival: three trag-
edies in a row (a trilogy), followed by a semicomic play featuring satyrs (mythical
half-man, half-animal beings) to end the day on a lighter note. Tragedies were writ-
ten in verses of solemn language, and many were based on stories about the violent
possibilities when gods and humans interacted. The plots often ended with a resolu-
tion to the trouble — but only after enormous suffering.
The performances of tragedies in Athens, as in many other cities in Greece, took
place during the daytime in an outdoor theater. The theater at Athens was built into
the southern slope of the acropolis; it held about fourteen thousand spectators over-
looking an open, circular area in front of a slightly raised stage. A tragedy had
eighteen cast members, all of whom were men: three actors to play the speaking
roles (both male and female characters) and fifteen chorus members. Although the
chorus leader sometimes engaged in dialogue with the actors, the chorus primar-
ily performed songs and dances in the circular area in front of the stage, called the
orchestra.
A successful tragedy offered a vivid spectacle. The chorus wore elaborate cos-
tumes and performed intricate dance routines. The actors, who wore masks, used
broad gestures and booming voices to reach the upper tier of seats. A powerful voice
was crucial to a tragic actor because words represented the heart of the plays, which
featured extensive dialogue and long speeches. Special effects were popular. Actors
playing the roles of gods swung from a crane to fly suddenly onto the stage. Actors
playing lead roles, called the protagonists (“first competitors”), competed to win the
“Best Actor” award. A skilled protagonist was so important to a play’s success that
actors were assigned by lottery to the competing playwrights so that all three had
an equal chance to have a winning cast. Great protagonists became enormously
popular.
Playwrights came from the social elite because only men with wealth could
afford the amount of time and learning this work demanded. They served as authors,
directors, producers, musical composers, choreographers, and occasionally actors for
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
Greek Vase Painting of

the Murder of King
Agamemnon
This Greek vase from
the fifth century B.C.E.
shows Queen Clytemnestra
(left) and her lover Aegisthus
murdering her husband, King
Agamemnon, after he returns
home from leading the Greek army
in its ten-year war against Troy. The
painting shows Agamemnon as
defenseless because he was
ensnared in a gauzy robe
that his wife gave him after
he took a bath. The other
side of the vase shows
Agamemnon’s son murdering
Clytemnestra, his mother, in
revenge. Greek mythology had many
stories of murderous vengeance that
emphasized how difficult it was to regulate human passions with social norms and laws.
(Mixing bowl [calyx krater] with the killing of Agamemnon, Early Classical Period, c. 460 B.C.E. [ceramic], Dokimasia
Painter [fl. 480–460 B.C.E.] / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts / William Francis Warden Fund / Bridge-
man Images.)
their own plays. In their lives as citizens, playwrights fulfilled the military and politi-
cal obligations of Athenian men. The best-known Athenian tragedians — Aeschylus
(525–456 b.c.e.), Sophocles (c. 496–406 b.c.e.), and Euripides (c. 485–406 b.c.e.) —
all served in the army, and Sophocles was elected to Athens’s highest board of offi-
cials. Authors of plays competed from a love of honor, not money. The prizes, deter-
mined by a board of judges, awarded high prestige but little cash. The competition
was regarded as so important that any judge who took a bribe in awarding prizes
was put to death.
Tragedy’s plots set out the difficulties of telling right from wrong when humans
came into conflict and the gods became involved. Even though most tragedies were
based on stories that referred to a legendary time before city-states existed, such as
the period of the Trojan War, the plays’ moral issues were relevant to the society and
obligations of citizens in a city-state. The plays suggest that human beings learn only
by suffering but that the gods provide justice in the long run. For example, Aeschy-
lus’s trilogy Oresteia (458 b.c.e.) explains the divine origins of democratic Athens’s
court system through the story of the gods finally stopping the murderous violence
in the family of Orestes, son of King Agamemnon, the Greek leader against Troy.
Sophocles’ Antigone (441 b.c.e.) presents the story of the cursed family of Oedi-
pus of Thebes as a drama of harsh conflict between a courageous woman, Antigone,
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
and the city-state’s stern male leader, her uncle Creon. After her brother dies in a
failed rebellion, Antigone insists on her family’s moral obligation to bury its dead in
obedience to divine command. Creon, however, takes harsh action to preserve order
and protect community values by prohibiting the burial of his traitorous nephew. In
a horrifying story of raging anger and suicide that features one of the most famous
heroines of Western literature, Sophocles exposes the right and wrong on each side
of the conflict. His play offers no easy resolution of the competing interests of
divinely sanctioned moral tradition and the state’s political rules.
Ancient sources report that audiences reacted strongly to the messages of these
tragedies. For one thing, spectators realized that the plays’ central characters were
figures who fell into disaster even though they held positions of power and pres-
tige. The characters’ reversals of fortune came about not because they were abso-
lute villains but because, as humans, they were susceptible to a lethal mixture of
error, ignorance, and hubris (violent arrogance that transformed one’s competitive
spirit into a self-destructive force). The Athenian Empire was at its height when
audiences at Athens attended the tragedies written by competing playwrights.
Thoughtful playgoers could reflect on the possibility that Athens’s current power
and prestige, managed as they were by humans, might fall victim to the same kinds
of mistakes and conflicts that brought down the heroes and heroines of tragedy.
Thus, these publicly funded plays both entertained through their spectacle and edu-
cated through their stories and words. In particular, they reminded male citizens —
who governed the city-state in its assembly, council, and courts — that success created
complex moral problems that self-righteous arrogance turned into community-wide
catastrophes.
The Development of Greek Comedy

Golden Age Athens developed comedy as its second distinctive form of public the-
ater. Like tragedies, comedies were written in verse, performed in festivals honoring
the god Dionysus, and subsidized with public funds and contributions from the rich.
Unlike tragedies, comedies commented directly on public policy and criticized cur-
rent politicians and intellectuals. Their plots and casts presented outrageous fantasies
of contemporary life. Comic choruses, which had twenty-four dancing singers, could
be colorfully costumed as talking birds or dancing clouds, or an actor could fly on
a giant dung beetle to visit the gods.
Authors competed to win the award for the festival’s best comedy by creating
beautiful poetry, raising laughs with constant jokes and puns, and mocking self-
important citizens and political leaders. The humor, delivered in a stream of imagi-
native profanity, frequently concerned sex and bodily functions. Well-known men of
the day were targets for insults as cowards or weaklings. Women characters portrayed
as figures of fun and ridicule seem to have been fictional, to protect the dignity of
actual female citizens.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
Athenian comedies often made fun of political leaders. As the leading politician
of radical democracy, Pericles was the subject of fierce criticism in comedy. Comic
playwrights ridiculed his policies, his love life, even the shape of his skull (“Old
Turnip Head” was a favorite insult). Aristophanes (c. 455–385 b.c.e.), Athens’s most
famous comic playwright, so fiercely satirized Cleon, the city’s most prominent
leader early in the Peloponnesian War, that Cleon sued him. A citizen jury ruled in
Aristophanes’ favor, upholding the Athenian tradition of free speech.
In several of Aristophanes’ comedies, the main characters are powerful women
who force the men of Athens to change their policy to preserve family life and the
city-state. These plays even criticize the assembly’s policy during wartime. Most
famous is Lysistrata (411 b.c.e.), named after the female lead character of the play.
In this fantasy, the women of Athens and Sparta unite to force their husbands to end
the Peloponnesian War. To make the men agree to a peace treaty, they first seize the
acropolis, where Athens’s financial reserves are kept, to prevent the men from squan-
dering them further on the war. They then use sarcasm and pitchers of cold water
to beat back an attack on their position by the old men who have remained in Ath-
ens while the younger men are away at war with Sparta. Above all, the women steel
themselves to refuse to sleep with their husbands returning from battle. The effects
of their sex strike on the men, portrayed in a series of explicit episodes, finally drive
the warriors to make peace.
Lysistrata presents women acting bravely and aggressively against men who seem
bent on destroying traditional family life — the men are absent from home for long
stretches while on military campaigns and ruin the city-state by prolonging a pointless
war. Lysistrata insists that women have the intelligence and judgment to make political
decisions: “I am a woman, and, yes, I have brains. And I’m pretty good in my judg-
ment. My education hasn’t been bad: it came from my listening often to the conver-
sations of my father and the elders among the men.” Lysistrata’s old-fashioned train-
ing and good sense allow her to see what needs to be done to protect the community.
Like the heroines of tragedy, Lysistrata is a conservative, even a reactionary. She wants
to put things back the way they were before the war fractured family life. To do that,
she has to act like an impatient revolutionary. That irony sums up the challenge that
fifth-century b.c.e. Athens faced in trying to resolve the tension between the dynamic
innovation of its Golden Age and the importance of tradition in Greek life.
The remarkable freedom of speech of Athenian comedy allowed frank, even
brutal, commentary on current issues and personalities. It cannot be an accident
that this energetic, critical drama emerged in Athens at the same time as radical
democracy, in the mid-fifth century b.c.e. The feeling that all citizens should have
a stake in determining their government’s
policies evidently fueled a passion for
REVIEW QUESTION How did new ways of
using biting humor to keep the commu- thinking in the Golden Age change traditional
nity’s leaders from becoming arrogant and ways of life?
aloof.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e.
A war between Athens and Sparta (431–404 b.c.e.) ended the Golden Age. This long
conflict is called the Peloponnesian War because it matched Sparta’s Peloponnese-
based alliance against Athens and the Delian League. The war started, according to
Thucydides, because the growth of Athenian power alarmed the Spartans, who feared
that their interests and allies would fall to the Athenians’ restless energy. Pericles
persuaded Athens’s assembly to take a hard line when the Spartans demanded that
Athens ease restrictions on city-states allied with Sparta. Corinth and Megara, crucial
Spartan allies, complained bitterly to Sparta about Athens. Finally, Corinth told Sparta
to attack Athens, or else Corinth and its navy would change sides to the Athenian
alliance. Sparta’s leaders therefore gave Athens an ultimatum — stop mistreating our
allies. Pericles convinced the Athenian voters to reject the ultimatum on the grounds
that Sparta had refused to settle the dispute through the third-party arbitration pro-
cess called for by the 446–445 b.c.e. treaty. Pericles’ critics claimed he was insisting
on war against Sparta to revive his fading popularity. His supporters replied that he
was defending Athenian honor and protecting foreign trade, a key to the economy.
By 431 b.c.e., these disputes had shattered the peace treaty between Athens and
Sparta that Pericles had negotiated fifteen years before.
The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 b.c.e.

Lasting longer than any previous war in Greek history, the Peloponnesian War
(Map 3.3) took place above all because Spartan leaders believed they had to fight
now to keep the Athenians from using their superior long-distance offensive power —
the Delian League’s naval forces — to destroy Sparta’s control of their Peloponnesian
League. Sparta made the first strike of the war, but the conflict dragged on so long
because the Athenian assembly failed to negotiate peace with Sparta when it had the
chance and because the Spartans were willing to make a deal with Persia to secure
money to build a fleet to win the war.
Dramatic evidence for the anger that fueled the war comes from Thucydides’
version of Pericles’ stern oration to the Athenian assembly about not yielding to
Spartan pressure:
If we do go to war, have no thought that you went to war over a trivial affair.
For you this trifling matter is the assurance and the proof of your determi-
nation. If you yield to their demands, they will immediately confront you
with some larger demand, since they will think that you only gave way on
the first point out of fear. But if you stand firm, you will show them that
they have to deal with you as equals. . . . When our equals, without agreeing
to arbitration of the matter under dispute, make claims on us as neighbors
and state those claims as commands, it would be no better than slavery to
give in to them, no matter how large or how small the claim may be.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e. 105
W E THRACE
A
RI
S
LY
ITAL Y Amphipolis
MACEDONIA
IL
422 B.C.E.
Cyzicus
Aegospotami 410 B.C.E.
405 B.C.E.
EPIRUS
THESSALY
Corcyra Dodona Lesbos
Aegean ANATOLIA
Arginusae Islands
Euboea Sea 406 B.C.E.
Delphi Chalcis
Ionia
Delium 424 B.C.E.
PERSIAN
Thebes Marathon Chios EMPIRE
Megara
Corinth Athens
Mantinea Argos Samos
Attica
Sicily 418 B.C.E.
Syracuse PELOPONNESE
413 B.C.E. Salamis Delos
Sparta Aegina
Pylos
Melos
416 B.C.E.
Delian League and allies
Rhodes
Sparta and allies Mediterranean S ea
Neutral states
Athenian route to Sicily, 415 B.C.E. Crete
Spartan campaigns
0 50 100 miles
Battle
0 50 100 kilometers
MAP 3.3 The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 b.c.e.

For the first ten years, the Peloponnesian War’s battles took place largely in mainland Greece.
Sparta, whose armies usually avoided distant campaigns, shocked Athens when its general
Brasidas led successful attacks against Athenian forces in northeast Greece. Athens stunned
the entire Greek world in the war’s next phase by launching a huge naval expedition against
Spartan allies in far-off Sicily. The last ten years of the war saw the action move to the east, on
and along the western coast of Anatolia and its islands, on the boundary of the Persian Empire.
Feeling threatened, the Persian king helped the Spartans build a navy there to defeat the
famous Athenian fleet. Look at the route of Athens’s expedition to Sicily; why do you think the
Athenians took this longer voyage, rather than a more direct route?
When Sparta invaded Athenian territory, Pericles advised a two-pronged strat-

egy to win what he saw would be a long war: (1) use the navy to raid the lands of
Sparta and its allies, and (2) avoid large infantry battles with the superior land forces
of the Spartans, even when the enemy hoplites plundered the Athenian countryside
outside the city. Athens’s citizens could retreat to safety behind the city’s impreg-
nable walls, massive barriers of stone that encircled the city and the harbor, with the
fortification known as the Long Walls protecting the land corridor between the
urban center and the port (Map 3.2, page 86). He insisted that Athenians should
sacrifice their vast and valuable country property to save their population. In the
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
end, he predicted, Athens, with its superior resources, would win a war of attrition,
especially because the Spartans, lacking a base in Athenian territory, could not sup-
port long invasions.
Pericles’ strategy and leadership might have made Athens the winner in the long
run, but chance intervened to deprive Athens of his guidance: an epidemic struck
Athens in 430 b.c.e. and killed Pericles the next year. This plague ravaged Athens’s
population for four years, killing thousands as it spread like wildfire among the
people packed in behind the walls to avoid Spartan attacks. Despite their losses and
their fears that the gods had sent the disease to punish them, the Athenians fought
on. Over time, however, they abandoned the disciplined strategy that Pericles’ pru-
dent plan had required. The generals elected after his death, especially Cleon, pur-
sued a much more aggressive strategy. At first this succeeded, especially when a
group of Spartan hoplites laid down their arms after being blockaded by Cleon’s
forces at Pylos in 425 b.c.e. Their surrender shocked the Greek world and led Sparta
to ask for a truce, but the Athenian assembly refused, believing their army could
now crush their enemy. When the daring Spartan general Brasidas captured Ath-
ens’s possessions in northern Greece in 424 and 423 b.c.e., however, he turned the
tide of war in the other direction by crippling the Athenian supply of timber and
precious metals from this crucial region. When Brasidas and Cleon were both killed
in 422 b.c.e., mutual exhaustion made Sparta and Athens agree to a peace treaty in
421 b.c.e.
Athens’s most innovative and confident new general, Alcibiades, soon persuaded
the assembly to reject the peace and to attack Spartan allies in 418 b.c.e. In 416–
415 b.c.e., the Athenians and their allies overpowered the tiny and strategically
meaningless Aegean island of Melos because it refused to abandon its allegiance to
Sparta. Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War dramatically represents
Athenian messengers telling the Melians they had to be conquered to show that Ath-
ens permitted no defiance to its dominance. Following their victory the Athenians
executed the Melian men, sold the women and children into slavery, and colonized
the island.
The turning point in the war came soon thereafter when, in 415 b.c.e., Alcibi-
ades persuaded the Athenian assembly to launch the greatest and most expensive
campaign in Greek history. The expedition of 415 b.c.e. was directed against Sparta’s
allies in Sicily, far to the west. Alcibiades had dazzled his fellow citizens with the
dream of conquering that rich island and especially its greatest city, Syracuse. Alcibi-
ades’ political rivals had him removed from his command, however, and the other
generals blundered into catastrophic defeat in Sicily in 413 b.c.e. (see Map 3.3, page
105). The victorious Syracusans destroyed the allied invasion fleet and packed the
survivors like sardines into quarries under the blazing sun, with no toilets and only
half a pint of drinking water and a handful of food a day.
On the advice of Alcibiades, who had deserted to their side in anger at having
lost his command, the Spartans in 413 b.c.e. seized a permanent base of operations
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e. 107
in the Athenian countryside for year-round raids, now that Athens was too weak to
drive them out. Constant Spartan attacks devastated Athenian agriculture, and
twenty thousand slave workers crippled production in Athens’s silver mines by
deserting to the enemy. The democratic assembly became so upset over these losses
that in 411 b.c.e. it voted itself out of existence in favor of an emergency government
run by the wealthier citizens. When an oligarchic group illegally took charge, how-
ever, the citizens restored the radical democracy and kept fighting for another seven
years. They even recalled Alcibiades, seeking better generalship, but the end came
when Persia gave the Spartans money to build a navy. The Persian king thought it
served his interests to have Athens defeated. Aggressive Spartan naval action forced
Athens to surrender in 404 b.c.e. After twenty-seven years of near-continuous war,
the Athenians were at their enemy’s mercy.
Athens Defeated: Tyranny and Civil War, 404–403 b.c.e.

Following Athens’s surrender, the Spartans installed a regime of antidemocratic
Athenians known as the Thirty Tyrants, who collaborated with the victors. The
collaborators were members of the social elite; some, including the violent leader
Critias, infamous for his criticism of religion, had been well-known pupils of the
Sophists. Brutally suppressing democratic opposition, these oligarchs embarked on
an eight-month period of murder and plunder in 404–403 b.c.e. The speechwriter
Lysias, for example, reported that Spartan henchmen murdered his brother to steal
the family’s valuables, even ripping the gold rings from the ears of his brother’s wife.
Outraged at the violence and greed of the Thirty Tyrants, citizens who wanted to
restore democracy banded together outside the city to fight to regain control of
Athens. A feud between Sparta’s two most important leaders paralyzed the Spartans,
and they failed to send help to the Athenian collaborators. The democratic rebels
defeated the forces of the Thirty Tyrants in a series of bloody street battles in
Athens.
Democracy was thereby restored, but the citizens still seethed with anger and
unrest. To settle the internal strife that threatened to tear Athens apart, the newly
restored democratic assembly voted the first known amnesty in Western history,
a truce agreement forbidding any official charges or recriminations from crimes
committed in 404–403 b.c.e. Agreeing not to pursue grievances in court was the
price of peace. As would soon become clear, however, some Athenians harbored
grudges that no amnesty could dispel. In addition, Athens’s financial and military
strength had been shattered. At the end of
the Golden Age, Athenians worried about
how to remake their lives and restore the REVIEW QUESTION What factors determined
reputation that their city-state’s innovative the course of the Peloponnesian War?
accomplishments had produced.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
Conclusion
The Greek city-states that united early in the fifth century b.c.e. to resist the Persian
Empire surprised themselves by defeating the invaders and preserving their political
independence. Following the unexpected Greek victory, Athens competed with
Sparta for power. The Athenian Golden Age that followed was based on empire and
trade, and the city’s riches funded the widening of democracy and famous cultural
accomplishments.
As the money poured in, Athens built glorious and expensive temples, legislated
pay for service in many government offices to strengthen democracy, and assembled
the Mediterranean’s most powerful navy. The poor men who rowed the ships
demanded greater democracy; such demands led to political and legal reforms that
guaranteed fairer treatment for all. Pericles became the most famous politician of
the Golden Age by leading the drive for radical democracy.
Religious practice and women’s lives reflected the strong grip of tradition on
everyday life, but dramatic innovations in education and philosophy created social
tension. The Sophists’ moral relativism disturbed tradition-minded people, as did
Socrates’ definition of excellence, which questioned ordinary people’s love of wealth
and success. Art and architecture broke out of old forms, promoting an impression
of balanced motion rather than stability, while medicine gained a more scientific
basis. Tragedy and comedy developed at Athens as competitive public theater com-
menting on contemporary social and political issues.
The Athenians’ harsh treatment of allies and enemies combined with Spartan fears
about Athenian power to bring on the disastrous Peloponnesian War. Nearly three
decades of battle brought the stars of the Greek Golden Age crashing to earth: by
400 b.c.e. the Athenians found themselves in the same situation as in 500 b.c.e., fearful
of Spartan power and worried whether the world’s first democracy could survive.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 109
0 250 500 miles Classical Greece, c. 400 B.C.E.

0 250 500 kilometers THRACE
N MACEDONIA
CHALCIDICE
W E Mt. Olympus
S EPIRUS
THESSALY Aegean
Sea ANATOLIA
Acarnania Euboea
S ea
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Aetolia Boeotia Sardis
tic
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Achaea Athens
North
al
B Elis Corinth Attica
S
Sea Arcadia Miletus
LE
IERNE E OP PELOPONNESE
(IRELAND) I CP Ionian Messenia Sparta
B ALT
ALBION TEUTONS Sea Pylos Laconia
(ENGLAND)
CELTS
Mediterranean Sea Rhodes
0 50 100 miles
SLAVS Knossos
0 50 100 kilometers Crete
Olbia
ATLANTIC S
L P SCYTHIANS
TH
OCEAN A ANS IL D an
RA
RI ET LY ube
U
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AN
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NS Sinope
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ITALIC Byzantium AS
US
n Sea
PEOPLES
MT
IBERIANS Sardinia GREECE ARMENIA S.
Balearic Corinth Athens ANATOLIA
Is. Sicily
NS Carthage Syracuse Sparta Al Mina

A Knossos
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NORTH AFRICA Naucratis ARABS

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.
EGYPT
MAPPING THE WEST Greece, Europe, and the Mediterranean, 400 b.c.e.
No single power controlled the Mediterranean region at the end of the fifth century B.C.E. In the
west, the Phoenician city of Carthage and the Greek cities on Sicily and in southern Italy were
rivals for the riches to be won by trade. In the east, the Spartans, confident after their recent
victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War, tried to become an international power outside
the mainland for the first time in their history by sending campaigns into Anatolia. This aggres-
sive action aroused stiff opposition from the Persians because it threatened their westernmost
imperial provinces. There was to be no peace and quiet in the Mediterranean even after the
twenty-seven years of the Peloponnesian War.
Chapter 3 Review
Themistocles (p. 79) ostracism (p. 84) hetaira (p. 92)
Delian League (p. 82) agora (p. 85) Sophists (p. 95)
triremes (p. 82) Parthenon (p. 85) Socratic method (p. 97)
Pericles (p. 83) mystery cults (p. 90) hubris (p. 102)
radical democracy (p. 83) metic (p. 90)
Review Questions
1. How did the Greeks overcome the dangers of the Persian invasions?
2. What factors produced political change in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens?
3. How did new ways of thinking in the Golden Age change traditional ways of life?
4. What factors determined the course of the Peloponnesian War?
Making Connections
1. What were the most significant differences between Archaic Age Greece and Golden Age
Greece?
2. For what sorts of things did Greeks of the Golden Age spend public funds? Why did they
believe these things were worth the expense?
3. What price, in all senses, did Athens and the rest of Greece pay for the Golden Age? Was it
worth it?
The Greek city-states, especially Athens, reached the height of their political, economic, and
military power in the fifth century B.C.E. following the defeat of the Persian invasion of main-
land Greece; scholars continue to investigate how the frequent wars of this period influenced
not only the democracy of Athens but also the famous dramatists and philosophers of this
so-called Golden Age.
Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. 1995.
Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander: History of the Persian Empire. Trans. Peter Daniels. 2006.
Camp, John M. The Archaeology of Athens. 2004.
*Dillon, John, and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. 2003.
Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity. 2013.
*Grene, David, and Richmond Lattimore, eds. The Complete Greek Tragedies. 1992.
Herman, Gabriel. Morality and Behavior in Democratic Athens. 2006.
*Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt. Revised by John Marincola. Rev. ed. 2003.
Mitchell-Boyask, Robin. Plague and the Athenian Imagination: Drama, History, and the Cult of
Asclepius. 2008.
Parker, Robert. Athenian Religion: A History. 1996.
Patterson, Cynthia B. The Family in Greek History. 1998.
*Primary source.
110
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
Important Events
500–323 B.C.E. Classical Age of Greece

499–479 B.C.E. Wars between Persia and Greece
490 B.C.E. Battle of Marathon
480 B.C.E. Battle of Salamis
480–479 B.C.E. Xerxes invades Greece
461 B.C.E. Ephialtes reforms Athenian court system
Early 450s B.C.E. Pericles introduces pay for officeholders in Athenian democracy
451 B.C.E. Pericles restricts Athenian citizenship to children whose parents
are both citizens
450 B.C.E. Protagoras and other Sophists begin to teach in Athens
446–445 B.C.E. Peace treaty between Athens and Sparta, intended to last thirty
(winter) years
441 B.C.E. Sophocles presents tragedy Antigone
431–404 B.C.E. Peloponnesian War
420s B.C.E. Herodotus finishes Histories
415–413 B.C.E. Enormous Athenian military expedition against Sicily
411 B.C.E. Aristophanes presents the comedy Lysistrata
404–403 B.C.E. Rule of Thirty Tyrants at Athens
403 B.C.E. Restoration of democracy in Athens
Consider three events: Ephialtes reforms Athenian court system (461 B.C.E.),
Protagoras and other Sophists begin to teach in Athens (450 B.C.E.), and Aristophanes
presents the comedy Lysistrata (411 B.C.E.). How did the principles of radical democracy
during the Athenian Golden Age help to make possible these different events?
*Strassler, Robert B., ed. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian
War. 1996.
Strauss, Barry. The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece — and Western Civili-
zation. 2005.
Thorley, John. Athenian Democracy. 2004.
Wees, Han van, ed. War and Violence in Ancient Greece. 2000.
From the Classical to the
4
Hellenistic World
400–30 b.c.e.
A
bout 255 b.c.e., an Egyptian camel trader far from home sent a letter
of complaint to his Greek employer back in Egypt:
You know that when you left me in Syria with Krotos I followed all
your instructions concerning the camels and behaved blamelessly towards
you. But Krotos has ignored your orders to pay me my salary; I’ve received
nothing despite asking him for my
money over and over. He just tells
The Rosetta Stone
Dug out of the wall of a fort in 1799 me to go away. I waited a long time
by a soldier in Napoleon’s army near for you to come, but when I no
Rosetta, in the Nile River delta, this longer had life’s necessities and
Hellenistic inscription in two different couldn’t get help anywhere, I had to
languages and three different forms of
run away . . . to keep from starving
writing unlocked the lost secrets of how
to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. The
to death. . . . I am desperate summer
bands of text repeat the same mes- and winter. . . . They have treated
sage (priests praising King Ptolemy V me like dirt because I am not a
in 196 B.C.E.) in hieroglyphs, demotic Greek. I therefore beg you, please,
(a cursive form of Egyptian invented order them to pay me so that I won’t
around 600 B.C.E.), and Greek. Bilingual
go hungry just because I don’t know
texts were necessary to reach the
mixed population of Hellenistic Egypt. how to speak Greek.
Scholars deciphered the hieroglyphs by
comparing them to the Greek version. The trader’s plea for help from a foreigner
They started with the hieroglyphs sur- living in his homeland reflects the changes
rounded by an oval, which they guessed in the eastern Mediterranean world dur-
were royal names. (Art Resource, NY.)
ing the Hellenistic Age (323–30 b.c.e.). The
movement of Greeks into the Near East
increased the cultural interaction between the Greek and the Near Eastern worlds
and set a new course for Western civilization in politics, art, philosophy, science, and
religion. Above all, Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.e.) changed the course of his-
tory by conquering the Persian Empire, leading an army of Greeks and Macedonians
113
114 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
to the border of India, taking Near Easterners into his army and imperial admin-
istration, and planting colonies of Greeks as far east as Afghanistan. His amazing
expedition shocked the world and spurred great change in Western civilization by
combining Near Eastern and Greek traditions as never before.
Politics changed in the Greek world when Alexander’s successors (who had been
commanders in his army) created new kingdoms that became the dominant powers
of the Hellenistic Age. The existing Greek city-states retained local rule but lost their
independence in international affairs. The Hellenistic kings imported Greeks to fill
royal offices, man their armies, and run businesses, generating tension with their
non-Greek subjects. Egyptians, Syrians, or Mesopotamians who wanted to rise in
Hellenistic society had to win the support of these Greeks and learn their language.
The Near East’s local cultures interacted with the Greek overlords’ culture to
spawn a multicultural synthesis. Although Hellenistic royal society always remained
hierarchical, its kings and queens did finance innovations in art, philosophy, religion,
and science that combined Near Eastern and Greek traditions. The Hellenistic king-
doms fell in the second and first centuries b.c.e. when the Romans overthrew them
one by one. But the cultural interaction
between diverse peoples and the emergence
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the major
political and cultural changes in the
of new ideas — unintended consequences of
Hellenistic Age? Alexander’s military campaigns — would
strongly influence Roman civilization.
Classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War,

400–350 b.c.e.
The Greek city-states regained their economic and political stability after the Pelo-
ponnesian War (431–404 b.c.e.), but daily life remained hard for many. The war’s
aftermath dramatically affected Greek philosophy. At Athens, citizens who blamed
Socrates for inspiring the Thirty Tyrants’ crimes prosecuted him in court; the jury
condemned him to death. His execution helped persuade the philosophers Plato and
Aristotle to detest democracy and develop new ways of thinking about right and
wrong and how human beings should live.
The Greek city-states’ continuing competition for power in the fourth century
b.c.e. drained their resources. Sparta’s attempt to dominate central Greece and western
Anatolia by collaborating with the Persians provoked violent resistance from Thebes
and Athens. By the 350s b.c.e., the Greek city-states had so weakened themselves that
they were unable to prevent the Macedonian kingdom from taking control of Greece.
Athens’s Recovery after the Peloponnesian War

The devastation of Athens’s economy in the Peloponnesian War and overcrowding of
refugees from the country in the wartime city produced social conflict. Life became
difficult for middle-class women whose male relatives had been killed. With no man
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War, 400–350 b.c.e. 115
Silver Coins of Athens

The city-state of ancient Athens
owned rich silver mines that
financed its silver coinage,
famous around the Greek world
for purity and reliability. This coin
from the fifth century B.C.E. was
a tetradrachm (“four drachmas”),
which was the amount that a
worker or rower in the Athenian
navy earned in four days. The images show Athena, the city-state’s main goddess, and an owl
with an olive branch, also symbols of Athena. The style of the images was kept old-fashioned
and mostly unchanging so as not to harm the trust that people in foreign lands had in accepting
Athenian coins in trade and commerce as a form of international currency. (© C. M. Dixon / Ancient
Art & Architecture Collection, Ltd.)
to provide for them and their children, many war widows had to work outside the
home. The only jobs open to them — such as wet-nursing, weaving, or laboring in
vineyards — were low-paying.
Resourceful Athenians found ways to profit from women’s skills. The family of
one of Socrates’ friends, for example, fell into poverty when several widowed sisters,
nieces, and female cousins moved in. The friend complained to Socrates that he was
too poor to support his new family of fourteen plus their slaves. Socrates replied that
the women knew how to make clothing, so they should sell it. This plan succeeded
financially, but the women then complained that Socrates’ friend was the household’s
only member who ate without working. Socrates advised the man to reply that the
women should think of him as sheep did a guard dog — he earned his share of the
food by keeping the wolves away.
Athens’s postwar economy recovered as international trade was revived once its
Long Walls, which protected the transportation corridor from the city to the port,
were rebuilt and mining for silver to produce the city’s coinage resumed. Greek busi-
nesses producing manufactured goods were small
Academy
and usually family-run; the largest known was a
R.
Lyceum
us
shield-making company with 120 slave workers.

his
R.
us
an
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Some changes occurred in occupations formerly

d
Athens
Eri
.
W all us R defined by gender. For example, men began work-
s
ong ll Ilis
N. L Wa
ng
all
Lo ing alongside women in cloth production when the

W
S.
n
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first commercial weaving shops outside the home

ale
Ph
Piraeus sprang up. Some women made careers in the arts,

Phaleron
0 2 miles
especially painting and music, which men had tra-
ditionally dominated.
0 2 kilometers
Daily life remained a struggle for working
Athens’s Long Walls as Rebuilt people. Most workers earned barely enough to
after the Peloponnesian War feed and clothe their families. They ate two meals
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
a day, with bread baked from barley as their main food; only rich people could afford
wheat bread. A family bought bread from small bakery stands, often run by women,
or made it at home, with the wife directing the slaves in grinding the grain, shap-
ing the dough, and baking it in a clay oven heated by charcoal. People topped their
bread with greens, beans, onions, garlic, olives, fruit, and cheese. The few households
rich enough to afford meat boiled or grilled it over a fire. Everyone of all ages drank
wine, diluted with water, with every meal.
The Execution of Socrates, 399 b.c.e.

Socrates, Athens’s most famous philosopher in the Golden Age, fell victim to the
bitterness many Athenians felt about the rule of the Thirty Tyrants following the
Peloponnesian War. Some prominent Athenians hated Socrates because his follower
Critias had been one of the Thirty Tyrants’ most violent leaders. These citizens
charged Socrates with impiety, claiming he rejected the city-state’s gods, introduced
new divinities, and lured young men away from Athenian moral traditions. Speaking
to a jury of 501 male citizens, Socrates refused to beg for sympathy, as was custom-
ary in trials, and repeated his dedication to goading his fellow citizens into examin-
ing how to live justly. He vowed to remain their stinging gadfly.
When the jurors narrowly voted to convict Socrates, Athenian law required them
to decide between the penalty proposed by the prosecutors and that proposed by
the defendant. The prosecutors proposed death. Socrates said he deserved a reward
rather than punishment, but his friends made him propose a fine as his penalty. The
jury chose death, requiring him to drink a poison concocted from powdered hemlock.
Socrates accepted his sentence calmly, saying that “no evil can befall a good man either
in life or in death.” Ancient sources report that many Athenians soon came to regret
Socrates’ punishment as a tragic mistake and a severe blow to their reputation.
The Philosophy of Plato

Socrates’ death helped make his follower and Greece’s most famous philosopher,
Plato (429–348 b.c.e.), hate democracy. Plato started out as a political consultant
supporting philosopher-tyrants as the best form of government, but he gave up hope
that political action could stop violence and greed. Instead, he turned to talking and
writing about philosophy as the guide to life and established a school, the Academy,
in Athens around 386 b.c.e. The Academy was an informal association of people
who studied philosophy, mathematics, and theoretical astronomy under the leader’s
guidance. It attracted intellectuals to Athens for the next nine hundred years, and
Plato’s ideas about the nature of reality, ethics, and politics have remained central to
philosophy and political science to this day.
Plato’s intellectual interests covered astronomy, mathematics, political philoso-
phy, ethics, and metaphysics (ideas about the ultimate nature of reality beyond the
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War, 400–350 b.c.e. 117
reach of the human senses). Plato wrote dialogues, to provoke readers into thought-
ful reflection, not to prescribe a set of beliefs. Nevertheless, he always maintained
one essential idea based on his view of reality: ultimate moral qualities are universal,
unchanging, and absolute, not relative.
Plato’s dialogues explore his theory that justice, goodness, beauty, and equality
exist on their own in a higher realm beyond the daily world. He used the word Forms
(or Ideas) to describe the abstract, invariable, and ultimate realities of such ethical
qualities. According to Plato, the Forms are the only genuine reality. All things that
humans perceive with their senses on earth are only dim and imperfect copies of these
metaphysical, ultimate realities.
Plato believed that humans possess immortal souls distinct from their bodies;
this idea established the concept of dualism, a separation between soul (or mind)
and body. Plato further explained that the human soul possesses preexisting knowl-
edge put there by a god. Humans’ present, impure existence is only a temporary stage
in cosmic existence because, while the body does not last, the soul is immortal. Plato
argued that people must seek perfect order and purity in their souls by using rational
thought to control irrational and therefore harmful desires. People who yield to irra-
tional desires fail to consider the future of their body and soul. The desire to drink
too much alcohol, for example, is irrational because the binge drinker fails to consider
the painful hangover that will follow.
Plato presented his most famous ideas on politics and justice in his dialogue The
Republic. This work, whose Greek title means “system of government,” discusses the
nature of justice and the reasons people should never commit injustice. Democracy,
Plato wrote, does not produce justice because people cannot rise above their own
self-interest to knowledge of the transcendent reality of universal truth. Justice can
come only under the rule of an enlightened oligarchy or monarchy.
Plato’s Republic describes an ideal society with a hierarchy of three classes dis-
tinguished by their ability to grasp the truth of Forms. Plato did not think humans
could actually create the model society described in The Republic, but he did believe
that imagining it was an important way to help people learn to live justly. The highest
class in his envisioned hierarchy consists of the rulers, or “guardians,” who must be
educated in mathematics, astronomy, and metaphysics. Next come the “auxiliaries,”
who defend the community. “Producers” make up the bottom class; they grow food
and make objects for everyone. According to Plato’s Republic, women can be guard-
ians because they possess the same virtues and abilities as men, except that the
average woman has less physical strength than the average man. To minimize distrac-
tion, guardians have neither private property nor nuclear families. Male and female
guardians live in houses shared in common, eat in the same dining halls, and exercise
in the same gymnasia. They have sex with various partners so that the best women
can mate with the best men to produce the best children. The children are raised
together by special caretakers, not their parents. Guardians who achieve the highest
level of knowledge can rule as philosopher-kings.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Aristotle, Scientist and Philosopher
After studying with Plato, Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.) founded his own school, the
Lyceum, in Athens. He taught his own life-guiding philosophy, emphasizing practical
reasoning. Like Plato, he thought Athenian democracy was a bad system because it
did not restrict decision making to the most educated and moderate citizens. His
vast writings made him one of the world’s most influential thinkers.
Aristotle’s achievements included scientific investigation of the natural world,
development of systems of logical argument, and practical ethics based on experi-
ence. He believed that the search for knowledge brought the good life and genuine
happiness. His teachings covered biology, botany, zoology, medicine, anatomy, psy-
chology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, music, metaphysics, rhetoric,
literary criticism, political science, and ethics. By creating a system of logic for precise
argumentation, Aristotle also established grounds for determining whether an argu-
ment was logically valid. Aristotle’s thought process stressed rationality and common
sense, not metaphysics. He rejected Plato’s theory of Forms and insisted that under-
standing depended on observation. He coupled detailed investigation with careful
reasoning in biology, botany, and zoology. He collected information on more than
five hundred different kinds of animals, including insects. His recognition that whales
and dolphins are mammals was not rediscovered for another two thousand years.
Some of Aristotle’s observations justified inequalities that were characteristic of
his time. He argued that some people were slaves by nature because their souls lacked
the rationality to be fully human. Mistaken biological information led Aristotle to
evaluate females as incomplete males, judging them as inferior. At the same time, he
believed that human communities could be successful and happy only if women and
men both contributed.
In ethics, Aristotle emphasized the need to develop practical habits of just behavior
in order to achieve happiness. Ethics, he taught, cannot work if they consist only of
abstract reasons for just behavior. People should achieve self-control by training their
minds to overcome instincts and passions. Self-control meant finding “the mean,” or
balance, between denying and indulging physical pleasures.
Greek Political Disunity

In the same period that Plato and Aristotle were developing their philosophies as
guides to life, the Greek city-states were in a constant state of war. Sparta, Thebes,
and Athens competed to dominate Greece in this period. None succeeded. Their
endless fighting weakened their morale and their finances.
Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos formed an anti-Spartan coalition, but the
Spartans checkmated the alliance by negotiating with the Persian king. Betraying their
traditional claim to defend Greek freedom, the Spartans acknowledged the Persian
ruler’s right to control the Greek city-states of Anatolia — in return for permission
to wage war in Greece without Persian interference. This agreement of 386 b.c.e.,
called the King’s Peace, sold out the Greeks of Anatolia, returning them to submis-
[400–30 b.c.e.
] The Rise of Macedonia, 359–323 b.c.e. 119
sion to the Persian Empire. Athens rebuilt its navy, again becoming the leader of a
naval alliance. In the 370s b.c.e., Thebes attacked Sparta and freed many helots to
weaken the enemy. The Theban success alarmed the Athenians, who allied with their
hated enemies, the Spartans. The allied armies confronted the Thebans in the battle
of Mantinea in the Peloponnese in 362 b.c.e. Thebes won the battle but lost the war
when its best general was killed and no capable replacement could be found. This
stalemate left the Greek city-states disunited and weak. By the 350s b.c.e., no Greek
city-state controlled anything except its
own territory. By failing to cooperate with
REVIEW QUESTION How did daily life, philos-
one another, the Greeks opened the way ophy, and the political situation change in
for the rise of a new power — the kingdom Greece during the period 400–350 B.C.E.?
of Macedonia.
The Rise of Macedonia, 359–323 b.c.e.

The kingdom of Macedonia’s rise to superpower status counts as one of the greatest
surprises in ancient military and political history. Located north of central Greece,
Macedonia rocketed from being a minor state to ruling the Greek and Near Eastern
worlds. Two aggressive and charismatic Macedonian kings led this transformation:
Philip II (r. 359–336 b.c.e.) and his son Alexander the Great. Their conquests ended
the Greek Classical Age and set in motion the Hellenistic Age’s cultural changes.
Macedonian Power and Philip II, 359–336 b.c.e.

The Macedonian kings governed by maintaining the support of the elite, who ranked
as their social equals and controlled many followers. Men spent their time training
for war, hunting, and drinking heavily. The king had to excel in these activities to show
that he deserved to lead the state. Queens and royal mothers received respect because
they came from powerful families or the ruling houses of neighboring regions.
Macedonian kings thought of themselves as ethnically Greek; they spoke Greek
as well as their native Macedonian. Macedonians as a whole, however, looked down
on the Greeks as too soft to survive life in their northern land. The Greeks regarded
Macedonians as barbarians.
In 359 b.c.e., the Illyrians, neighbors to the west, slaughtered Macedonia’s king
and four thousand troops. Philip, the new king, restored the troops’ confidence by
teaching them to use thrusting spears sixteen feet long. He trained them to maneu-
ver in battle while maintaining formation. Deploying cavalry as a strike force, Philip
routed the Illyrians. During the 340s b.c.e., Philip persuaded or forced most of north-
ern and central Greece into alliance with him. Seeking glory for Greece and fearing
the instability his strengthened army would create in his kingdom if the soldiers had
nothing to do, he decided to lead a united Macedonian and Greek army to conquer
the Persian Empire. He justified attacking Persia as revenge for its invasion of Greece
150 years earlier.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Athens and Thebes rallied a coalition of southern Greek city-states to combat
Philip, but in 338 b.c.e. the Macedonian king and his Greek allies crushed the coali-
tion’s forces at the battle of Chaeronea in Greece. The defeated city-states retained
their internal freedom, but Philip forced them to join his alliance. The battle of
Chaeronea marked a turning point in Greek history: never again would the city-
states of Greece be independent agents in international affairs.
The Rule of Alexander the Great, 336–323 b.c.e.

Philip was murdered in 336 b.c.e. Some scholars think his son Alexander and his
son’s mother, Olympias, arranged the killing to seize power for the twenty-year-old
Alexander, but the murderer, one of Philip’s bodyguards, was probably motivated by
personal anger at the king. Alexander secured his rule by eliminating rivals and
defeating Macedonia’s enemies to the west and north with swift attacks. He forced
the southern Greeks, who had defected from the alliance at the news of Philip’s death,
to rejoin. To demonstrate the cost of disloyalty, in 335 b.c.e. Alexander destroyed
Thebes for having rebelled.
In 334 b.c.e., Alexander launched the most astonishing military campaign in
ancient history, leading a Macedonian and Greek army against the Persian Empire
to fulfill Philip’s dream of avenging Greece. Alexander’s conquest of all the lands from
Turkey to Egypt to Uzbekistan while still in his twenties led later peoples to call him
Alexander the Great. Alexander inspired his troops by leading charges against the
enemy, riding his warhorse Bucephalas (“oxhead”). Everyone saw him speeding
ahead in his plumed helmet, polished armor, and vividly colored cloak. He was so
intent on conquest that he rejected advice to delay the war until he had fathered an
heir. He gave away nearly all of his land to strengthen ties with his army officers.
Alexander aimed at becoming more famous even than Achilles; he always kept a
copy of Homer’s Iliad under his pillow — along with a dagger.
Medallion with Alexander the Great

This gold medallion was made in the third century C.E., during
the time of the Roman Empire, to commemorate the repu-
tation of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, the ancient
world’s greatest conqueror. It depicts Alexander with-
out a helmet to allow his face to show the gaze
looking up at the sky that he wanted artists to use
in representing him. He wears armor and a shield
decorated with images showing his belief in the
support he received from the gods, and he holds
a spear to show that he fought alongside his men.
Roman emperors or high officials wore expensive
objects like this to identify with heroes of the past or
to give them as gifts to express their great generosity.
(Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, USA / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
] The Rise of Macedonia, 359–323 b.c.e. 121
Building on Near Eastern traditions of siege technology and Philip’s innovations,

Alexander developed even better military technology. When Tyre, a heavily fortified
city on an island off the eastern Mediterranean coast, refused to surrender to him
in 332 b.c.e., he built a massive stone pier as a platform for artillery towers, armored
battering rams, and catapults flinging boulders to breach Tyre’s walls. Knowing that
Alexander could overcome their fortifications made enemies much readier to nego-
tiate a deal.
In his conquest of Egypt and the Persian heartland, Alexander revealed his strat-
egy for ruling a vast empire: keep an area’s traditional administrative system in place
while founding cities of Greeks and Macedonians in the conquered territory. In Egypt,
he established his first new city, naming it Alexandria after himself. In Persia, he
proclaimed himself the king of Asia and relied on Persian administrators.
Alexander led his army past the Persian heartland farther east into territory
hardly known to the Greeks (Map 4.1). He aimed to outdo the heroes of legend by
marching to the end of the world. Shrinking his army to reduce the need for sup-
plies, he marched northeast into what is today Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Unable
N Alexander’s campaigns, 334–324 B.C.E. (with dates)

Macedonia in 336 B.C.E.
W E
. Alexander’s empire in 323 B.C.E.
D anu be R
S Regions dependent on Alexander
Black Sea
Ca
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spi
MACEDONIA
CAS
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Sardis ANATOLIA sR the Furthest
335 B.C.E. Issus L. Van raxe Ox
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Ephesus r 330 R
334 Side Nisibis Drapsaca
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Sparta Miletus
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BACTRIA 329 U S H
331 Mutiny of
Gaugamela MEDIA
M
Artacoana 326 B.C.E.

ES
Thapsacus 331 B.C.E. Ecbatana K

OP
Crete
Medi Cyprus
PARTHIA
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OT
Babylon N 326 B.C.E.

terrane E HI
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R.
IA
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Tyre 332 B.C.E. 323 B.C.E.) 330

h
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R. 331 Susa
tes
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Pelusium sis
.
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EGYPT Hy
du
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In
ARABIAN GEDROSIA
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Re
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ea
INDIA
OCEAN
MAP 4.1 Conquests of Alexander the Great, r. 336–323 b.c.e.

From the time Alexander led his army against Persia in 334 B.C.E. until his death in 323 B.C.E.,
he was continually fighting military campaigns. His charismatic and fearless generalship,
combined with effective intelligence gathering about his targets, generated an unbroken string
of victories and made him a legend. His founding of garrison cities and preservation of local
governments kept his conquests largely stable during his lifetime.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
to subdue the local guerrilla forces, Alexander settled for an alliance sealed by his
marriage to the Bactrian princess Roxane.
Alexander then headed east into India. Seventy days of marching through mon-
soon rains extinguished his soldiers’ fire for conquest. In the spring of 326 b.c.e., they
mutinied, forcing Alexander to turn back. The return journey through southeast-
ern Iran’s deserts cost many casualties from hunger and thirst; the survivors finally
reached safety in the Persian heartland in 324 b.c.e. Alexander immediately began
planning an invasion of the Arabian peninsula and, after that, of North Africa. He
also announced that he wished to receive the honors due a god. Most Greek city-
states obeyed by sending religious delegations to him. Personal motives best explain
Alexander’s announcement: he had come to believe he was truly the son of Zeus and
that his superhuman accomplishments demonstrated that he must himself be a god.
Alexander died from a fever in 323 b.c.e. Unfortunately for the stability of his
immense conquests, he had no heir ready to take over his rule. Roxane gave birth
to their son only after Alexander’s death. The story goes that, when at Alexander’s
deathbed his commanders asked him to whom he left his kingdom, he replied, “To
the most powerful.”
Scholars disagree on almost everything about Alexander. Was he a bloodthirsty
monster obsessed with war, or a romantic visionary intent on creating a multiethnic
world open to all cultures? The ancient sources suggest that Alexander had inter-
linked goals reflecting his restless and ruthless nature: to conquer and administer
the known world with a new ruling class mixing competent people from all ethnic
groups, to outdo the exploits and glory of legendary heroes, and to earn the status
no living human had ever achieved — that of a god on earth.
Alexander’s explorations benefited scientific fields from geography to botany
because he took along knowledgeable writers to collect and catalog new knowledge.
He had vast quantities of scientific observations dispatched to his old tutor Aristotle.
Alexander’s new cities promoted trade
between Greece and the Near East. Most of
REVIEW QUESTION What were the accom-
plishments of Alexander the Great, and what
all, his career brought the two cultures into
were their effects both for the ancient world closer contact than ever before. This con-
and for later Western civilization? tact represented his career’s most enduring
impact.
The Hellenistic Kingdoms, 323–30 b.c.e.

New kingdoms arose when Alexander’s empire fragmented after his death. The time
from Alexander’s death in 323 b.c.e. to the death of Cleopatra VII, the last Macedo-
nian queen of Egypt, in 30 b.c.e. is the Hellenistic Age. The term Hellenistic (“Greek-
like”) conveys the most significant characteristic of this period: the emergence in the
eastern Mediterranean world of a mixture of Near Eastern and Greek traditions gen-
erating innovations in politics, literature, art, philosophy, and religion. War stirred up
this cultural mixing, and tension persisted between conquerors and subjects.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
] The Hellenistic Kingdoms, 323–30 b.c.e. 123
The Hellenistic period reintroduced monarchy into Greek culture for the first
time in a thousand years. Commanders from Alexander’s army created the kingdoms
by seizing portions of his empire and proclaiming themselves kings. This process of
state formation took more than fifty years of war. The self-proclaimed kings — called
Alexander’s successors — had to transform their families into dynasties and accumu-
late enough power to force the Greek city-states to obey them. Eventually, wars with
the Romans ended the Hellenistic kingdoms.
Creating New Kingdoms

Alexander’s successors divided his conquests among themselves. Antigonus (c. 382–
301 b.c.e.) took over Anatolia, the Near East, Macedonia, and Greece; Seleucus
(c. 358–281 b.c.e.) seized Babylonia and the East as far as India; and Ptolemy (c. 367–
282 b.c.e.) took over Egypt. These successors had to create their own form of monar-
chy based on military power and personal prestige because they were self-proclaimed
rulers with no connection to Alexander’s royal line.
The kingdoms’ territories were never completely stable because the Hellenistic
monarchs never stopped competing (Map 4.2). Conflicts repeatedly arose over bor-
der areas. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids, for example, fought to control the eastern
N
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GALATIA M
AETOLIAN Pergamum
CAP
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ACHAEAN Athens Ox
LEAGUE Hierapolis us
Sparta Iasus MEDIA R.
M
Syracuse Antioch ATROPATENE

ES
PARTHIA
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Rhodes
Tigri
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Med SYRIA Ecbatana

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TA
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s R.
anean Se
M
Damascus Eu S
Seleucia E L E
IA hra
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Cyrene U CI
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us R.
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LIBYANS AR ABI A Hyp

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EGYPT ia
rs
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INDIA
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R. Independent Greek states Hellenized non-Greek kingdoms

N ile
Antigonid kingdom Seleucid kingdom
0 250 500 miles Ptolemaic kingdom Parthian Empire
Arabian
0 250 500 kilometers Attalid kingdom Bactrian kingdom Sea
MAP 4.2 Hellenistic Kingdoms, 240 b.c.e.

Monarchy became the dominant political system in the areas of Alexander’s conquests. By
about eighty years after his death, the three major kingdoms established by his successors
had settled their boundaries, after the Seleucids gave up their easternmost territories to an
Indian king and the Attalids carved out their kingdom in western Anatolia.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Mediterranean coast, just like the Egyptians and Hittites. The wars between the major
kingdoms created openings for smaller kingdoms to establish themselves. The most
famous of these smaller kingdoms was that of the Attalids in western Anatolia, with
the wealthy city of Pergamum as its capital. In Bactria in Central Asia, the Greeks —
originally colonists settled by Alexander — broke off from the Seleucid kingdom in
the mid-third century b.c.e. to found their own regional kingdom, which flourished
for a time from the trade in luxury goods between India and China and the Mediter-
ranean world.
The Hellenistic kingdoms imposed foreign rule by Macedonian kings and queens
on indigenous populations. The kings incorporated local traditions into their rule
to build legitimacy. The Ptolemaic royal family, for example, observed the Egyptian
royal tradition of brother-sister marriage. Royal power was the ultimate source of
control over the kingdoms’ subjects, in keeping with the Near Eastern monarchical
tradition that Hellenistic kings adopted. Seleucus justified his rule on what he
claimed as a universal truth of monarchy: “It is not the customs of the Persians and
other people that I impose upon you, but the law which is common to everyone,
that what is decreed by the king is always just.” The survival of these dynasties
depended on their ability to create strong armies, effective administrations, and close
ties to urban elites. A letter from a Greek city summed up the situation while prais-
ing the Seleucid king Antiochus I (c. 324–261 b.c.e.): “His rule depends above all
on his own excellence [aretê], and on the goodwill of his friends, and on his forces.”
Professional soldiers manned Hellenistic royal armies and navies. To develop
their military might, the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings encouraged immigration by
Greeks and Macedonians, who received land grants in return for military service.
When this source of manpower gave out, the kings had to employ more local men
as troops. Military competition put tremendous financial pressure on the kings to
pay growing numbers of mercenaries and to purchase expensive new military tech-
nology. To compete effectively, a Hellenistic king had to provide giant artillery, such
as catapults capable of flinging a 170-pound projectile up to two hundred yards. His
navy cost a fortune because warships were now huge, requiring crews of several hun-
dred men. War elephants became popular after Alexander brought them back from
India, but they were extremely costly to maintain.
Hellenistic kings needed effective administrations to collect revenues. Initially,
they recruited mostly Greek and Macedonian immigrants to fill high-level posts. The
Seleucids and the Ptolemies also employed non-Greeks for middle- and low-level posi-
tions, where officials had to be able to deal with the subject populations and speak
their languages. Local men who wanted a government job bettered their chances if
they could read and write Greek in addition to their native language. Bilingualism
qualified them to fill positions communicating the orders of the highest-ranking
officials, all Greeks and Macedonians, to local farmers, builders, and crafts pro-
ducers. Non-Greeks who had successful government careers were rarely admitted
to royal society because Greeks and Macedonians saw themselves as too superior
[400–30 b.c.e.
to mix with locals. Greeks and non-Greeks therefore tended to live in separate
communities.
Administrators’ principal responsibilities were to maintain order and to direct
the kingdoms’ tax systems. The Ptolemaic administration used methods of central
planning and control inherited from earlier Egyptian history. Its officials continued
to administer royal monopolies, such as that on vegetable oil, to maximize the king’s
revenue. They decided how much land farmers could sow in oil-bearing plants,
supervised production and distribution of the oil, and set prices for every stage of
the oil business. The king, through his officials, also often entered into partnerships
with private investors to produce more revenue.
Cities were the Hellenistic kingdoms’ economic and social hubs. Many Greeks
and Macedonians lived in new cities founded by Alexander and the Hellenistic kings
in Egypt and the Near East, and they also immigrated to existing cities there. Hel-
lenistic kings promoted this urban immigration by adorning their new cities with
the features of classical Greek city-states, such as gymnasia and theaters. Although
these cities often retained the city-state’s political institutions, such as councils and
assemblies for citizen men, the need to follow royal policy limited their freedom;
they made no independent decisions on foreign policy. The cities taxed their popula-
tions to send money demanded by the king.
The crucial element in the Hellenistic kingdoms’ political and social structure
was the system of mutual rewards by which the kings and their leading urban sub-
jects became partners in government and public finance. Wealthy people in the cities
were responsible for collecting taxes from the people in the surrounding countryside
as well as from the city dwellers and sending the money on to the royal treasury. The
kings honored and flattered the cities’ Greek and Macedonian social elites because
they needed their cooperation to ensure a steady flow of tax revenues. When writing
to a city’s council, a king would issue polite requests, but the recipients knew he was
giving commands.
This system thus continued the Greek tradition of requiring the wealthy elite to
contribute financially to the common good. Cooperative cities received gifts from
the king to pay for expensive public works like theaters and temples or for reconstruc-
tion after natural disasters such as earthquakes. Wealthy men and women in turn
helped keep the general population peaceful by subsidizing teachers and doctors,
financing public works, and providing donations and loans to ensure a reliable sup-
ply of grain to feed the city’s residents.
To keep their vast kingdoms peaceful and profitable, the kings established rela-
tionships with well-to-do non-Greeks living in the old cities of Anatolia and the Near
East. In addition, non-Greeks and non-Macedonians from eastern regions began
moving westward to the new Hellenistic Greek cities in increasing numbers. Jews in
particular moved from their ancestral homeland to Anatolia, Greece, and Egypt. The
Jewish community eventually became an influential minority in Egyptian Alexan-
dria, the most important Hellenistic city. In Egypt, as the Rosetta stone shows, the
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
king also had to build good relationships with the priests who controlled the temples
of the traditional Egyptian gods because the temples owned large tracts of rich land
worked by tenant farmers.
The Layers of Hellenistic Society

The royal family and the king’s friends had the highest social rank. The Greek and
Macedonian elites of the major cities came next. Then came indigenous urban elites,
leaders of large minority urban populations, and local lords in rural regions. Mer-
chants, artisans, and laborers made up the free population’s bottom layer. Slaves still
lacked any social status.
The kingdoms’ growth increased the demand for slave labor throughout the
eastern Mediterranean; a market on the island of Delos sold up to ten thousand slaves
a day. The luckier ones were purchased as servants for the royal court or elite house-
holds and lived physically comfortable lives, so long as they pleased their owners.
The luckless ones labored, and often died, in the mines. Enslaved children could be
taken far from home to work. For example, a sales contract from 259 b.c.e. records
that a Greek bought a seven-year-old girl named Gemstone to work in an Egyptian
textile factory. Originally from an eastern Mediterranean town, she had previously
labored as the slave of a Greek mercenary soldier employed by a Jewish cavalry com-
mander in the Transjordan region.
Poor people — the majority of the population — mostly labored in agriculture,
the foundation of the Hellenistic kingdoms’ economies. There were some large cit-
ies, above all Alexandria in Egypt, but most people lived in country villages. Many
of the poor were employed on the royal family’s huge estates, but free peasants still
worked their own small fields in addition to laboring for wealthy landowners. Per-
haps as many as 80 percent of all adult men and women had to work the land to
produce enough food to sustain the population. In cities, poor women and men
worked as small merchants, peddlers, and artisans, producing and selling goods such
as tools, pottery, clothing, and furniture. Men could sign on as deckhands on the
merchant ships that sailed the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.
Many country people in the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms existed in a state
of dependency between free and slave. The peoples, as they were called, were tenants
who farmed the estates belonging to the king. Although they could not be sold like
slaves, they were not allowed to move away or abandon their tenancies. They owed
a large quota of produce to the king, and this compulsory rent gave these tenant
farmers little chance to escape poverty.
Hellenistic queens had great social status and commanded enormous riches
and honors. They exercised power as the representatives of distinguished families,
as the mothers of a line of royal descendants, and as patrons of artists, thinkers, and
even entire cities. Later Ptolemaic queens essentially co-ruled with their husbands.
Queens ruled on their own when no male heir existed. For example, Arsinoe II
[400–30 b.c.e.
(c. 316–270 b.c.e.), the daughter of Ptolemy I, first married the Macedonian succes-
sor Lysimachus, who gave her four towns as her personal domain. After his death
she married her brother Ptolemy II of Egypt and was his partner in making policy.
Public praise for a queen reflected traditional Greek values for women. A city decree
from about 165 b.c.e. honored Queen Apollonis of Pergamum by praising her piety
toward the gods, her reverence toward her parents, her distinguished conduct toward
her husband, and her harmonious relations with her “beautiful children born in
wedlock.”
Some queens paid special attention to the condition of women. About 195 b.c.e.,
for example, the Seleucid queen Laodice gave a ten-year endowment to a city to
provide dowries for needy girls. Laodice’s gift shows that she recognized the impor-
tance to women of controlling property, which was the surest guarantee of respect.
Most women remained under the control of men. A common saying by men
was “Who can judge better than a father what is to his daughter’s interest?” Most of
the time, elite women continued to be separated from men outside their families,
while poor women worked in public. Greeks continued to abandon infants they did
not want to raise — girls more often than boys — but other populations, such as the
Egyptians and the Jews, did not practice infant exposure. Exposure differed from
infanticide in that the parents expected someone to find the child and rear it, usually
as a slave. A third-century b.c.e. comic poet overstated the case by saying, “A son,
one always raises even if one is poor; a daughter, one exposes, even if one is rich.”
Daughters of wealthy parents were not usually abandoned, but scholars have esti-
mated that up to 10 percent of other infant girls were.
A woman of exceptional wealth could enter public life by making donations or
loans to her city and in return be rewarded with an official post in local government.
In Egypt, women of all classes acquired greater say in married life as the marriage
contract evolved from an agreement between the bride’s parents and the groom to
one in which the bride made her own arrangements with the groom.
Rich people showed increasing concern for the welfare of poorer people during
the Hellenistic period. They were following the lead of the royal families, who empha-
sized philanthropy to build a reputation for generosity that would support their
legitimacy in ruling. Sometimes wealthy citizens funded a foundation to distribute
free grain to eliminate food shortages, and they also funded schools for children in
various Hellenistic cities, the first public schools in the Greek world. In some places,
girls as well as boys could attend school. Many cities also began sponsoring doctors
to improve medical care: patients still had to pay, but at least they could count on
finding a doctor.
The donors funding these services were repaid by the respect and honor they
earned from their fellow citizens. When an earthquake devastated Rhodes, many cities
joined kings and queens in sending donations to help the residents recover. In return,
the citizens of Rhodes showered honors on their benefactors by appointing them to
prestigious municipal offices and erecting inscriptions expressing the city’s gratitude.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
In this system, the masses’ welfare depended more and more on the generosity of the
rich. Lacking democracy, the poor had no political power to demand support.
The End of the Hellenistic Kingdoms

All the Hellenistic kingdoms eventually lost their riches and power, mostly through
internal rivalries in their ruling families. Thus weakened, they could not prevent
takeovers by the Romans, who over time intervened forcefully in conflicts among
kingdoms and Greek city-states in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Roman interventions caused wars. Rome first established dominance over
the Antigonid kingdom by the middle of the second century b.c.e. Next, the Seleucid
kingdom fell to the Romans in 64 b.c.e. The Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt survived
a bit longer; by the 50s b.c.e., however, its royal family had split into warring fac-
tions, and the resulting weakness forced the rivals for the throne to seek Roman
support. The end came when the famous queen Cleopatra VII, the last Macedonian
to rule Egypt, chose the losing side in the civil war between Mark Antony and the
future emperor Augustus in the late first
century b.c.e. An invading Roman army
REVIEW QUESTION How did the political
ended Ptolemaic rule in 30 b.c.e. Rome
and social organization of the new Hellenistic
kingdoms compare with that of the earlier then became the heir to all the Hellenis-
Greek city-states? tic kingdoms (see Mapping the West,
page 139).
Relief Carving of Cleopatra

and Her Son Caesarion
This relief carving appears on
the wall of a temple at Dendera
in Egypt. It depicts Cleopatra VII,
queen of Egypt, and her son by
Julius Caesar, Caesarion (“Little
Caesar”). They are shown wear-
ing the traditional ceremonial
clothing and crowns of Egyptian
pharaohs, a sign of the claim
of the Ptolemaic ruling family
to be the legitimate rulers of
Egypt despite their Macedonian
ethnic origins. Both died in
30 B.C.E. when Octavian, the
adopted son of Julius Caesar
and soon to become Augustus
and the ruler of Rome, con-
quered Egypt and made it a
Roman province. (© Ancient Art
and Architecture Collection, Ltd.)
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Hellenistic Culture 129
Hellenistic Culture
Hellenistic culture reflected three principal influences: (1) the overwhelming impact
of royal wealth, (2) increased emphasis on private life and emotion, and (3) greater
interaction of diverse peoples. The kings drove developments in literature, art, science,
and philosophy by deciding which scholars and artists to put on the royal payroll.
The obligation of authors and artists to the kings meant that they did not have free-
dom to criticize public policy; their works mostly concentrated on everyday life and
personal feelings.
Cultural interaction between Near Eastern and Greek traditions occurred most
prominently in language and religion. These developments deeply influenced the
Romans as they took over the Hellenistic world. The Roman poet Horace (65–8 b.c.e.)
described the effect of Hellenistic culture on his own Roman culture by saying that
“captive Greece captured its fierce victor.”
The Arts under Royal Support

Hellenistic kings became the supporters of scholarship and the arts on a vast scale,
competing with one another to lure the best scholars and artists to their capitals with
lavish salaries. They funded intellectuals and artists because they wanted to boost
their reputations by having these famous people produce books, poems, sculptures,
and other prestigious creations at their courts.
The Ptolemies turned Alexandria into the Mediterranean’s leading arts and sci-
ences center, establishing the world’s first scholarly research institute and a massive
library. The librarians were instructed to collect all the books in the world. The library
grew to hold half a million scrolls, an enormous number for the time. Linked to it
was the building in which the hired research scholars dined together and produced
encyclopedias of knowledge such as The Wonders of the World and On the Rivers of
Europe. We still use the name of the research institute’s building, the Museum (“place
of the Muses,” the Greek goddesses of learning and the arts), to designate institutions
preserving knowledge.
The writers and artists paid by Hellenistic kings had to please their paymasters.
The poet Theocritus (c. 300–260 b.c.e.) spelled out the deal underlying royal support
in a poem flattering King Ptolemy II: “The spokesmen of the Muses [that is, poets]
celebrate Ptolemy in return for his benefactions.” Poets such as Theocritus avoided
political topics and exploited the social gap that existed between the intellectual
elite — to which the kings belonged — and the uneducated masses. They filled their
new poetry with erudite references to make it difficult to understand and therefore
exclusive. Only people with a deep literary education could appreciate the mythologi-
cal allusions that studded these authors’ elaborate poems.
No Hellenistic women poets seem to have enjoyed royal financial support;
rather, they created their art independently. They excelled in writing epigrams, short
poems in the style of those originally used on tombstones to remember the dead.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Highly literary poems by women from diverse regions of the Hellenistic world still
survive. Many epigrams were about women, from courtesans to respectable matrons,
and the writer’s personal feelings. No other Hellenistic literature better conveys the
depth of human emotion than the epigrams written by women poets.
Hellenistic comedies also emphasized stories about emotions and stayed away
from politics. Comic playwrights presented plays concerning the troubles of fictional
lovers. These comedies became enormously popular because, like modern situation
comedies (sitcoms), they offered humorous views of daily life. Papyrus discoveries
have restored previously lost comedies of Menander (c. 342–289 b.c.e.), the most
famous Hellenistic comic poet, noted for his skill in depicting human personality.
Hellenistic tragedy could take a multicultural approach: Ezechiel, a Jew
living in Alexandria, wrote Exodus, a tragedy in Greek about Moses
leading the Hebrews out of captivity in Egypt.
Hellenistic sculptors and painters featured emotions in their
works as well. Classical artists had given their subjects’ faces
an idealized serenity, but now Hellenistic sculptures depicted
intense personal feelings. Athletes, for example, could be shown
realistically as exhausted and scarred by the exertion
required to compete at a high level.
The increasing diversity of subjects that emerged in
Hellenistic art presumably represented a trend approved
by kings, queens, and the elites. Sculpture best reveals
this new preference for depicting people who had
never before appeared in art: heartbreaking vic-
tims of war, drunkards, battered athletes, wrinkled
old people. The female nude became common.
A statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles, which por-
trayed the goddess completely naked for the first
time, became renowned as a religious object
Praxiteles’ Statue of Aphrodite

The fourth-century B.C.E. Athenian sculptor Prax-
iteles excelled at carving stone to resemble flesh
and producing perfect surfaces, which he had a
painter make lively with color. His masterpiece was
the Aphrodite made for the city-state of Cnidos in
southwestern Anatolia; the original is lost, but many
Hellenistic-era copies like this one were made. Prax-
iteles was the first to show the goddess of love nude,
and rumor said his lover was the model. Given that
there was a long tradition of nude male statues, why
do you think it took until the Hellenistic period for
Greek sculptors to produce female nudes? (Museo Pio
Clementino, Vatican Museums, Vatican State / Nimatallah / Art
Resource, NY.)
[400–30 b.c.e.
and also a tourist attraction in the city of Cnidos, which had commissioned it. The
king of Bithynia offered to pay off the citizens’ entire public debt if he could have
the work of art. They refused.
Philosophy for a New Age

New philosophies arose in the Hellenistic period, all asking the same question:
“What is the best way to live?” They recommended different paths to the same
answer: individuals must achieve inner personal tranquility to achieve freedom from
the disruptive effects of outside forces, especially chance. It is easy to see why these
philosophies had appeal: outside forces — the Hellenistic kings — had robbed the
Greek city-states of their independence in foreign policy, and their citizens’ fates
ultimately rested in the hands of unpredictable monarchs. More than ever, human
life seemed out of individuals’ control. It therefore was appealing to look to philoso-
phy for personal solutions to the unsettling new conditions of Hellenistic life.
Hellenistic philosophers concentrated on materialism, the doctrine that only
things made of matter truly exist. This idea corresponded to Aristotle’s teaching that
only things identified through logic or observation exist. Hellenistic philosophy was
divided into three areas: (1) logic, the process for discovering truth; (2) physics, the
fundamental truth about the nature of existence; and (3) ethics, how humans should
achieve happiness and well-being through logic and physics.
One of the two most significant new Hellenistic philosophies was Epicureanism,
named for its founder, Epicurus (341–271 b.c.e.). He settled his followers around
307 b.c.e. in an Athenian house surrounded by greenery — hence, his school came
to be known as the Garden. Epicurus broke tradition by admitting women and slaves
to study philosophy in his group.
Epicurus’s key idea was that people should be free of worry about death. Because
all matter consists of tiny, invisible, and irreducible pieces called atoms in random
movement, he said, death is nothing more than the painless separating of the body’s
atoms. Moreover, all human knowledge must be empirical, that is, derived from expe-
rience and perception. Phenomena that most people perceive as the work of the gods,
such as thunder, do not result from divine intervention in the world. The gods live
far away in perfect tranquility, ignoring human affairs. People therefore have nothing
to fear from the gods.
Epicurus believed people should pursue true pleasure, meaning an “absence of
disturbance.” Thus, people should live free from the turmoil, passions, and desires
of ordinary existence. A sober life spent with friends and separated from the cares
of the common world provided Epicurean pleasure. Epicureanism thus challenged
the Greek tradition of political participation by citizens.
The other most prominent Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism, prohibited an iso-
lationist life. Its name derives from the Painted Stoa in Athens, where Stoic philoso-
phers discussed their ideas. Stoics believed that fate controls people’s lives but that
individuals should still make the pursuit of excellence their goal. Stoic excellence
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
meant putting oneself in harmony with the divine, rational force of universal nature
by cultivating good sense, justice, courage, and temperance. These doctrines applied
to women as well as men. Some Stoics advocated equal citizenship for women, unisex
clothing, and abolition of marriage and families.
The Stoic belief in fate raised the question of whether humans have free will.
Stoic philosophers concluded that purposeful human actions do have significance
even if fate rules. Nature, itself good, does not prevent evil from occurring, because
excellence would otherwise have no meaning. What matters in life is striving for
good. A person should therefore take action against evil by, for example, participat-
ing in politics. To be a Stoic also meant to shun desire and anger while calmly endur-
ing pain and sorrow, an attitude that yields the modern meaning of the word stoic.
Through endurance and self-control, Stoics gained inner tranquility. They did not
fear death because they believed that people live the same life over and over again.
This repetition occurred because the world is periodically destroyed by fire and then
re-formed.
Tower of the Winds

This forty-foot octagonal tower,
built in Athens about 150 B.C.E.,
used scientific knowledge devel-
oped in Hellenistic Alexandria to
tell time and predict the weather.
Eight sundials (now missing)
carved on the walls displayed
the time of day all year; a huge
interior water clock showed
hours, days, and phases of the
moon. A vane on top showed
wind direction. The carved figures
represented the winds, which
the Greeks saw as gods. Each
figure’s clothing predicted the typ-
ical weather from that direction,
with the cold northern winds
wearing boots and heavy cloaks,
while the southern ones have
bare feet and gauzy clothes.
What were the goals, do you
imagine, in erecting such a
large clock in a public place?
(De Agostini Picture Library / S. Vannini /
Bridgeman Images.)
[
400–30 b.c.e.
Several other Hellenistic philosophies competed with Epicureanism and Stoi-

cism. Philosophers called Skeptics aimed for a state of personal calm, as did Epi-
cureans, but from a completely different basis. They believed that secure knowledge
about anything was impossible because the human senses perceive contradictory
information about the world. All people can do, the Skeptics insisted, is depend on
perceptions and appearances while suspending judgment about their ultimate reality.
These ideas had been influenced by the Indian ascetics (who practiced self-denial as
part of their spiritual discipline) encountered on Alexander the Great’s expedition.
Cynics rejected every convention of ordinary life, especially wealth and material
comfort. The name Cynic, which means “like a dog,” came from the notion that dogs
had no shame. Cynics believed that humans should aim for complete self-sufficiency
and that whatever was natural was good and could be done without shame before
anyone. Therefore, such things as bowel movements and sex acts in public were
acceptable. Above all, Cynics rejected life’s comforts. The most famous early Cynic,
Diogenes (c. 412–c. 324 b.c.e.), wore borrowed clothing and slept in a storage jar.
Also notorious was Hipparchia, a female Cynic of the late fourth century b.c.e. who
once defeated a philosophical opponent named Theodorus the Atheist with the fol-
lowing remarks: “Anything that would not be considered wrong if done by Theo-
dorus would also not be considered wrong if done by Hipparchia. Now if Theodorus
punches himself, he does no wrong. Therefore, if Hipparchia punches Theodorus,
she does no wrong.”
Philosophy in the Hellenistic Age reached a wider audience than ever before.
Although the working poor were too busy to attend philosophers’ lectures, many
well-off members of society studied philosophy. Greek settlers took their interest in
philosophy with them to even the most remote Hellenistic cities. Archaeologists exca-
vating a city in Afghanistan — thousands of miles from Greece — uncovered a Greek
philosophical text and inscriptions of moral advice recording Apollo’s oracle at Del-
phi as their source. Sadly, this site, called Ai-Khanoum, was devastated in the twen-
tieth century during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Scientific Innovation
Historians have called the Hellenistic period the golden age of ancient science. Sci-
entific innovation flourished because Alexander’s expedition had encouraged curios-
ity and increased knowledge about the world’s extent and diversity, royal families
supported scientists financially, and the concentration of scientists in Alexandria
promoted the exchange of ideas.
The greatest advances in scientific knowledge came in geometry and mathemat-
ics. Euclid, who taught at Alexandria around 300 b.c.e., made revolutionary discov-
eries in analyzing two- and three-dimensional space. Euclidean geometry is still use-
ful. Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 b.c.e.) calculated the approximate value of pi
and invented a way to manipulate very large numbers. He also invented hydrostatics
(the science of the equilibrium of fluid systems) and mechanical devices, such as a
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
screw for lifting water to a higher elevation and cranes to disable enemy warships.
Archimedes’ shout of delight when he solved a problem while soaking in his bathtub
has been immortalized in the expression Eureka! meaning “I have found it!”
Advances in Hellenistic mathematics energized other fields that required com-
plex computation. Early in the third century b.c.e., Aristarchus was the first to pro-
pose the correct model of the solar system: the earth revolving around the sun. Later
astronomers rejected Aristarchus’s heliocentric model in favor of the traditional geo-
centric one (with the earth at the center) because conclusions drawn from his cal-
culations of the earth’s orbit failed to correspond to the observed positions of celestial
objects. Aristarchus had assumed a circular orbit instead of an elliptical one, an
assumption not corrected until much later. Eratosthenes (c. 275–194 b.c.e.) pio-
neered mathematical geography. He calculated the circumference of the earth with
astonishing accuracy by measuring the length of the shadows cast by widely separated
but identically tall structures. Together, these researchers gave Western scientific
thought an important start toward its fundamental procedure of reconciling theory
with observed data through measurement and experimentation.
Hellenistic science and medicine made gains even though no technology existed
to measure very small amounts of time or matter. The science of the age was as
quantitative as it could be, given these limitations. Ctesibius invented pneumatics by
creating machines operated by air pressure. He also built a working water pump, an
organ powered by water, and the first accurate water clock. Hero of Alexandria also
built a rotating sphere powered by steam. As in most of Hellenistic science, these
inventions did not lead to usable applications in daily life. The scientists and their
royal patrons were more interested in new theoretical discoveries than in practical
results, and the technology did not exist to produce the pipes, fittings, and screws
needed to build metal machines.
Hellenistic science produced impressive military technology, such as more pow-
erful catapults and huge siege towers on wheels. The most famous large-scale appli-
cation of technology for nonmilitary purposes was the construction of the Pharos,
a lighthouse three hundred feet tall, for the harbor at Alexandria. Using polished
metal mirrors to reflect the light from a large bonfire, the Pharos shone many miles
out over the sea. Awestruck sailors called it one of the wonders of the world.
Medicine also benefited from the Hellenistic quest for new knowledge. Increased
contact between Greeks and people of the Near East made Mesopotamian and Egyp-
tian medical knowledge better known in the West and promoted research on what
made people ill. Hellenistic medical researchers discovered the value of measuring
the pulse in diagnosing illness and studied anatomy by dissecting human corpses.
It was rumored that they also dissected condemned criminals while they were still
alive; they had access to these subjects because the king authorized the research.
Some of the terms then invented are still used, such as diastolic and systolic for blood
pressure. Other Hellenistic advances in anatomy included the discovery of the nerves
and nervous system.
[400–30 b.c.e.
Greek-Style Buddha
The style of this statue of the founder of Buddhism, who
expounded his doctrines in India, shows the mingling of
Eastern and Western art. The Buddha’s appearance,
gaze, and posture stem from Indian artistic traditions,
while the flowing folds of his garment recall Greek tra-
ditions. This combination of styles is called Gandharan,
after the region in northwestern India where it began.
What do you think are the possible motives for combin-
ing different artistic traditions? (National Museum, New Delhi,
India / Borromeo / Art Resource, NY.)
Cultural and Religious Transformations

Cultural transformations also shaped Helle-
nistic society. Wealthy non-Greeks increasingly
adopted a Greek lifestyle to conform to the Hel-
lenistic world’s social hierarchy. Greek became
the common language for international com-
merce and cultural exchange. The widespread
use of the simplified form of the Greek language
called Koine (“shared” or “common”) reflected
the emergence of an international culture based
on Greek models; this was the reason the Egyp-
tian camel trader stranded in Syria mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter was at a disadvan-
tage because he did not speak Greek. The most strik-
ing evidence of this cultural development comes from
Afghanistan. There, King Ashoka (r. c. 268–232 b.c.e.),
who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, used Greek
as one of the languages in his public inscriptions. These texts announced his plan to
teach his subjects Buddhist self-control, such as abstinence from eating meat. Local
languages did not disappear in the Hellenistic kingdoms, however. In one region of
Anatolia, for example, people spoke twenty-two different languages.
Religious diversity also grew. Traditional Greek cults (as described in Chapter 3)
remained popular, but new cults, especially those deifying kings, reflected changing
political and social conditions. Preexisting cults that previously had only local sig-
nificance gained adherents all over the Hellenistic world. In many cases, Greek cults
and local cults from the eastern Mediterranean influenced each other. Sometimes,
local cults and Greek cults existed side by side and even overlapped. Some Egyptian
villagers, for example, continued worshipping their traditional crocodile god and
mummifying their dead, but they also honored Greek deities. As polytheists (believ-
ers in multiple gods), people could worship in both old and new cults.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
New cults incorporated a concern for the relationship between the individual
and what seemed the arbitrary power of divinities such as Tychê (“chance” or “luck”).
Since advances in astronomy had furthered knowledge about the movement of the
universe’s celestial bodies, religion now had to address the disconnect between “heav-
enly uniformity” and the “shapeless chaos of earthly life.” One increasingly popular
approach to bridging that gap was to rely on astrology, which was based on the
movement of the stars and planets, thought of as divinities. Another common choice
was to worship Tychê in the hope of securing good luck in life.
The most revolutionary approach in seeking protection from Tychê’s unpredict-
able tricks was to pray for salvation from deified kings, who expressed their divine
power in ruler cults. Various populations established these cults in recognition of
great benefactions. The Athenians, for example, deified the Macedonian Antigonus
and his son Demetrius as savior gods in 307 b.c.e., when they liberated the city and
bestowed magnificent gifts on it. Like most ruler cults, this one expressed the popu-
lation’s spontaneous gratitude to the rulers for their salvation, in hopes of preserving
the rulers’ goodwill toward them by addressing the kings’ own wishes to have their
power respected. Many cities in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms set up ruler
cults for their kings and queens. An inscription put up by Egyptian priests in 238 b.c.e.
concretely described the qualities appropriate for a divine king and queen who
brought physical salvation:
King Ptolemy III and Queen Berenice, his sister and wife, the Benefactor
Gods, . . . have provided good government . . . and [after a drought] sacri-
ficed a large amount of their revenues for the salvation of the population,
and by importing grain . . . they saved the inhabitants of Egypt.
The Hellenistic monarchs’ tremendous power and wealth gave them the status of
gods to the ordinary people who depended on their generosity and protection. The
idea that a human being could be a god, present on earth to save people from evils,
was now firmly established and would prove influential later in Roman imperial
religion and Christianity.
Healing divinities offered another form of protection to anxious individuals. The
cult of the god Asclepius, who offered cures for illness and injury at his many shrines,
grew in popularity during the Hellenistic period. Suppliants seeking Asclepius’s help
would sleep in special locations at his shrines to await dreams in which he prescribed
healing treatments. These prescriptions emphasized diet and exercise, but numerous
inscriptions commissioned by grateful patients also testified to miraculous cures and
surgery performed while the sufferer slept. The following example is typical:
Ambrosia of Athens was blind in one eye. . . . She . . . ridiculed some of the
cures [described in inscriptions in the sanctuary] as being incredible and
impossible. . . . But when she went to sleep, she saw a vision; she thought
the god was standing next to her. . . . He split open the diseased eye and
poured in a medicine. When day came she left cured.
[400–30 b.c.e.
Underground Labyrinth for Healing

This underground stone labyrinth formed part of the enormous healing sanctuary of the god
Asclepius at Epidaurus in Greece. Patients flocked to the site from all over the Mediterranean
world. They descended into the labyrinth, which was covered and dark, as part of their treatment,
which centered on reaching a trance state to receive dreams that would provide instructions
on their healing and, sometimes, miraculous surgery. Do you think such treatment could be
effective? (Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
People’s faith in divine healing gave them hope that they could overcome the con-
stant danger of illness, which appeared to strike at random; there was no knowledge
of germs as causing infections.
Mystery cults promised initiates secret knowledge for salvation. The cults of the
Greek god Dionysus and the Egyptian goddess Isis attracted many people. Isis became
the most popular female divinity in the Mediterranean because her powers protected
her worshippers in all aspects of their lives. Her cult involved rituals and festivals
mixing Egyptian religion with Greek elements. Disciples of Isis strove to achieve per-
sonal purification and the goddess’s aid in overcoming the demonic power of Tychê.
This popularity of an Egyptian deity among Greeks (and, later, Romans) is clear
evidence of the cultural interaction of the Hellenistic world.
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Cultural interaction between Greeks and Jews influenced Judaism during the Hel-
lenistic period. King Ptolemy II made the Hebrew Bible accessible to a wide audience
by having his Alexandrian scholars produce a Greek translation — the Septuagint.
Many Jews, especially those in the large Jewish communities that had grown up in
Hellenistic cities outside their homeland, began to speak Greek and adopt Greek
culture. These Greek-style Jews mixed Jewish and Greek customs, while retaining
Judaism’s rituals and rules and not worshipping Greek gods.
Internal conflict among Jews erupted in second-century b.c.e. Palestine over
how much Greek tradition was acceptable for traditional Jews. The Seleucid king
Antiochus IV (r. 175–164 b.c.e.) intervened to support Greek-style Jews in Jerusa-
lem, who had taken over the high priesthood that ruled the Jewish community. In
167 b.c.e., Antiochus converted the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem into a Greek
temple and outlawed Jewish religious rites such as observing the Sabbath and per-
forming circumcision. This action provoked a revolt led by Judah the Maccabee,
which won Jewish independence from Seleucid control after twenty-five years of war.
The most famous episode in this revolt was the retaking of the Jerusalem temple and
its rededication to the worship of the Jewish god, Yahweh, commemorated by the
Hanukkah holiday.
That Greek culture attracted some Jews in the first place provides a striking
example of the transformations that affected many — though far from all — people
of the Hellenistic world. By the time of the Roman Empire, one of those transforma-
tions would be Christianity, whose theol-
ogy had roots in the cultural interaction of
REVIEW QUESTION How did the political
changes of the Hellenistic period affect art,
Hellenistic Jews and Greeks and their ideas
science, and religion? on apocalypticism (religious ideas reveal-
ing the future) and divine human beings.
Conclusion
The aftermath of the Peloponnesian War led ordinary people as well as philosophers
like Plato and Aristotle to question the basis of morality. The disunity of Greek
international politics allowed Macedonia’s aggressive leaders Philip II and Alexander
the Great to make themselves the masters of the competing city-states. Inspired by
Greek heroic ideals, Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire and set in
motion the Hellenistic period’s enormous political, social, and cultural changes.
When Alexander’s commanders transformed themselves into Hellenistic kings
after his death, they reintroduced monarchy into the Greek world, adding an admin-
istrative layer of Greek and Macedonian officials to the conquered lands’ existing
governments. Local elites cooperated with the new Hellenistic monarchs in govern-
ing and financing their hierarchical society, which was divided along ethnic lines,
with the Greek and Macedonian elite ranking above local elites. To enhance their
own reputations, Hellenistic kings and queens funded writers, artists, scholars, phi-
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 139
losophers, and scientists, thereby energizing intellectual life. The traditional city-
states continued to exist in Hellenistic Greece, but their freedom extended only to
local governance; the Hellenistic kings controlled foreign policy.
Increased contacts between diverse peoples promoted greater cultural interac-
tion in the Hellenistic world. Artists and writers expressed emotion in their works,
philosophers discussed how to achieve true happiness, and scientists conducted
research with royal support. More anxious than ever about the role of chance in life,
many people looked for new religious experiences, especially in cults promising
secret knowledge to initiates. What changed most of all was the Romans’ culture
once they took over the Hellenistic kingdoms’ territory and came into close contact
with their diverse peoples’ traditions. Rome’s rise to power took centuries, however,
because Rome originated as a tiny, insignificant place that no one except Romans
ever expected to amount to anything in the wider world.
N Extent of Roman-controlled territory:

200 B.C.E.
W E
146 B.C.E.
S 133 B.C.E.
31 B.C.E.
D an
ube R.
GAUL S
ATLANTIC L P
A
OCEAN
ILLYRIA
PY
RE Black Sea
NE IA
ES ON
Corsica ROMAN LAG
IA
PH
THRACE PA IA
OC
REPUBLIC MACEDONIA EN
AD
(ANTIGOID KINGDOM)
BITHYNIA M
Sardinia PONTUS
AR
PP
SPAIN EPIRUS Samos GALATIA

CA
AETOLIAN Pergamum SELEUCID KINGDOM

LEAGUE ANATOLIA
Sicily ACHAEAN
Athens
M
LEAGUE Sparta
ES
Syracuse Antioch
O
PO
Rhodes Eu
Tigri
ph
TA
Med Crete ra
SYRIA tes
M
iterr Cyprus
s R.
R.
IA
anean Sea
NUMIDIA Seleucia
Babylon
Alexandria PALESTINE
EGYPT ARABIA
0 250 500 miles (PTOLEMAIC KINGDOM)
Red
Ni
0 250 500 kilometers eR Sea

l
MAPPING THE WEST Roman Takeover of the Hellenistic World, to 30 b.c.e.

By the death of Cleopatra VII of Egypt in 30 B.C.E., the Romans had taken over the Hellenistic
kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean. This territory became the eastern half of the Roman
Empire.
Chapter 4 Review
Plato (p. 116) Alexander the Great (p. 119) Stoicism (p. 131)
metaphysics (p. 116) Hellenistic (p. 122) Koine (p. 135)
dualism (p. 117) epigrams (p. 129) ruler cults (p. 136)
Aristotle (p. 118) materialism (p. 131)
Lyceum (p. 118) Epicureanism (p. 131)
Review Questions
1. How did daily life, philosophy, and the political situation change in Greece during the period
400–350 B.C.E.?
2. What were the accomplishments of Alexander the Great, and what were their effects both
for the ancient world and for later Western civilization?
3. How did the political and social organization of the new Hellenistic kingdoms compare with
that of the earlier Greek city-states?
4. How did the political changes of the Hellenistic period affect art, science, and religion?
Making Connections
1. What made ancient people see Alexander as “great”? Would he be regarded as “great” in
today’s world?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of governmental support of the arts and
sciences? Compare such support in the Hellenistic kingdoms to that in the United States
today (e.g., through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment
for the Arts, and the National Science Foundation).
3. Is inner personal tranquility powerful enough to make a difficult or painful life bearable?
After the Peloponnesian War, the structure of international relations changed radically in the
Greek world as the city-states became secondary in political power to the kingdom of Macedo-
nia, and then to the kingdoms of the Hellenistic period. Long-lasting cultural changes
accompanied this political transformation.
*Aristotle. Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. 1985.
Briant, Pierre. Alexander the Great and His Empire: A Short Introduction. Trans. Amélie Kuhrt.
2010.
Chaniotis, Angelos. War in the Hellenistic World. 2005.
Collins, John Joseph. Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora.
1999.
Erskine, Andrew, ed. A Companion to the Hellenistic Age. 2003.
Evans, J. A. S. Daily Life in the Hellenistic Age: From Alexander to Cleopatra. 2008.
Martin, Thomas R., and Christopher W. Blackwell. Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient
Life. 2012.
Mikalson, Jon D. Religion in Hellenistic Athens. 1998.
*Primary source.
140
[400–30 b.c.e.
Important Events
399 B.C.E. Socrates is executed

386 B.C.E. In King’s Peace, Sparta surrenders control of Anatolian Greek city-
states to Persia; Plato founds Academy
362 B.C.E. Battle of Mantinea leaves power vacuum in a disunited Greece
338 B.C.E. Battle of Chaeronea allows Macedonian Philip II to become the
leading power in Greece
335 B.C.E. Aristotle founds Lyceum
334–323 B.C.E. Alexander the Great leads Greeks and Macedonians to conquer
Persian Empire
307 B.C.E. Epicurus founds his philosophical group in Athens
306–304 B.C.E. Successors of Alexander declare themselves kings
300–260 B.C.E. Theocritus writes poetry at Ptolemaic court
c. 300 B.C.E. Euclid teaches geometry at Alexandria
195 B.C.E. Seleucid queen Laodice endows dowries for girls
167 B.C.E. Maccabee revolt after Antiochus IV turns temple in Jerusalem into
a Greek sanctuary
30 B.C.E. Cleopatra VII dies and Rome takes over Ptolemaic Empire
Consider three events: Alexander the Great leads Greeks and Macedonians to conquer
Persian Empire (334–323 B.C.E.), Epicurus founds his philosophical group in Athens
(307 B.C.E.), and Euclid teaches geometry at Alexandria (c. 300 B.C.E.). How might
Alexander’s expeditions have influenced developments in politics, philosophy, and
science?
*Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. 1963.
*Plutarch. The Age of Alexander. Trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert. 1973.
Pollitt, J. J. Art in the Hellenistic Age. 1986.
Ptolemaic Egypt: http://www.houseofptolemy.org/
Sharples, R. W. Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy. 1996.
Shipley, Graham. The Greek World after Alexander 323–30 B.C. 1999.
Snyder, Jane M. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. 1989.
The Rise of Rome
5
and Its Republic
753– 44 b.c.e.
T
he Romans treasured legends about their state’s transformation from a
tiny village to a world power. They especially loved stories about their city’s
legendary first king, Romulus. When early Rome needed more women to bear
children to increase its population and build a strong army, Romulus begged Rome’s
neighbors for permission for its men to marry their women. Everyone turned him
down, mocking Rome’s poverty and weakness. Enraged, Romulus hatched a plan to
use force where diplomacy had failed. Invit-
The Wolf Suckling Romulus
ing the neighboring Sabines to a religious
and Remus festival, he had his men kidnap the unmar-
This bronze statue relates to the myth ried women who attended. The Roman kid-
that a she-wolf nursed the twin broth- nappers immediately married these Sabines,
ers Romulus and Remus, the offspring promising to cherish them as beloved wives
of the war god Mars and the future
and new citizens. When the Sabine men
founders of Rome. Romans treasured
this story because it meant that Mars attacked Rome to rescue their kin, the women
loved their city so dearly that he sent a rushed into the midst of the bloody battle,
wild animal to nurse its founders after begging their brothers, fathers, and new
a cruel tyrant had forced their mother husbands either to stop slaughtering one
to abandon the infants. The myth also another or to kill them — their devoted sis-
taught Romans that their state had
been born in violence: Romulus killed
ters, daughters, and wives — to end the war.
Remus in an argument over who would The men on both sides made peace on the
lead their new settlement. The wolf is spot and agreed to merge their populations
an Etruscan sculpture from the fifth under Roman rule.
century B.C.E.; the babies were added This legend emphasizes that Rome,
in the Renaissance. (Musei Capitolini,
Rome, Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
unlike the city-states of Greece, expanded by
absorbing outsiders into its citizen body.
Rome’s growth was the ancient world’s great-
est expansion of population and territory, as a people originally housed in a few huts
gradually created a state that fought countless wars and relocated an unprecedented
number of citizens to gain control of most of Europe, North Africa, Egypt, and the
eastern Mediterranean region. The social, cultural, political, legal, and economic
143
144 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
traditions that Romans developed to rule this vast area created greater connections
between diverse peoples than had ever existed before. Unlike the Greeks and Mace-
donians, the Romans maintained the unity of their state for centuries. The empire’s
long existence allowed many Roman values and traditions to become essential com-
ponents of Western civilization.
Greek literature, art, and philosophy influenced Rome’s culture greatly. Romans
learned from their neighbors, adapting foreign traditions to their own purposes and
forging their own cultural identity.
The legend about Romulus belongs to Rome’s earliest history, when kings ruled
(753–509 b.c.e.). Rome’s later history is divided into the republic and the empire.
Under the republic (founded 509 b.c.e.), male citizens elected government officials
and passed laws (although an oligarchy of the social elite controlled politics). Under
the empire, monarchs once again ruled. Rome’s greatest expansion came during the
republic. Romans’ belief in a divine destiny fueled this tremendous growth. They
believed that the gods wanted them to rule the world and improve it by making
everyone adhere to their social and moral values.
Roman values emphasized family loyalty, selfless political and military service
to the community, individual honor and public status, the importance of the law, and
shared decision making. By the first cen-
tury b.c.e., power-hungry leaders such as
CHAPTER FOCUS How did traditional Roman
Sulla and Julius Caesar had plunged Rome
values affect both the rise and the downfall of into civil war. By putting their personal
the Roman republic? ambition before the good of the state, they
destroyed the republic.
Roman Social and Religious Traditions

Rome’s citizens believed that eternal moral values connected them to one another
and required them to honor the gods in return for divine support. Hierarchy affected
everyone: people at all social levels were obligated to patrons or to clients; in families,
fathers dominated; in religion, people at all levels of society owed sacrifices, rituals,
and prayers to the gods who protected the family and the state.
Roman Moral Values

Roman values defined relationships with other people and with the gods. Romans
guided their lives by the mos maiorum (“the way of the elders”), values passed down
from their ancestors. The Romans preserved these values because, for them, old
equaled “tested by time,” while new meant “dangerous.” Roman morality emphasized
virtue, faithfulness, and respect. A reputation for behaving morally was crucial to
Romans because it earned them the respect of others.
Virtus (“manly virtue”) meant strength, loyalty, and courage, especially in war.
It also included wisdom and moral purity; in this broader sense, women, too,
[753–44 b.c.e.
] Roman Social and Religious Traditions 145
could possess virtus. In the second century b.c.e., the Roman poet Lucilius defined
it this way:
Virtus is to know the human relevance of each thing,
To know what is humanly right and useful and honorable,
And what things are good and what are bad, useless, shameful,
and dishonorable. . . .
And, in addition, virtus is putting the country’s interests first,
Then our parents’, with our own interests third and last.
Fides (FEE dehs, “faithfulness”) meant keeping one’s obligations no matter the
cost. Failing to meet an obligation offended the community and the gods. Faithful
women remained virgins before marriage and monogamous afterward. Faithful men
kept their word, paid their debts, and treated everyone with justice — which did not
mean treating everyone equally, but rather appropriately, according to whether the
person was a social superior, an equal, or an inferior. Showing respect and devotion
to the gods and to one’s family was the supreme form of faithfulness. Romans
believed they had to worship the gods faithfully to maintain the divine favor that
protected their community.
Roman values required that each person maintain self-control and limit displays
of emotion. So strict was this value that not even wives and husbands could kiss in
public without seeming emotionally out of control. It also meant that a person should
never give up no matter how hard the situation.
The reward for living these values was respect from others. Women earned respect
by bearing legitimate children and educating them morally. Respected men relied on
their reputations to help them win election to the republic’s government posts. A man
of the highest reputation commanded so much respect that others would obey him
regardless of whether he held an office with formal power over them. A man with this
much prestige was said to possess authority. The concept of authority based on respect
reflected the Roman belief that some people were by nature superior to others and
that society had to be hierarchical to be just. Romans believed that aristocrats, people
born into the “best” families, automatically deserved high respect. In return, aristo-
crats were supposed to live strictly by the highest values to serve the community.
In legends about the early days of Rome, a person could be poor and still remain
a proud aristocrat. Over time, however, money became overwhelmingly important
to the Roman elite, to spend on showy luxuries, large-scale entertaining, and costly
gifts to the community. In this way, wealth became necessary to maintain high social
status.
The Patron-Client System

The patron-client system was an interlocking network of personal relationships that
obligated people to one another. A patron was a man of superior status able to pro-
vide benefits to lower-status people; these were his clients, who in return owed him
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
duties and paid him special attention. In this hierarchical system, a patron was often
himself the client of a higher-status man.
Benefits and duties created mutual exchanges of financial and political help.
Patrons would help their clients get started in business by giving them a gift or a
loan and connecting them with others who could help them. In politics, a patron
would promote a client’s candidacy for elective office and provide money for cam-
paigning. Patrons also supported clients if they had legal trouble.
Clients had to support their patrons’ campaigns for public office and lend them
money to build public works and to fund their daughters’ dowries. A patron expected
his clients to gather at his house at dawn to accompany him to the forum, the city’s
public center, to show his great status. A Roman leader needed a large house to hold
this throng and to entertain his social equals.
Patrons’ and clients’ mutual obligations endured for generations. Ex-slaves, who
became the clients for life of the masters who freed them, often handed down this
relationship to their children. Romans with contacts abroad could acquire clients
among foreigners; Roman generals sometimes had entire foreign communities obli-
gated to them. The patron-client system demonstrated the Roman idea that social
stability and well-being were achieved by faithfully maintaining established ties.
The Roman Family

The family was Roman society’s bedrock because it taught values and determined
the ownership of property. Men and women shared the duty of teaching their chil-
dren values, though by law the father possessed the patria potestas (“father’s power”)
over his children — no matter how old — and his slaves. This power made him the
sole owner of all his dependents’ property. As long as he was alive, no son or daugh-
ter could officially own anything, accumulate money, or possess any independent
legal standing. Unofficially, however, adult children did control personal property
and money, and favored slaves could build up savings. Fathers also held legal power
of life and death over these members of their households, but they rarely exercised
this power except through exposure of newborns, an accepted practice to limit family
size and dispose of physically imperfect infants.
Patria potestas did not allow a husband to control his wife; instead, under the
common arrangement called a “free” marriage, the wife formally remained under
her father’s power as long as the father lived. But in the ancient world, few fathers
lived long enough to oversee the lives of their married daughters or sons; four out
of five parents died before their children reached age thirty. A Roman woman with-
out a living father was relatively independent. Legally she needed a male guardian
to conduct her business, but guardianship was largely an empty formality by the first
century b.c.e. As a commentator explained, “The common belief seems more false
than true that, because of their instability of judgment, women are often deceived
and that therefore it is only fair to have them controlled by the authority of guard-
ians. In fact, women of full age manage their affairs themselves.”
[753–44 b.c.e.
Sculpture of a Woman Running a Store

This sculpture portrays a woman selling food from a small shop while customers make pur-
chases or chat. Since Roman women could own property, it is possible that the woman is the
store owner. The man standing behind her could be her husband or a servant. Much like malls
of today, markets in Roman towns were packed with small stores. (Art Resource, NY.)
A Roman woman had to grow up fast. Tullia (c. 79–45 b.c.e.), daughter of Rome’s
most famous politician and orator, Cicero, was engaged at twelve, married at sixteen,
and widowed by twenty-two. Like every other wealthy married Roman woman, she
managed the household slaves, monitored the nurturing of the young children by
wet nurses, kept account books to track the property she personally owned, and
accompanied her husband to dinner parties — something a Greek wife never did.
A mother’s responsibility for shaping her children’s values constituted the foun-
dation of female virtue. Women like Cornelia, a famous aristocrat of the second
century b.c.e., won enormous respect for loyalty to family. When her husband died,
Cornelia refused an offer of marriage from King Ptolemy VIII of Egypt so that she
could continue to oversee the family estate and educate her surviving daughter and
two sons. (Her other nine children had died.) The boys, Tiberius and Gaius Grac-
chus, grew up to be among the most influential political leaders in the late republic.
The number of children Cornelia bore reveals the fertility and stamina required of
a Roman wife to ensure the survival of her husband’s family line. Cornelia also
became famous for her stylishly worded letters, which were still being read a century
later.
Roman women could not vote or hold political office, but wealthy women like
Cornelia influenced politics by expressing their opinions to men at home and at
dinner parties. Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 b.c.e.), a famous politician and author,
described this clout: “All mankind rule their wives, we [Roman men] rule all man-
kind, and our wives rule us.”
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
Women could acquire property through inheritance and entrepreneurship.
Archaeological discoveries reveal that by the end of the republic some women owned
large businesses. Prenuptial agreements determining the property rights of husband
and wife were common. In divorce fathers kept the children. Most poor women
worked as field laborers or in shops. Women and men both worked in manufac-
turing, which mostly happened in the home. The men worked the raw materials —
cutting, fitting, and polishing wood, leather, and metal — while the women sold the
finished goods. The poorest women earned money through prostitution, which was
legal but considered disgraceful.
Education for Public Life

Roman education aimed to make men and women effective speakers and exponents
of traditional values. Most children received their education at home; there were
no public schools, but the rich hired private teachers. Wealthy parents bought literate
slaves called pedagogues to educate their children, especially to teach them Greek.
In upper-class families, both daughters and sons learned to read. The girls were taught
literature and music, and how to make educated conversation at dinner parties. The
aim of women’s education was to prepare them to teach traditional social and moral
values to their children.
Sons received physical training and learned to fight with weapons, but rhetorical
training dominated an upper-class Roman boy’s education because a successful polit-
ical career depended on the ability to speak persuasively in public. A boy would learn
winning techniques by listening to speeches in political meetings and arguments
in court cases. The orator Cicero said, “[Young men must learn to] excel in public
speaking. It is the tool for controlling men at Rome.”
Public and Private Religion

Romans followed Greek models of religion. Their chief deity, Jupiter, corresponded
to the Greek god Zeus and was seen as a powerful, stern father. Juno (Greek Hera),
queen of the gods, and Minerva (Greek Athena), goddess of wisdom, joined Jupiter
to form the state religion’s central triad. These three deities shared Rome’s most
revered temple.
Protecting Rome’s safety and prosperity was the gods’ major function. They were
supposed to help Rome defeat enemies in war and to support agriculture. Prayers
requested the gods’ aid in winning battles, growing abundant crops, healing disease,
and promoting reproduction for animals and people. In times of crisis, Romans
sought foreign gods for help in bringing salvation to their community, such as when
the government imported the cult of the healing god Asclepius from Greece in
293 b.c.e., praying he would stop an epidemic.
The republic supported many other cults, including that of Vesta, goddess of the
hearth and protector of the family. Her shrine housed Rome’s official eternal flame,
[753–44 b.c.e.
which guaranteed the state’s permanent existence. The Vestal Virgins, six unmarried
women sworn to chastity and Rome’s only female priests, tended Vesta’s shrine. They
earned high status and freedom from their fathers’ control by performing their most
important duty: keeping the flame from going out. If the flame went out, the Romans
assumed that one of the Vestal Virgins had had sex and buried her alive.
Religion was important in Roman family life. Each household maintained small
indoor shrines that housed statuettes of the spirits of the household and those of the
ancestors, protectors of the family’s health and morality. Upper-class families kept
death masks of famous ancestors hanging in the main room and wore them at funer-
als to display their status.
Religious rituals accompanied everyday activities such as breast-feeding babies
or fertilizing crops. Many public religious gatherings promoted the community’s
health and stability. For example, during the Lupercalia festival (whose name recalled
the wolf, luper in Latin, that had reared Romulus and his twin, Remus, according to
legend), near-naked young men streaked around the Palatine hill, lashing any woman
they met with strips of goatskin. Women who had not yet borne children would run
out to be struck, believing this would help them become fertile.
The Romans did not regard the gods as guardians of human morality. As Cicero
explained, “We call Jupiter the Best and Greatest not because he makes us just or
sober or wise but, rather, healthy, unharmed, rich, and prosperous.” Roman officials
preceded important actions with the ritual called taking the auspices, in which they
sought Jupiter’s approval by observing natural signs such as birds’ flight direction or
eating habits, or the appearance of thunder and lightning.
Romans regarded values as divine forces. Pietas (“piety”), for example, meant
devotion and duty to family, friends, the state, and the gods; a temple at Rome held
a statue personifying pietas as a female divinity. The personification of abstract moral
qualities provided a focus for cult rituals.
The duty of Roman religious officials was to maintain peace with the gods.
Socially prominent men served as priests, conducting sacrifices, festivals, and prayers.
Priests were citizens performing public service, not religious professionals. The chief
priest, the pontifex maximus (“greatest bridge-builder”), served as the head of state
religion, a position carrying political prominence. The most prominent religious
ceremonies at which priests presided were sacrifices of large animals, whose meat
would be shared among the worshippers.
Disrespect for religious tradition brought punishment. Admirals, for example,
took the auspices by feeding sacred chickens on their warships: if the birds ate ener-
getically, Jupiter favored the Romans and an attack could begin. In 249 b.c.e., the
commander Publius Claudius Pulcher grew frustrated when his chickens, prob-
ably seasick, refused to eat. Determined to
attack, he finally hurled the birds over-
REVIEW QUESTION What common themes
board in a rage, sputtering, “Well then, let underlay Roman values, and how did Romans’
them drink!” When he promptly suffered behavior reflect those values?
a huge defeat, he was fined heavily.
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
From Monarchy to Republic
Romans’ values and their belief in a divine destiny fueled their astounding growth
from a tiny settlement into the Mediterranean’s greatest power. The Romans spilled
much blood as they gradually expanded their territory through war. From the eighth
to the sixth century b.c.e., they were ruled by kings, but the later kings’ violence
provoked members of the social elite to overthrow the monarchy and create the
republic, which lasted until the first century b.c.e. The republic — res publica (“the
people’s matter” or “the public business”) — distributed power among elected officials
and assemblies of voters. This model of republican government, rather than Athens’s
direct democracy, influenced the founders of the United States in organizing their new
nation as a federal republic. The Roman Republic gained land and population by
winning aggressive wars and by absorbing other peoples. Its economic and cultural
growth depended on contact with many other peoples around the Mediterranean.
Roman Society under the Kings, 753–509 b.c.e.

Seven kings ruled from 753 to 509 b.c.e. and created Rome’s most famous and
enduring government body: the Senate, a group of distinguished men chosen as the
king’s personal council. This council played the same role — advising government
leaders — for a thousand years, as Rome changed from a monarchy to a republic and
back to a monarchy (the empire). It was always a Roman tradition that one should
never make decisions by oneself but only after consulting advisers and friends.
Rome’s expansion depended on taking in outsiders conquered in war and,
uniquely in the ancient world, freed slaves. Though freedmen and freedwomen owed
special obligations to their former owners and could not hold elective office or serve
in the army, they enjoyed all other citizens’ rights, such as legal marriage. Their
children possessed citizenship without any limits. By the late republic, many Roman
citizens were descendants of freed slaves.
By 550 b.c.e., Rome had grown to some forty thousand people and, through war
and diplomacy, had won control of three hundred square miles of surrounding ter-
ritory. Recent archaeological excavation confirms that the Romans had already built
substantial temples to their gods by this date. Rome’s geography propelled its further
expansion. The Romans originated in central Italy, a long peninsula with a mountain
range down its middle like a spine and fertile plains on either side. Rome also con-
trolled a river crossing on a major north–south route. Most important, Rome was
ideally situated for international trade: the Italian peninsula stuck so far out into the
Mediterranean that east–west seaborne traffic naturally encountered it (Map 5.1),
and the city had a good port nearby.
The Italian ancestors of the Romans lived by herding animals, farming, and
hunting. They became skilled metalworkers, especially in iron. The earliest Romans’
neighbors in central Italy were poor villagers, too, and spoke the same language, Latin.
Greeks lived to the south in Italy and Sicily, and contact with them deeply affected
Roman cultural development. Romans developed a love-hate relationship with
[
753–44 b.c.e.
] From Monarchy to Republic 151
Etruscans
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Carthaginians (Phoenicians)
Po R.
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BR
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IA
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the city-states to the south, including
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Mediterranean Sea Latium, called Latins. How did geogra-
Malta phy aid early Roman expansion in the
Italian peninsula?
Greece, admiring its literature and art but looking down on its lack of military unity.
Romans adopted many elements from Greek culture — from the deities for their
national cults to the models for their poetry, prose, and architectural styles.
The Etruscans, a people to the north, also influenced Roman culture. Brightly
colored wall paintings in tombs, portraying funeral banquets and festive games,
reveal the splendor of Etruscan society. In addition to producing their own art, jew-
elry, and sculpture, the Etruscans imported luxurious objects from Greece and the
Near East. Most of the intact Greek vases known today were found in Etruscan tombs,
and Etruscan culture was deeply influenced by that of Greece.
Romans adopted ceremonial features of Etruscan culture, such as musical instru-
ments, religious rituals, and lictors (attendants who walked before the highest offi-
cials carrying the fasces, a bundle of rods around an ax, symbolizing the officials’
right to command and punish). The Romans also borrowed from the Etruscans the
ritual of divination — determining the will of the gods by examining organs of slaugh-
tered animals. Other prominent features of Roman culture were probably part of the
ancient Mediterranean’s shared practices, such as the organization of the Roman
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
Etruscan Tomb of the Leopards

This detail from a wall painting in an Etruscan Tomb shows a banquet in honor of the dead
person buried in the underground chamber. Like Greeks, the banqueters recline on couches,
propped up on an elbow. The servant, shown nude, is carrying a wine jug to refill. Unlike Greeks,
the Etruscans mixed women and men as guests at dinner and drinking parties, a tradition they
passed on to the Romans. The men are depicted with darker skin tones, while the woman has
lighter skin, reflecting the tradition that upper-class women stayed out of the sun to avoid get-
ting a tan. (O. Louis Mazzatenta / National Geographic Creative.)
army (a citizen militia of heavily armed infantry troops fighting in formation) and
the use of an alphabet.
The Early Roman Republic, 509–287 b.c.e.

The social elite’s hatred of monarchy motivated the creation of the Roman Republic.
In 509 b.c.e., the son of the king raped the virtuous Roman woman Lucretia, who
committed suicide to preserve her honor. Her relatives and friends from the social
elite responded by overthrowing the king to found the republic. Thereafter, the
Romans prided themselves on having a political system based on sharing political
power among (male) citizens.
The Romans struggled for 250 years to shape a stable government for the repub-
lic. Roman social hierarchy split the population into two orders: the patricians (a
small group of the most aristocratic families) and the plebeians (the rest of the citi-
zens). These two groups’ conflicts over power created the so-called struggle of the
[753–44 b.c.e.
orders. The struggle finally ended in 287 b.c.e. when plebeians won the right to make
laws in their own assembly.
Patricians constituted a tiny percentage of the population — numbering only
about 130 families — but in the beginning of the republic their inherited status enti-
tled them to control public religion and to monopolize political office. Many patri-
cians were much wealthier than most plebeians. Some plebeians, however, were also
rich, and they resented the patricians’ dominance, especially their ban on intermar-
riage with plebeians. Poor plebeians demanded farmland and relief from crushing
debts. Patricians inflamed tensions by wearing special red shoes to set themselves apart;
later they changed to black shoes adorned with a small metal crescent. To pressure
the patricians, the plebeians periodically refused military service. This tactic worked
because Rome’s army depended on plebeian manpower.
The Roman Forum

The center of this photo shows the Roman Forum, the valley below the Palatine hill (on the right)
and the Capitoline hill (out of the picture at the bottom) that from the earliest days of the city
served as the central space for meetings of all kinds. Over the centuries, it became crowded
with buildings designed for political, judicial, and religious purposes; today, they survive only as
ruins. The later version of the meetinghouse of the Roman Senate stands at the lower left edge
of the photo. The huge amphitheater of the Colosseum can be seen in the upper right of the
picture, located just outside the forum. (Italy, Latium Region, Rome, Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater,
aerial view, 70–80 A.D. / De Agostini Picture Library / Publiaer Foto / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
In response to plebeian unrest, the patricians agreed to the earliest Roman law
code. This code, enacted between 451 and 449 b.c.e. and known as the Twelve
Tables, guaranteed greater equality and social mobility. The Twelve Tables prevented
patrician judges from giving judgments in legal cases only according to their own
wishes. The Roman belief in fair laws as the best protection against social strife helped
keep the republic united until the late second century b.c.e.
The voting to elect officials took place around the forum in the city center
(Map 5.2). All officials worked as part of committees, to ensure power sharing. The
highest officials, two elected each year, were called consuls. Their most important
duty was to command the army.
To be elected consul, a man had to win elections all the way up a ladder of
offices (cursus honorum). Before politics, however, came ten years of military service
from about age twenty. The ladder’s first step was getting elected quaestor (a financial
administrator). Next was election as an aedile (supervisors of Rome’s streets, sewers,
aqueducts, temples, and markets). The third step was election as praetor (a powerful
office with judicial and military duties). The most successful praetors competed to
be one of the two consuls elected each year. Praetors and consuls held imperium
(the power to command and punish) and served as army generals. Families with a
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center?
[753–44 b.c.e.
consul among their ancestors were honored as nobles. By 367 b.c.e., the plebeians
had forced passage of a law requiring that at least one of the two consuls be a plebe-
ian. Ex-consuls competed to become one of the censors, elected every five years to
conduct censuses of the citizen body and to appoint new senators. To be eligible for
selection to the Senate, a man had to have been at least a quaestor.
The patricians tried to monopolize the highest offices, but after violent struggle
from about 500 to 450 b.c.e., the plebeians forced the patricians to create ten annually
elected plebeian officials, called tribunes, who could stop actions that would harm
plebeians or their property. The tribunate did not count as a regular ladder office.
Tribunes based their special power on the plebeians’ sworn oath to protect them, and
on their authority to block officials’ actions, prevent laws from being passed, suspend
elections, and contradict the Senate’s advice. The tribunes’ extraordinary power to
veto government action often made them agents of political conflict.
Men competed in elections to win respect and glory, not money. Only well-off
men could serve in government because officials earned no salaries and were
expected to spend their own money to pay for public works and for expensive shows
featuring gladiators and wild animals. In the early republic, officials’ only reward was
respect, but as Romans conquered overseas territory, the desire for money from
plunder overcame many men’s adherence to traditional Roman values of faithfulness
and honesty. By the second century b.c.e., military officers were also enriching them-
selves by extorting bribes as administrators of conquered territories.
The Senate directed government policy by giving advice to the consuls. The
senators’ social standing gave their opinions great weight. To make their status vis-
ible, the senators wore black high-top shoes and robes with a broad purple stripe. If
a consul rejected the Senate’s advice, a political crisis ensued.
Three different assemblies made legislation, conducted elections, and rendered
judgment in certain trials. The Centuriate Assembly, which elected praetors and
consuls, was dominated by patricians and rich plebeians. The Plebeian Assembly,
which excluded patricians, elected the tribunes. In 287 b.c.e., its resolutions, called
plebiscites, became legally binding on all Romans. The Tribal Assembly mixed patri-
cians with plebeians and became the republic’s most important assembly. Each
assembly was divided into groups, with each group comprising a different number
of men based on status and wealth; each group had one vote.
Before assembly meetings, orators gave speeches about issues. Everyone, includ-
ing women and noncitizens, could listen to these pre-vote speeches. The crowd
expressed its opinions by either applauding or hissing. This process mixed a small
measure of democracy with the republic’s oligarchy.
Early on, the praetors decided most legal cases. A separate jury system arose in
the second century b.c.e., and senators repeatedly clashed with other upper-class
Romans over whether these juries should consist exclusively of senators. Accusers
and accused had to speak for themselves in court, or have friends speak for them.
Priests dominated in legal knowledge until the third century b.c.e., when senators
with legal expertise, called jurists, began to offer advice about cases.
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
The Roman Republic’s complex political and judicial system evolved in response to
conflicts over power. Laws could emerge from different assemblies, and legal cases
could be decided by various institutions. Rome had no single highest court, such as the
U.S. Supreme Court, to give final verdicts.
The republic’s stability therefore depended
on maintaining the mos maiorum. Because
REVIEW QUESTION How and why did the
Roman republic develop its complicated they defined this tradition, the most socially
political and judicial systems? prominent and richest Romans dominated
politics and the courts.
Roman Imperialism and Its Consequences

From the fifth to the third century b.c.e., the Romans fought war after war in Italy
until Rome became the most powerful state on the peninsula. In the third and sec-
ond centuries b.c.e., Romans warred far from home in every direction, above all
against Carthage across the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Their success in these
campaigns made Rome the premier power in the Mediterranean by the first cen-
tury b.c.e.
Fear of enemies and the desire for wealth propelled this Roman imperialism, as
modern scholars tend to label the process of expansion of Rome’s power internation-
ally. The senators’ worries about national security spurred them to recommend pre-
emptive attacks against foreign powers. Poor soldiers hoped to pull their families out
of poverty; the elite, who commanded the armies, wanted to strengthen their cam-
paigns for office by acquiring glory and greater wealth.
The state of being at war transformed Roman life. Romans had no literature
until around 240 b.c.e., when contact with conquered peoples stimulated their first
written history and poetry. War’s harshness also influenced Roman art. Repeated
military service away from home created stresses on small farmers and undermined
the stability of Roman society; so, too, did the relocation of numerous citizens and
the importation of countless war captives to work as slaves on wealthy people’s
estates. Rome’s great conquests turned out to be a double-edged sword: they brought
expansion and wealth, but their unexpected social and political consequences dis-
rupted the traditional values and stability of the community.
Expansion in Italy, 500–220 b.c.e.

After defeating their Latin neighbors in the 490s b.c.e., the Romans spent the next
hundred years warring with the nearby Etruscan town of Veii. Their 396 b.c.e. vic-
tory doubled their territory. By the fourth century b.c.e., the Roman infantry legion
of five thousand men had surpassed the Greek and Macedonian infantry phalanx as
an effective fighting force because in the legion’s more flexible battle line the soldiers
were trained to throw javelins from behind their long shields and then rush in to finish
off the enemy with swords. A devastating sack of Rome in 387 b.c.e. by marauding
[753–44 b.c.e.
] Roman Imperialism and Its Consequences 157
Gauls (Celts) from beyond the Alps made Romans 0 100 200 miles
forever fearful of foreign invasion. By around Po R. 0 100 200 kilometers
220 b.c.e., Rome controlled all of Italy south of the Genoa Bologna
Po River, at the northern end of the peninsula.

Tiber
The Romans combined brutality with diplo- R.
Adriatic
macy to control conquered peoples. Sometimes they Sea
Corsica Rome
enslaved the defeated or forced them to surrender
large parcels of land. Other times they offered gen-
Sardinia
erous peace terms to former enemies but required
Tyrrhenian Sea
them to join in fighting against other foes, for which
they received a share of the spoils, mainly slaves Palermo Messana
Sicily
and land.
To increase homeland security, the Romans Roman Roads, 110 b.c.e.
planted numerous colonies of relocated citizens and
constructed roads up and down the peninsula to allow troops to travel faster. By
connecting Italy’s diverse peoples, these settlements promoted a unified culture dom-
inated by Rome. Latin became the common language, although some local tongues
lived on.
Aqueduct at Nîmes in France

The Romans excelled at building complex delivery systems of tunnels, channels, bridges, and
fountains to transport fresh water from far away. One of the best-preserved sections of a major
aqueduct is the so-called Pont-du-Gard near Nîmes (ancient Nemausus) in France, erected in
the late first century B.C.E. to serve the flourishing town there. Built of stones fitted together
without clamps or mortar, the span soars 160 feet high and 875 feet long, carrying water along
its topmost level from 35 miles away in a channel constructed to fall only one foot in height for
every 3,000 feet in length so that the flow would remain steady but gentle. What sort of social
and political organization would be necessary to construct such a system? (Hubertus Kanus /
Science Source)
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
The wealth of its army attracted hordes of people to Rome, where new aqueducts
provided fresh, running water and a massive building program employed many.
By 300 b.c.e., about 150,000 people lived within Rome’s walls (Map 5.2, page 154).
Outside the city, around 750,000 free Roman citizens inhabited various parts of Italy
on land that had been taken from local peoples. Much conquered territory was
declared public land, open to any Roman for grazing cattle.
Rich plebeians and patricians cooperated to exploit the expanding Roman terri-
tories, deriving their wealth from agricultural land and war plunder. Since Rome had
no regular income or inheritance taxes, families could pass down their wealth from
generation to generation freely.
Wars with Carthage and in the East, 264–121 b.c.e.

The Roman Republic fought its three most famous foreign wars against the wealthy
city of Carthage in North Africa, which Phoenicians had founded around 800 b.c.e.
Carthage, governed as a republic like Rome, controlled a powerful empire rich from
farming in Africa and seaborne trade in the Mediterranean. Carthage seemed both
a dangerous rival and a fine prize. Horror at the Carthaginians’ reported tradition of
incinerating infants to placate their gods in times of trouble also fed Romans’ hostil-
ity against people they saw as barbarians.
Rome’s wars with Carthage are called the Punic Wars (from the Latin word for
“Phoenician”). The first one (264–241 b.c.e.) erupted over Sicily, where Carthage
wanted to preserve its trading settlements, while Rome wanted to block Carthaginian
power close to Italy. This long conflict revealed why the Romans won wars: the large
Italian population provided deep manpower reserves, and the government was pre-
pared to sacrifice as many troops, spend as much money, and fight as long as it took
to defeat the enemy. Previously unskilled at naval warfare, the Romans expended
vast sums to build warships to combat Carthage’s experienced navy; they lost more
than five hundred ships and 250,000 men while learning how to win at sea.
The Romans’ victory in the First Punic War made them masters of Sicily, where
they set up their first province (a foreign territory ruled and taxed by Roman offi-
cials). This innovation proved so profitable that they soon seized the islands of Sar-
dinia and Corsica from the Carthaginians to create another province. These first
successful foreign conquests increased the Romans’ appetite for expansion outside
Italy (Map 5.3). Fearing a renewal of Carthage’s power, the Romans cemented alli-
ances with local peoples in Spain, where the Carthaginians were expanding from
their southern trading posts.
The Carthaginians decided to strike back. In the Second Punic War (218–
201 b.c.e.), their general Hannibal terrified the Romans by marching troops and war
elephants over the Alps into Italy. Slaughtering thirty thousand Romans at Cannae
in 216 b.c.e., Hannibal tried to convince Rome’s Italian allies to desert, but most
refused to rebel. Hannibal’s alliance in 215 b.c.e. with the king of Macedonia forced
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
a
Se
ltic
Roman territory:
North B a
Sea c. 500 B.C.E. (victory over Latium)
264 B.C.E. (start of First Punic War)
BRITAIN 241 B.C.E. (end of First Punic War)
Rh
201 B.C.E. (end of Second Punic War)
ine
R.
N 146 B.C.E. (end of Third Punic War)
GERMANIA
133 B.C.E. (territory in Asia Minor given to Rome)
W E
44 B.C.E. (death of Julius Caesar)
S
GAUL S Battle
ATLANTIC L P
A o R.
.
Rhône R
OCEAN P
ILLYRIA
Tiber R.
PY D a nube R.
RE Black Sea
NE Tarquinia
ES Arpinum
Corsica Rome MACEDONIA Byzantium
SPAIN Cannae ARMENIA
EP
Sardinia 216 B.C.E. Pharsalus
IR
48 B.C.E.
U
Pergamum ASIA MINOR
S
Messana
Sicily Corinth Athens
Carthage Carrhae
Rhodes
Tigri
NUMIDIA Zama Med Crete SYRIA
n e a n S e a Cyprus
iterra
s R.
202 B.C.E. Eu
ph
ra
te
s
NORTH AFRICA Jerusalem
R.
0 250 500 miles R.
EGYPT
Nile
MAP 5.3 Roman Expansion, 500–44 b.c.e.

During its first two centuries, the Roman republic used war and diplomacy to extend its power
north and south in the Italian peninsula. In the third and second centuries B.C.E., conflict with
Carthage in the south and west and the Hellenistic kingdoms in the east extended Roman
power outside Italy and led to the creation of provinces from Spain to Greece. The first century
B.C.E. saw the conquest of Syria by Pompey and of Gaul by Julius Caesar.
the Romans to fight on a second front in Greece. Still, they refused to crack despite
Hannibal’s ravaging of Italy from 218 to 203 b.c.e. Invading the Carthaginians’
homeland, the Roman army won the battle of Zama in 202 b.c.e. The Senate forced
Carthage to scuttle its navy, pay huge war indemnities, and hand over its Spanish
territory, rich with silver mines.
The Third Punic War (149–146 b.c.e.) began when the Carthaginians retali-
ated against the aggression of the king of Numidia, a Roman ally. After winning the
war, the Romans heeded the senator Cato’s demand, “Carthage must be destroyed!”
They obliterated the city and converted its territory into a province. This disaster
did not destroy Carthaginian culture, however, and under the Roman Empire this
part of North Africa flourished economically and intellectually, creating a synthesis
of Roman and Carthaginian traditions.
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
The aftermath of the Punic Wars extended Roman power to Spain, North Africa,
Macedonia, Greece, and western Asia Minor. Hannibal’s alliance with the king of
Macedonia had brought Roman troops east of Italy for the first time. After defeating
the Macedonian king for revenge and to prevent any threat of his invading Italy, the
Roman commander proclaimed the “freedom of the Greeks” in 196 b.c.e. to show
respect for Greece’s glorious past. The Greek cities and federal leagues understood
the proclamation to mean that they, as “friends” of Rome, could behave as they liked.
They were mistaken. The Romans expected them to behave as clients and follow
their new patrons’ advice.
The Romans repeatedly intervened to make the kingdom of Macedonia and the
Greeks observe their obligations as clients. The Senate in 146 b.c.e. ordered Corinth
destroyed for asserting its independence and converted Macedonia and Greece into
a province. In 133 b.c.e., a Hellenistic king increased Roman power with a stupen-
dous gift: in his will he bequeathed to Rome his kingdom in western Asia Minor. In
121 b.c.e., the Romans made the lower part of Gaul across the Alps (modern south-
ern France) into a province. By the late first century b.c.e., then, Rome governed
and profited from two-thirds of the Mediterranean region; only the easternmost
Mediterranean lay outside its control (see Map 5.3, page 159).
Greek Influence on Roman Literature and the Arts

Roman imperialism generated extensive cross-cultural contact with Greece. Roman
authors and artists found inspiration in Greek literature and art. The earliest Latin
poetry was a translation of Homer’s Odyssey by a Greek ex-slave, composed some-
time after the First Punic War. About 200 b.c.e., the first Roman historian used
Greek to write his narrative of Rome’s founding and the wars with Carthage.
Many famous early Latin authors were not native Romans but came from dif-
ferent regions of Italy, Sicily, and even North Africa. All found inspiration in Greek
literature. Roman comedies, for example, took their plots and stock characters from
Hellenistic comedy such as that of Menander, which featured jokes about family
life and stereotyped personalities, such as the braggart warrior and the obsessed
lover.
In the mid-second century b.c.e., Cato established Latin prose writing with his
history of Rome, The Origins, and his instructions on running a large farm, On
Agriculture. He predicted that if the Romans adopted Greek values, they would lose
their power. In fact, early Latin literature reflected traditional Roman values. For
example, the path-breaking Latin epic Annals, a poetic version of Roman history by
the poet Ennius, shows the influence of the Greek epic but praises ancestral Roman
traditions, as in this famous line: “The Roman state rests on the ways and the men
of old.” Later Roman writers also took inspiration from Greek literature. The first-
century b.c.e. poet Lucretius wrote On the Nature of Things to persuade people not
to fear death. His ideas reflected Greek philosophy’s “atomic theory,” which said that
matter was composed of tiny, invisible particles. Dying, the poem taught, simply
[
753–44 b.c.e.
meant the dissolving of the union of atoms, which had come together temporarily
to make up a person’s body. There could be no eternal punishment or pain after death
because a person’s soul perished along with the body.
Hellenistic Greek authors inspired Catullus in the first century b.c.e. to write
witty poems ridiculing prominent politicians for their sexual behavior and lamenting
his own disastrous love life. His most famous love poems revealed his obsession with
a married woman named Lesbia. The orator and politician Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.)
wrote speeches, letters, and treatises on political science, philosophy, ethics, and
theology. He adapted Greek philosophy to Roman life and stressed the need to appre-
ciate each person’s uniqueness. His doctrine of humanitas (“humaneness,” “the qual-
ity of humanity”) expressed an ideal for human life based on generous and honest
treatment of others and a commitment to morality based on natural law (the rights
that belong to all people because they are human beings, independent of the differing
laws and customs of different societies).
Greece also influenced Rome’s art and architecture. Hellenistic sculptors had
pioneered a realistic style showing the ravages of age and pain on the human body.
They portrayed only stereotypes, however, such as the “old man” or the “drunken
woman,” not specific people. Their portrait sculpture presented actual individuals in
the best possible light, much like a digitally enhanced photograph today. By contrast,
Roman artists applied Greek realism to male portraiture, as contemporary Etruscan
sculptors also did. They sculpted men without hiding their unflattering features: long
noses, receding chins, deep wrinkles, bald heads, and worried looks. Portraits of
women, by contrast, were more idealized, probably representing the traditional
vision of the bliss of family life. Because the men depicted in the portraits (or their
families) paid for the busts, they may have wanted their faces sculpted realistically —
showing the damage of age and effort — to emphasize how hard they had worked to
serve the republic.
Stresses on Society from Imperialism

The wars of the third and second centuries b.c.e. damaged small farmers, creat-
ing grave social and economic difficulties for the republic. The long deployments
of troops abroad disrupted Rome’s agricultural system, the economy’s foundation. A
farmer absent during a protracted war had to rely on a hired hand or slave to manage
his crops and animals, or have his wife perform farm work in addition to her usual
family responsibilities.
The story of the consul Regulus, who won a great victory in Africa in 256 b.c.e.,
revealed the problems that prolonged absence caused. When the man who managed
Regulus’s farm died while the consul was away fighting, a worker stole all the farm’s
tools and livestock. Regulus begged the Senate to send a replacement fighter so that
he could return to save his wife and children from starving. The senators instead
sent help to preserve Regulus’s family and property because they wanted to keep him
on the battle lines.
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
Ordinary soldiers received no special aid, and economic troubles hit them hard
when, in the second century b.c.e., for unknown reasons, there was no longer enough
farmland to support the population. The rich had deprived the poor of land, but
recent research suggests that an increase in the number of young people created the
crisis. Not all regions of Italy suffered as severely as others, and some impoverished
farmers and their families survived by working as agricultural laborers for others.
Many homeless people, however, relocated to Rome, where the men begged for work
and women made cloth or, in desperation, became prostitutes.
This flood of landless poor created an explosive element in Roman politics by
the late second century b.c.e. The government had to feed its poor citizens to avert
riots, so Rome needed to import grain. The poor’s demand for low-priced (and even-
tually free) food distributed at state expense became one of the most divisive issues
in the late republic.
While the landless poor struggled, imperialism meant political and financial
rewards for Rome’s social elite. The need for commanders to lead military campaigns
Bedroom in a Rich Roman House

This bedroom from about 40 B.C.E. was in the house of a rich Roman family near Naples; it was
buried — and preserved — by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in 79 C.E. The bright paintings
showed a dazzling variety of outdoor scenes and architecture. The stone floor helped create a
sensation of coolness in the summer. (Cubiculum [bedroom] from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Bosco-
reale, c. 50–40 B.C.E. Fresco, Room: 8 ft. ½ in. × 10 ft. 11½ in. × 19 ft. 7¼ in. [265.4 × 334 × 583.9 cm.]. Rogers
Fund, 1903 [03.14.13a-g]. Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA. Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.)
[753–44 b.c.e.
] Civil War and the Destruction of the Republic 163
abroad created opportunities for successful generals to enrich their families. The elite
enhanced their reputations by spending their gains to finance public works that ben-
efited the general population. Building new temples, for example, won praise because
the Romans believed it pleased their gods to have many shrines.
The troubles of small farmers enriched landowners who could buy bankrupt farms
to create large estates. Some landowners also illegally occupied public land carved out
of territory seized from defeated enemies. The rich worked their huge farms, called
latifundia, with free laborers as well as slaves who had been taken captive in the same
wars that displaced so many farmers. The size of the latifundia slave crews made their
periodic revolts so dangerous that the army had to fight hard to suppress them.
The elite profited from Rome’s expansion by filling the governing offices in the
new provinces. Some governors ruled honestly, but others used their power to extort
the locals. Since martial law ruled, no one in the provinces could curb a greedy
governor’s appetite for graft and extortion. Often such offenders escaped punishment
because their fellow senators excused their crimes.
The new opportunities for rich living strained the traditional values of modera-
tion and frugality. Previously, a man could become legendary for his life’s simplicity:
Manius Curius (d. 270 b.c.e.), for example, boiled turnips for his meals in a humble
hut despite his glorious military victories.
Now the elite acquired showy luxuries, REVIEW QUESTION What advantages and
such as large country villas for entertaining disadvantages did Rome’s victories over
friends and clients. Money had become foreign peoples create for both rich and poor
more valuable to them than the republic’s Romans?
ancestral values.
Civil War and the Destruction of the Republic

Conflict among members of the Roman upper class in the late second century b.c.e.
turned politics into a violent competition. This conflict exploded into civil wars in
the first century b.c.e. that destroyed the Roman Republic. Senators introduced vio-
lence to politics by murdering the tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus when the
brothers pushed for reforms to help the poor by giving them land. When a would-be
member of the elite, Gaius Marius, opened military service to the poor to boost his
personal status, his creation of “client armies” undermined faithfulness to the general
good of the community. The people’s unwillingness to share citizenship with Italian
allies sparked a damaging war in Italy. Finally, the competition for power by the
“great men” Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar peaked in destructive civil wars.
The Gracchus Brothers and Violence in Politics, 133–121 b.c.e.

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus based their political careers on pressuring the rich to
make concessions to strengthen the state. Their policies supporting the poor angered
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
many of their fellow members of the social elite. Tiberius explained the tragic cir-
cumstances motivating them:
The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens. . . . But the men who
fight and die for Italy enjoy nothing but the air and light. They wander about
homeless with their wives and children. . . . They fight and die to protect the
wealth and luxury of others. They are called masters of the world, but have
not a lump of earth they call their own.
When Tiberius became tribune in 133 b.c.e., he took the radical step of blocking
the Senate’s will by having the Plebeian Assembly vote to redistribute public land to
landless Romans and to spend the Attalid king’s gift of his kingdom to equip new
farms on the land. Tiberius next announced he would run for reelection as tribune
for the following year, violating the prohibition against consecutive terms. His oppo-
nents therefore led a band of senators and their clients to kill him and many of his
clients, shouting, “Save the Republic.”
Gaius, elected tribune for 123 b.c.e. and, contrary to tradition, again for the next
year, also pushed measures that outraged his fellow elite: more farming reforms,
subsidized prices for grain, public works projects to employ the poor, and colonies
abroad with farms for the landless. His most revolutionary measures proposed
Roman citizenship for many Italians, and new courts to try senators accused of cor-
ruption as provincial governors. The new juries would be manned by equites (“eques-
trians” or “knights”). These were wealthy businessmen whose focus on commerce
instead of government made their interests different from the senators’. Because they
did not serve in the Senate, the equites could convict senators for crimes without
having to face peer pressure.
When the senators blocked Gaius’s plans in 121 b.c.e., he threatened violent
resistance. The senators then advised the consuls “to take all measures necessary to
defend the republic,” meaning they should kill anyone identified as dangerous to
public order. When his enemies came to murder him, Gaius committed suicide by
having a slave cut his throat. The senators then killed hundreds of his supporters.
The conflict over reforms introduced factions (aggressive interest groups) into
Roman politics. Members of the elite now identified themselves as either supporters
of the people, the populares faction, or supporters of “the best,” the optimates fac-
tion. Some chose a faction from genuine allegiance to its policies; others supported
whichever side better promoted their own political advancement. The elite’s splinter-
ing into bitterly hostile factions remained a source of murderous political violence
until the end of the republic.
Marius and the Origin of Client Armies, 107–100 b.c.e.

A new kind of leader arose to meet the need to combat slave revolts and foreign
invasions in the late second and early first centuries b.c.e. The “new man” was an
[
753–44 b.c.e.
upper-class man without a consul among his ancestors, whose ability led him to
fame, fortune, and — his ultimate goal — the consulship.
Gaius Marius (c. 157–86 b.c.e.), from the equites class, set the pattern for the
influential “new man.” Gaining fame for his brilliant military record, Marius won
election as a consul for 107 b.c.e. Marius’s success as a commander, first in North
Africa and next against German tribes attacking southern France and Italy, led the
people to elect him consul six times, breaking all tradition.
For his victories, the Senate voted Marius a triumph, Rome’s ultimate military
honor. In this ceremony, crowds cheered as he rode a chariot through Rome’s streets.
His soldiers shouted obscene jokes about him, to ward off the evil eye at his moment
of supreme glory. Despite Marius’s triumph, the optimates never accepted him as an
equal. His support came from the common people, whom he had won over with his
revolutionary reform of entrance requirements for the army. Previously, only men with
property could usually enroll as soldiers. Marius opened the ranks to proletarians, men
who had no property and could not afford weapons. For them, serving in the army
meant an opportunity to better their life by acquiring plunder and a grant of land.
Marius’s reform created armies that were more loyal to their commander than
to the republic. Poor Roman soldiers behaved like clients following their commander
as patron, who benefited them with plunder. They in turn supported his political
ambitions. Commanders after Marius used client armies to advance their careers
more ruthlessly than he had, accelerating the republic’s internal conflict.
Sulla and Civil War, 91–78 b.c.e.

One such commander, Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c. 138–78 b.c.e.), took advantage of
uprisings by non-Romans in Italy and Asia Minor in the early first century b.c.e. to
use his client army to seize Rome’s highest offices and force the Senate to support
him. His career revealed the dirty secret of politics in the late republic: traditional
values no longer restrained commanders who prized their own advancement over
peace and the good of the community.
The uprisings in Italy occurred because many of Rome’s Italian allies lacked
Roman citizenship and therefore had no vote in decisions that affected them. Their
upper classes also wanted to share the prosperity that war brought to Rome’s citizen
elite. The Roman people rejected the allies’ demand for citizenship, afraid that shar-
ing such status would lessen their own privileges.
The Italians’ discontent erupted in 91–87 b.c.e. in the Social War. They demon-
strated their commitment by the number of their casualties — 300,000 dead. Although
Rome’s army prevailed, the rebels won the political war: the Romans granted citizen-
ship and the vote to all freeborn people in Italy south of the Po River. The Social
War’s bloodshed therefore reestablished Rome’s tradition of strengthening the state
by granting citizenship to outsiders.
Sulla’s generalship in the war won him election as consul for 88 b.c.e. When
Mithridates VI (120–63 b.c.e.), king of Pontus on the Black Sea’s southern coast,
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
Escape from Troy on a Coin of Julius Caesar
This coin minted for Julius Caesar in 47/46 B.C.E. shows
the hero Aeneas escaping from Troy, which the victorious
Greeks were burning down. He carries his elderly father
on his shoulder and the city’s wooden statue of the god-
dess Athena in his right hand. This myth was a famous
example of the Roman value of faithfulness, a quality
that Caesar wanted to claim for himself at the time,
when he was still fighting other Romans for control of the
state as the republic was being torn apart by the violent
conflict among upper-class leaders. (bpk, Berlin / Muenzkabinett,
Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Art Resource, NY.)
rebelled against Roman control and high taxation, Sulla seized his chance. Victory
against Mithridates would mean capturing unimaginable riches from Asia Minor’s
cities and allow him to restore his patrician but impoverished family’s status. When
the Senate gave Sulla the command, Marius had it transferred to himself by plebi-
scite. Outraged, Sulla marched his client army against Rome. All his officers except
one deserted him in horror at this shameful attack, but his common soldiers followed
him. After capturing Rome, Sulla killed or exiled his opponents. He let his men
rampage through the city and then led them off to Asia Minor, ignoring a summons
to stand trial and sacking Athens on the way. In Sulla’s absence, Marius embarked
on his own reign of terror in Rome to try to regain his former power. In 83 b.c.e.,
Sulla returned victorious, having allowed his soldiers to plunder Asia Minor. Civil
war erupted for two years until Sulla crushed his enemies at home.
Sulla then exterminated his opponents. He used proscription — posting a list of
people accused of being traitors so that anyone could hunt them down and execute
them. Because proscribed men’s property was confiscated, the victors fraudulently
added to the list anyone whose wealth they coveted. The terrorized Senate appointed
Sulla dictator — an emergency office supposed to be held only temporarily — and
gave him permanent immunity from prosecution. Sulla reorganized the government
to favor the optimates — his social class — by making senators the only ones allowed
to judge cases against their colleagues and forbidding tribunes from sponsoring leg-
islation or holding any other office after their term.
Sulla’s career revealed the strengths and weaknesses of Roman values. First, the
purpose of war had changed from defending the community to accumulating plun-
der for common soldiers as well as commanders. Second, the patron-client system
led proletarian soldiers to feel stronger ties of loyalty to their generals than to the
republic.
Finally, the traditional competition for status worked both for and against politi-
cal stability. When that value motivated men to seek office to promote the commu-
nity’s welfare, it promoted social unity and prosperity. But pushed to its extreme, the
contest for individual prestige and wealth destroyed the republic.
[753–44 b.c.e.
Julius Caesar and the Collapse of the Republic, 83–44 b.c.e.

Powerful generals after Sulla proclaimed their loyalty to the community while in
reality ruthlessly pursuing their own advancement. The competition for power and
money between Gnaeus Pompey and Julius Caesar, two Roman aristocrats, generated
the civil war that ended the Roman Republic and led to the return of monarchy.
Pompey (106–48 b.c.e.) was a brilliant general. In his early twenties he won
victories supporting Sulla. In 71 b.c.e., he won the mop-up battles defeating a mas-
sive slave rebellion led by a gladiator named Spartacus, stealing the glory from the
real victor, Marcus Licinius Crassus. (Spartacus had terrorized southern Italy for
two years and defeated consuls with his army of 100,000 escaped slaves.) Pompey
shattered tradition by demanding and receiving a consulship for 70 b.c.e., even
though he was nowhere near the legal age of forty-two and had not been elected to
any lower post on the ladder of offices. Three years later, he received a command to
exterminate the pirates who were then infesting the Mediterranean, a task he accom-
plished in a matter of months. This success made him wildly popular with many
groups: the urban poor, who depended on a steady flow of imported grain; mer-
chants, who depended on safe sea lanes; and coastal communities, which were vul-
nerable to pirates’ raids. In 66 b.c.e., he defeated Mithridates, who was still stirring
up trouble in Asia Minor. By annexing Syria as a province in 64 b.c.e., Pompey ended
the Seleucid kingdom and extended Rome’s power to the Mediterranean’s eastern
coast.
People compared Pompey to Alexander the Great and added Magnus (“the
Great”) to his name. He ignored the tradition of consulting the Senate about con-
quering and administering foreign territories, and behaved like an independent king.
He summed up his attitude by replying to some foreigners who criticized his actions
as unjust: “Stop quoting the laws to us,” he told them. “We carry swords.”
Pompey’s enemies at Rome undermined his popularity by seeking the people’s
support, declaring sympathy for the problems of citizens in financial trouble. By the
60s b.c.e., Rome’s urban population had soared to more than half a million. Hun-
dreds of thousands of the poor lived crowded together in slum apartments, surviving
on subsidized food distributions. Jobs were scarce. Danger haunted the streets
because the city had no police force. Even many formerly wealthy property owners
were in trouble: Sulla’s confiscations had caused land values to plummet and pro-
duced a credit crunch by flooding the real estate market with properties for sale.
The senators, jealous of Pompey’s glory, blocked his reorganization of the former
Seleucid kingdom and his distribution of land to his army veterans. Pompey then
negotiated with his fiercest political rivals, Crassus and Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.). In
60 b.c.e., they formed an unofficial arrangement called the First Triumvirate (“group
of three”). Pompey forced through laws confirming his plans, reinforcing his status as
a great patron. Caesar got the consulship for 59 b.c.e. and a special command in Gaul,
where he could build his own client army. Crassus received financial breaks for the
Roman tax collectors in Asia Minor, who supported him politically and financially.
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
This coalition of political rivals revealed how private relationships had largely
replaced communal values in politics. To cement their political bond, Caesar arranged
to have his daughter, Julia, marry Pompey in 59 b.c.e., even though she had been
engaged to another man. Pompey soothed Julia’s jilted fiancé by offering the hand
of his own daughter, who had been engaged to yet somebody else. Through these
marital machinations, the two powerful antagonists now had a common interest: the
fate of Julia, Caesar’s only daughter and Pompey’s new wife. (Pompey had earlier
divorced his second wife after Caesar allegedly seduced her.) Pompey and Julia
apparently fell deeply in love in their arranged marriage. As long as Julia lived,
Pompey’s affection for her kept him from breaking his alliance with her father.
During the 50s b.c.e., Caesar won his soldiers’ loyalty with victories and plunder
in Gaul, which he added to the Roman provinces. His political enemies in Rome
dreaded his return, and the bond allying him to Pompey shattered in 54 b.c.e. when
Julia died in childbirth. The two leaders’ rivalry exploded into violence: gangs of
their supporters battled each other in Rome’s streets. The violence became so bad in
53 b.c.e. that it prevented elections. The First Triumvirate dissolved, and in 52 b.c.e.
Caesar’s enemies convinced the Senate to make Pompey consul alone, breaking the
republic’s long tradition of two consuls sharing power at the head of the state.
Civil war exploded when the Senate ordered Caesar to surrender his command.
Like Sulla, Caesar led his army against Rome. In 49 b.c.e., when he crossed the
Rubicon River, the official northern boundary of Italy, he uttered the famous words
signaling there was now no turning back: “We have rolled the dice.” His troops and
the people in the countryside cheered him on. He had many backers in Rome, with
the masses counting on his legendary generosity for handouts and impoverished
members of the elite hoping to regain their fortunes.
The support for Caesar convinced Pompey and most senators to flee to Greece.
Caesar entered Rome peacefully, left soon thereafter to defeat enemies in Spain, and
then sailed to Greece. There he nearly lost the war when his supplies ran out, but
his soldiers stayed loyal even when they were reduced to eating bread made from
roots. When Pompey saw what Caesar’s men were willing to live on, he cried, “I am
fighting wild beasts.” Caesar defeated Pompey and the Senate at the battle of Phar-
salus in central Greece in 48 b.c.e. Pompey fled to Egypt, where the pharaoh’s min-
isters treacherously murdered him.
Caesar then invaded Egypt, winning a difficult campaign that ended when he
restored Cleopatra VII (69–30 b.c.e.) to the Egyptian throne. As ruthless as she was
intelligent, Cleopatra charmed Caesar into sharing her bed and supporting her rule.
Their love affair shocked the general’s friends and enemies alike: they thought Rome
should seize power from foreigners, not share it with them.
By 45 b.c.e., Caesar had won the civil war. He apparently believed that only a
sole ruler could end the chaotic violence of the factions, but the republic’s oldest
tradition prohibited monarchy. So Caesar decided to rule as a king without the title,
taking instead the traditional Roman title of dictator, used for a temporary emer-
gency ruler. In 44 b.c.e., he announced he would continue as dictator without a term
[753–44 b.c.e.
Ides of March Coin Celebrating Caesar’s Murder

Coins were the most widely distributed form of art and communication
in the Roman world. Their messages became topical and contempo-
rary during the crisis of the late republic. Caesar’s assassins, led
by Marcus Junius Brutus, issued this coin celebrating the murder
and their claim to be liberators. The daggers refer to their method,
while the conical cap stands for liberation — it was the kind of
headgear worn by slaves who had won their freedom. The inscrip-
tion gives the date of the assassination, the Ides of March (March
15). What political message was intended by putting pictures of mur-
der weapons on a coin? (© The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY.)
limit. “I am not a king,” he insisted. The distinction, however, was meaningless. As

ongoing dictator, he controlled the government. Elections for offices continued, but
Caesar manipulated the results by recommending candidates to the assemblies,
which his supporters dominated.
As sole ruler, Caesar imposed a moderate cancellation of debts; a cap on the
number of people eligible for subsidized grain; a large program of public works,
including public libraries; colonies for his veterans in Italy and abroad; plans to rebuild
Corinth and Carthage as commercial centers; and citizenship for more non-Romans.
Caesar treated his opponents mildly, thereby obligating them to become his grateful
clients. Caesar’s decision not to seek revenge earned him unheard-of honors, such
as a special golden seat in the Senate house and the renaming of the seventh month
of the year after him (July). He also regularized the Roman calendar by having each
year include 365 days, a calculation based on an ancient Egyptian calendar that forms
the basis for our modern one.
Caesar’s dictatorship satisfied the people but outraged the optimates. They
resented being dominated by one of their own, a “traitor” who had deserted to the
people’s faction. Some senators, led by Caesar’s former close friend Marcus Junius
Brutus (85–42 b.c.e.), conspired to murder him. They stabbed Caesar repeatedly in
the Senate house on March 15 (the Ides of March), 44 b.c.e. When Brutus struck
him, Caesar gasped his last words — in Greek: “You, too, son?” He collapsed dead at
the foot of a statue of Pompey.
The liberators, as they called themselves, had no new plans for government.
They apparently expected the republic to revive automatically after Caesar’s mur-
der, ignoring the political violence of the past century and the deadly imbalance in
Roman values, with “great men” placing their competitive private interests above
the community’s well-being. The liberators were stunned when the people rioted at
Caesar’s funeral to vent their anger against
the upper class that had robbed them of
their generous patron. Instead of then
REVIEW QUESTION What factors generated
forming a united front, the elite resumed the conflicts that caused the Roman Republic’s
their personal vendettas. The traditional destruction?
values of the republic failed to save it.
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
Conclusion
The two most remarkable features of the Roman Republic’s history were its tre-
mendous expansion and its violent disintegration. Rome expanded to control vast
territories because it incorporated outsiders, its small farmers produced agricul-
tural surpluses to support a growing population and army, and its leaders respected
the traditional values stressing the common good. The Romans’ willingness to
endure great loss of life and property — the proof of faithfulness — made their army
unstoppable: Rome might lose battles, but never wars. Because wars of conquest
brought profits to leaders and the common people alike, peace seemed a wasted
opportunity.
But the victories over Carthage and in Macedonia and Greece had unexpected
consequences. Long military service ruined many farming families, and poor people
flocked to Rome to live on subsidized food, becoming an unstable political force.
Members of the upper class increased their competition with one another for the
career opportunities presented by constant war. These rivalries became dangerous to
the state when successful generals began acting as patrons to client armies of poor
troops. Violence and murder became common in political disputes. Communal val-
ues were submerged in the blood of civil war. No one could have been optimistic
about the chances for an enduring peace following Caesar’s assassination in 44 b.c.e.
It would have seemed an impossible dream to imagine that Caesar’s grandnephew
and adopted son, Octavian — a teenage student at the time of the murder — would
eventually bring peace by creating a new political system disguised as the restoration
of the old republic.
[753–44 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 171
N
BRITAIN
GERMANIA W E
Alesia Danub S
eR
52 B.C.E. BOSPORAN
KINGDOM
.
GAUL Bibracte S
58 B.C.E. L P
ATLANTIC Avaricum A
52 B.C.E.
OCEAN Gergovia
52 B.C.E.
Arar River Po R.
58 B.C.E.
Rubicon
PY R E Black Sea
NEE R.
S
Ilerda
49 B.C.E.
Rome
Dyrrhacium Philippi ARMENIA
48 B.C.E. 42 B.C.E. Zela
SPAIN GREECE
47 B.C.E.
Pharsalus ASI A MI NO R
48 B.C.E. Carrhae
Munda
PAR PIR Tig IA s R.

45 B.C.E. Corinth 53 B.C.E.
EM
ES
TH E r i s
Carthage
O
Med SYRIA
IAN R.
PO
NUMIDIA Thapsus iter
TA r
46 B.C.E. ranea Eu
n
M ate
Sea ph
MAURETANIA
Alexandria Jerusalem
NO RTH AFR ICA 47 B.C.E.
JUDAEA
CYRENAICA
Roman territory at Caesar’s death, 44 B.C.E.
Ni l
Roman client states EG Y PT
Red
eR
.
Caesar’s major battles in Gaul 0 250 500 miles
Sea
Major battles of the civil war 0 250 500 kilometers
MAPPING THE WEST The Roman World at the End of the Republic, 44 b.c.e.
By the time of Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C.E., the territory that would be the Roman
Empire was almost complete. Caesar’s young relative Octavian (the future Augustus) would
conquer and add Egypt in 30 B.C.E. Geography, distance, and formidable enemies were the
primary factors inhibiting further expansion — which Romans never stopped wanting, even when
lack of money and political discord rendered it purely theoretical. The deserts of Africa and the
once again powerful Persian kingdom in the Near East worked against expansion southward or
eastward, while trackless forests and fierce resistance from local inhabitants made expansion
into central Europe and the British Isles impossible to maintain.
Chapter 5 Review
mos maiorum (p. 144) Twelve Tables (p. 154) equites (p. 164)
patron-client system (p. 145) ladder of offices (p. 154) populares (p. 164)
patria potestas (p. 146) plebiscites (p. 155) optimates (p. 164)
res publica (p. 150) Cicero (p. 161) proletarians (p. 165)
orders: patricians and humanitas (p. 161) First Triumvirate (p. 167)
plebeians (p. 152)
Review Questions
1. What common themes underlay Roman values, and how did Romans’ behavior reflect
those values?
2. How and why did the Roman Republic develop its complicated political and judicial
systems?
3. What advantages and disadvantages did Rome’s victories over foreign peoples create
for both rich and poor Romans?
4. What factors generated the conflicts that caused the Roman Republic’s destruction?
Making Connections
1. How did the political and social values of the Roman Republic compare to those of the
Greek city-state in the Classical Age?
2. What were the positive and the negative consequences of war for the Roman republic?
3. How can people decide what is the best balance between individual advancement and
communal stability?
Scholars continue to debate the causes and the effects of the rise and fall of the Roman
Republic, focusing in particular on the intended and unintended political, social, and cultural
consequences of the many wars that the Romans fought in this period.
Beard, Mary, et al. Religions of Rome. 2 vols. 1998.
Billows, Richard. Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome. 2008.
*Caesar. The Civil War. Trans. John Carter. 1997.
*Cicero. On the Good Life. Trans. Michael Grant. 1971.
Cornell, Tim. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars
(c. 1000–264 B.C.). 1995.
Daily life (and more): http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/romanpages.html
Earl, Donald. The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome. 1967.
Flower, Harriet. Roman Republics. 2009.
Gardner, Jane. Women in Roman Law and Society. 1986.
Goldworthy, Adrian. The Punic Wars. 2000.
Haynes, Sybill. Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History. 2005.
*Primary source.
172
[753–44 b.c.e.
Important Events
753 B.C.E. Traditional date of Rome’s founding as monarchy

509 B.C.E. Roman Republic is established
509–287 B.C.E. Struggle of the orders
451–449 B.C.E. Creation of Twelve Tables, Rome’s first written law code
396 B.C.E. Defeat of Etruscan city of Veii; first great expansion of Roman
territory
387 B.C.E. Gauls sack Rome
264–241 B.C.E. Rome and Carthage fight First Punic War
220 B.C.E. Rome controls Italy south of Po River
218–201 B.C.E. Rome and Carthage fight Second Punic War
168–149 B.C.E. Cato writes The Origins, first history of Rome in Latin
149–146 B.C.E. Rome and Carthage fight Third Punic War
146 B.C.E. Carthage and Corinth are destroyed
133 B.C.E. Tiberius Gracchus is elected tribune; assassinated in same year
91–87 B.C.E. Social War between Rome and its Italian allies
60 B.C.E. First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus
49–45 B.C.E. Civil war, with Caesar the victor
45–44 B.C.E. Cicero writes his philosophical works on humanitas
44 B.C.E. Caesar is appointed dictator with no term limit; assassinated in
same year
Consider two events: Cato writes The Origins (168–149 B.C.E.) and Carthage and
Corinth are destroyed (146 B.C.E.). What attitudes prompted Cato’s writings, and how
were similar ideas reflected in the destruction of Carthage and Corinth?
Hoyos, Dexter. The Carthaginians. 2010.

Martin, Thomas R. Ancient Rome: From Romulus to Justinian. 2012.
*Plutarch. The Fall of the Roman Republic. Trans. Rex Warner. Rev. ed. 2006.
Ramage, Nancy H., and Andrew Ramage. Roman Art. 2008.
Roller, Duane W. Cleopatra: A Biography. 2010.
Rosenstein, Nathan, and Robert Morstein-Marx, eds. A Companion to the Roman Republic.
2006.
The Creation of the
6
Roman Empire
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
I
n 203 c.e., Vibia Perpetua, wealthy and twenty-two years old, was confined in a
Carthage jail, nursing her infant. She had been condemned to death for treason after
refusing to sacrifice to the gods for the Roman emperor’s health and safety. Perpetua
recorded what happened when the local governor tried to persuade her to save her life:
My father came carrying my son,
Mosaic of Chariot Racing shouting “Perform the sacrifice; take
Racing four-horse chariots was the pity on your baby!” Then the governor
most popular (and most expensive) said, “Think of your old father; show
sport in the Roman Empire. This
pity for your little child! Offer the sac-
mosaic, a picture made from thou-
sands of tiny colored tiles put rifice for the imperial family’s well
together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, being.” “I refuse,” I answered. “Are you
shows a driver holding a branch signi- a Christian?” asked the governor. “Yes.”
fying that he has just won a big race. When my father would not stop try-
Two attendants or race officials are in
ing to change my mind, the governor
the background. Hundreds of thou-
sands of spectators attended the
ordered him thrown to the earth and
largest races at the Circus Maximus whipped with a rod. I felt sorry for my
in Rome, but many cities across the father; it seemed they were beating me.
empire had tracks. Romans loved the I pitied his pathetic old age.
races’ action and potential violence,
as chariots swerved at top speed Gored by a wild cow and stabbed by a gladi-
around and around the tight turns of ator, Perpetua died because she placed her
the track and sometimes collided in faith above her duty of loyalty to her family
bloody accidents. (Museo Arqueologico
Nacional, Madrid, Spain / De Agostini Picture
and the state.
Library / Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.) Rome’s rulers during what we call the
Roman Empire punished disloyalty because
it threatened to reignite the civil wars that
had destroyed the Roman Republic. The refusal of some Christians such as Perpetua
to perform traditional sacrifice was considered treason because Romans believed the
gods would punish them for sheltering people who refused to worship them and
rejected the traditional religion.
175
176 Chapter 6 The Creation of the Roman Empire
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
The transformation from republic to empire opened with seventeen years of civil
war after Julius Caesar’s death in 44 b.c.e. Finally, in 27 b.c.e., his adopted son,
Octavian (thereafter known as Augustus), created a disguised monarchy to end the
violence, declaring that he had restored the republic. Augustus’s new system retained
traditional institutions for sharing power — the Senate, the consuls, the courts — but
in reality he and his successors governed like kings ruling an empire.
Augustus’s innovations brought peace for two hundred years, except for a struggle
between generals for rule in 69 c.e. This Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”) allowed
agriculture and trade to flourish in the provinces, but paying for the military eventu-
ally weakened Rome. Previously, foreign wars had won Romans huge amounts of
land and money, but now the distances were too great and the enemies too strong.
The army was no longer an offensive weapon for expansion that brought in new
taxes but instead a defense force that had to be paid for out of existing revenues.
The financial strain drained the treasury and destabilized the government. Chris-
tianity emerged as a new religion that would slowly transform the Roman world, but
it also created tension because the growing
presence of Christians made other Romans
CHAPTER FOCUS How did Augustus’s
worry about punishment from the gods.
“restored republic” successfully keep the
peace for more than two centuries, and why In the third century c.e., a crisis developed
did it fail in the third century? when generals competing to rule reignited
civil war that lasted fifty years.
From Republic to Empire, 44 b.c.e.–14 c.e.

It takes time for a new tradition to take hold. Augustus created his new political
system gradually; following his favorite saying, Augustus “made haste slowly.” He
succeeded because he reinvented government, guaranteed the army’s support, did
not hesitate to use violence to win power, and built political legitimacy by commu-
nicating an image of himself as a dedicated leader and patron. By declaring his respect
for tradition and establishing his disguised monarchy as Rome’s political system, he
saved the state from anarchy. Succeeding where Caesar had failed, Augustus pre-
served his power by making the new look old.
Civil War, 44–27 b.c.e.

The main competitors in the civil war after Julius Caesar’s death were Octavian (the
future Augustus), Caesar’s eighteen-year-old grandnephew and adopted son, and
Caesar’s friend Mark Antony. Octavian won over Caesar’s soldiers by promising them
money he had inherited from their general. Marching them to Rome, the teenage
Octavian forced the Senate to make him consul in 43 b.c.e., ignoring the ladder of
offices.
Octavian and Mark Antony joined with a general named Lepidus to eliminate
rivals. In 43 b.c.e., they formed the Second Triumvirate to reorganize the govern-
[
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] From Republic to Empire, 44 b.c.e.–14 c.e. 177
ment. They murdered many of their enemies, including some of their own relatives,
and seized their property.
Octavian and Antony then forced Lepidus out and fought each other. Antony
controlled the eastern provinces by allying with the ruler of Egypt, Queen Cleopa-
tra VII (69–30 b.c.e.), who had earlier allied with Julius Caesar. Dazzled by her
intelligence and magnetism, Antony, who was married to Octavian’s sister, fell in love
with Cleopatra. Octavian rallied support by claiming that Antony planned to make
this foreign queen Rome’s ruler. He made the residents of Italy and the western
provinces swear an oath of allegiance to him. Octavian’s victory in the naval battle
of Actium in northwest Greece in 31 b.c.e. won the war. Cleopatra and Antony fled
to Egypt, where they both committed suicide in 30 b.c.e. The general Mark Antony
first stabbed himself, bleeding to death in his lover’s embrace. Queen Cleopatra then
ended her life by allowing a poisonous snake to bite her. Octavian’s revenues from
the capture of Egypt made him Rome’s richest citizen.
The Creation of the Principate, 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.

In 27 b.c.e., Octavian proclaimed that he “gave back the state from [his] own power
to the control of the Roman Senate and the people” and announced they should
decide how to preserve it. Recognizing Octavian’s power, the senators asked him to
safeguard the state, granted him special civil and military powers, and bestowed on
him the honorary title Augustus, meaning “divinely favored.”
Augustus changed Rome’s political system, but he retained the name republic
and maintained the appearance of representative government. Citizens elected con-
suls, the Senate gave advice, and the assemblies met. Augustus occasionally served
as consul, but mostly he let others hold that office so they could enjoy its prestige.
He concealed his monarchy by referring to himself only with the honorary title
princeps, meaning “first man” (among social equals), a term of status from the repub-
lic. The Romans used the Latin word princeps to describe the position that we call
emperor, and so the Roman government in the early empire after 27 b.c.e. is most
accurately labeled the principate. Each new princeps was supposed to be chosen only
with the Senate’s approval, but in practice each ruler chose his own successor, in the
way a royal family decides who will be king. To preserve the tradition that no official
should hold more than one post at a time, Augustus as princeps had the Senate grant
him the powers, though not the office, of a tribune. In 23 b.c.e., the Senate agreed
that Augustus should also have a consul’s power to command (imperium): in fact,
his power would be superior to that held by the actual consuls.
Holding the power of a tribune and a power even greater than that of a consul
meant that Augustus could rule the state without filling any formal executive political
office. Augustus insisted that people obeyed him not out of fear but out of respect
for his auctoritas (“moral authority”). Since Augustus realized that symbols affect
people’s perception of reality, he dressed and acted modestly, like a regular citizen,
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
not an arrogant king. Livia, his wife, played a prominent role as his political adviser
and partner in publicly upholding old-fashioned values. In fact, Augustus and the
emperors who came after him were able to exercise supreme power because they
controlled the army and the treasury. Later Roman emperors held the same power
but continued to refer to the state as the republic; the senators and the consuls con-
tinued to exist, and the rulers continued to pretend to respect them.
Augustus made the military the foundation of the emperor’s power by turn-
ing the republic’s citizen militia into a professional, full-time army and navy. He
established regular lengths of service and retirement benefits, making the emperor
the troops’ patron and solidifying their loyalty to him. To pay the added costs,
Augustus imposed Rome’s first inheritance tax on citizens, angering the rich. He also
stationed several thousand soldiers in Rome for the first time ever. These soldiers —
the praetorian guard — would later play a crucial role in selecting the next emperor
when the current one died. Augustus meant them to provide security for him and
prevent rebellion in the capital by serving as a visible reminder that the superiority
of the princeps was backed by the threat of armed force.
Augustus constantly promoted his image as patron and public benefactor. He
used media as small as coins and as large as buildings. As a mass-produced medium
for official messages, Roman coins functioned like modern political advertising.
They proclaimed slogans such as “Father of His Country,” to stress Augustus’s moral
authority, or “Roads have been built,” to emphasize his care for the public.
Augustus used his personal fortune to erect spectacular public buildings in
Rome. The huge Forum of Augustus, dedicated in 2 b.c.e., best illustrates his skill
at communicating messages through architecture (Figure 6.1). This public gather-
ing space centered on a temple to Mars, the god of war. Two-story colonnades held
statues of famous Roman heroes to serve as inspirations to the young. Augustus’s
forum hosted religious rituals and the coming-of-age ceremonies of upper-class boys.
As a symbol, it demonstrated his justifications for ruling: a new age of peace and
security through military power, devotion to the gods protecting Rome, respect for
tradition, and generosity in spending money on public works.
Augustus used the paternalism of the patron-client system to make the princeps
everyone’s most important patron, possessing the moral authority to guide their lives.
When in 2 b.c.e. the Senate and the people proclaimed Augustus “Father of His
Country,” the title emphasized that the emperor governed like a father: stern but
caring, expecting obedience and loyalty from his children, and taking care of them
in return. The goal was stability and order, not freedom.
Augustus ruled until his death at age seventy-five in 14 c.e. As the historian
Tacitus (c. 56–120 c.e.) remarked, by the time Augustus died after a reign of forty-
one years, “almost no one was still alive who had seen the republic.” His longevity,
military innovations, support for the masses, and manipulation of political symbols
had allowed Augustus to create the Roman Empire.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Temple of Mars Ultor Colonnades (porches) Statues of FIGURE 6.1 Cutaway

lined with columns Roman heroes Reconstruction of the
Forum of Augustus
Augustus built this large forum
(120 × 90 yards) to commemo-
rate his victory over the assas-
sins of Julius Caesar. The center-
piece was a marble temple to
Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”),
and inside the temple were stat-
ues of Mars, Venus (the divine
ancestor of Julius Caesar), and
Julius Caesar (as a god), as well
Unroofed area as works of art and Caesar’s
sword. The two spaces flanking
the temple featured statues of
Aeneas and Romulus, Rome’s
founders. The high stone wall
behind the temple protected it
from fire, a constant threat in the
crowded neighborhood behind.
Daily Life in the Rome of Augustus

In Augustan Rome’s population of nearly one million, many had no regular jobs and
too little to eat. The streets were packed: “One man jabs me with his elbow, another
whacks me with a pole; my legs are smeared with mud, and big feet step on me from
all sides,” one poet wrote of walking in Rome. To ease congestion in the narrow
streets, the city banned wagons in the daytime.
Most residents lived in small apartments in multistoried buildings called islands.
The first floors housed shops, bars, and restaurants. The higher the floor, the cheaper
the rent. The wealthy, who lived at ground level, had piped-in water. The less fortunate
had to fill water jugs at public fountains, to which aqueducts delivered fresh water,
and then lug the heavy jugs up the stairs. Most people had to use the public latrines
or keep buckets for toilets at home and then carry the waste down to the streets for
sewage collectors. Sanitation was a problem in this city that generated sixty tons of
human waste daily.
However, low fees for public baths meant that almost everyone could bathe regu-
larly. Baths were centers for exercising and socializing. Bathers progressed through
a series of increasingly warm areas until they reached a sauna-like room. They swam
naked in their choice of either hot or cold pools. Men and women bathed apart.
Augustus improved public safety and health. He instituted the first public fire
department in Western history. He also established Rome’s first permanent police
force. He greatly enlarged the city’s main sewer, but its contents still emptied untreated
into the Tiber River. Also, poor people often left human and animal corpses in the
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
A Roman Street
Like Pompeii, the town of
Herculaneum on the Bay of
Naples was frozen in time
by the volcanic eruption of
Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E.
Mud from the eruption buried
the town and preserved its
buildings. Herculaneum’s
straight roads paved with flat
stones and sidewalks were
typical for a Roman town.
Balconies jutted from the
houses, offering a shady
viewing point for life in the
streets. Roman houses often
enclosed a garden courtyard
instead of having yards in
front or back. Why do you
think urban homes had
this arrangement? (Scala /
Art Resource, NY.)
streets, to be gnawed by birds and dogs. Flies and no refrigeration contributed to

frequent gastrointestinal ailments. The wealthy splurged on luxuries such as snow
rushed from the mountains to ice their drinks and slaves to clean their houses,
which were built around courtyards and gardens. Roman architects built public
structures with concrete, brick, and stone that lasted centuries, but crooked contrac-
tors cheated on materials for private buildings; therefore, apartment buildings some-
times collapsed. Augustus imposed a maximum height of seventy feet on new apart-
ment buildings to limit the danger.
As the people’s patron, Augustus paid for grain to feed the poor, extending the
government’s traditional distribution of food to 250,000 heads of households. From
this grain, people made bread or soup, adding beans, leeks, or cheeses if they could
afford them; they washed down these meals with cheap wine. The rich ate more
costly food, such as roast pork or seafood with honey and vinegar sauce.
Wealthy Romans increasingly spent money on luxuries and political careers
instead of raising families. Fearing the falling birthrate would destroy the social elite
[
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
on whom Rome relied for public service, Augustus granted privileges to the parents
of three or more children. He criminalized adultery, even exiling his own daughter —
his only child — and a granddaughter for sex scandals. His legislation failed, however,
and the prestigious old families dwindled over time. With each generation, three-
quarters of senatorial families lost their official status by either spending all their
money or dying off without having children. The emperors filled the open places in
the social hierarchy and in the Senate with equites and provincials.
Since imperial Rome still gave citizenship to freed slaves, all slaves hoped some-
day to become a free Roman citizen, regardless of how they had originally become
enslaved (by being captured in war, stolen from their home region by slave trad-
ers, or born to slave women as the owner’s property). Freed slaves’ descendants, if
they became wealthy, could become members of the social elite. This policy of giv-
ing citizenship to former slaves meant that eventually most Romans had slave
ancestors.
The harshness of slaves’ lives varied widely. Slaves in agriculture and manu-
facturing had a grueling existence, while household slaves lived more comfortably.
Modestly prosperous families owned one or two slaves, while rich houses and the
imperial palace owned large numbers. Domestic slaves were often women, working
as nurses, maids, kitchen helpers, and clothes makers. Some male slaves ran businesses
for their masters and were often allowed to keep part of the profits, which they could
save to purchase their freedom. Women had less opportunity to earn money, though
masters sometimes granted tips for sexual favors to both female and male slaves.
Many female prostitutes were slaves working for their owner in a brothel. Slaves with
savings would sometimes buy other slaves, especially to have a mate; they were
barred from legal marriage, because they and their children remained their master’s
property, but they could live as a shadow family. Some masters’ tomb inscriptions
express affection for a slave, but if slaves attacked their owner, the punishment was
death.
Violence featured in much of Roman public entertainment. The emperors pro-
vided shows featuring hunters killing wild beasts, animals mangling condemned
criminals, mock naval battles in flooded arenas, gladiatorial combats, and wreck-
filled chariot races. Spectators were seated according to their social rank and gen-
der. The emperor and senators sat up front, while women and the poor were in the
upper tiers.
Criminals and slaves could be forced to fight as gladiators, but free people also
voluntarily competed, hoping to become celebrities and win prizes. Most gladiators
were men, though women could fight other women until such matches were banned
around 200 c.e. Gladiators were often wounded or killed in the fights, but their
contests rarely required a fight to the death, unless they were captives or criminals.
To make the bouts unpredictable, pairs of gladiators often competed with different
weapons. One favorite match pitted a lightly armored “net man” with a net and a
trident against a heavily armored “fish man,” so named from his helmet design. Bet-
ting was popular, and the crowds were rowdy.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Gladiator after a Kill

This first-century C.E. mosaic covered a villa floor in North Africa. It shows a gladiator staring at
the opponent he has just killed. What feelings do you think his expression conveys? Gladiato-
rial combats originated as part of wealthy people’s funeral ceremonies, symbolizing the human
struggle to avoid death. Training an expert gladiator took many years and great expense. Like
boxers today, gladiators fought only a couple of times a year. Because it cost so much to
replace a dead gladiator, most fights were not to the death intentionally; however, kills often
happened in the fury of combat. (Gilles Mermet / Art Resource, NY.)
Public entertainment supported communication between the ruler and the ruled.
Emperors provided gladiatorial combats, chariot races, and theater productions for
the masses, and ordinary citizens staged protests at them to express their wishes.
Poor Romans, for example, rioted to protest shortfalls in the free grain supply.
Changes in Education, Literature, and Art in Augustus’s Rome

Elite culture changed in the Augustan period to serve the same goal as public enter-
tainment: legitimizing the transformed political system. Orators skilled at speaking
persuasively and critically lost their freedom of expression, as did artists. Under the
republic, the ability to criticize political opponents in speeches had been such a pow-
erful weapon that it could catapult a “new man” like Cicero to a leadership role. Now,
the emperor’s dominance limited frank political debate or subversive art. Criticism
of the ruler was very dangerous.
With no public schools, only wealthy Romans received formal education. Most
people learned only through working. As a character in a novel said, “I didn’t study
geometry and literary criticism and worthless junk like that. I just learned how to
read the letters on signs and how to work out percentages, and I learned weights,
measures, and the values of the different kinds of coins.” Rich boys and girls attended
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Marble Statue of Augustus

from Prima Porta
At six feet eight inches high, this
statue of Augustus stood a foot
taller than he did. Found at his wife
Livia’s country villa at Prima Porta
(“First Gate”), the portrait was
probably done about 20 B.C.E.,
when Augustus was in his forties;
however, it shows him as younger,
using the idealizing techniques of
classical Greek art. The statue’s
symbols communicate Augustus’s
image: his bare feet hint he is a
near-divine hero, the Cupid refers
to the Julian family’s descent from
the goddess Venus (the Roman
equivalent of Aphrodite, Greek
goddess of love), and the breast-
plate’s design shows a Parthian
surrendering to a Roman soldier
under the gaze of personified cos-
mic forces admiring the peace
Augustus’s regime has created.
(Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican
City / Bridgeman Images.)
private elementary schools to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some went on
to study literature, history, and grammar. Only a few boys then proceeded to study
advanced literature and history, rhetoric, ethical philosophy, law, and dialectic (rea-
soned argument). Mathematics and science were rarely studied as separate subjects,
but engineers and architects became proficient at calculation.
Scholars call the Augustan period the Golden Age of Latin literature. The emperor
was the patron for writers and artists. Augustus’s favorite authors were Horace (65–
8 b.c.e.) and Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.). Horace’s poem celebrating Augustus’s victory at
Actium became famous for its opening line: “Now it’s time to drink!” Virgil’s epic
poem The Aeneid became Rome’s most famous work of literature. Inspired by Homer,
Virgil told the drama-filled story of the Trojan Aeneas, whom the Romans regarded
as their heroic ancestor, as he established a community in Italy after fleeing from the
burning ruins of his home city. Virgil balanced his praise for Roman civilization with
the acknowledgment that peace existed at the cost of freedom.
Livy (54 b.c.e.–17 c.e.) wrote a history of Rome recording Augustus’s ruthless-
ness in the civil war after Caesar’s murder. The emperor only scolded him, because
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Livy’s work proclaimed that stability and prosperity depended on traditional values
of loyalty and self-sacrifice. The poet Ovid (43 b.c.e.–17 c.e.), however, wrote Art
of Love and Love Affairs to mock the emperor’s moral legislation with witty advice
on sexual affairs and adultery. Ovid’s work Metamorphoses undermined the idea of
natural hierarchy with stories of supernatural shape-changes, with people becoming
animals and mixing the human and the divine. Augustus exiled the poet in 8 b.c.e.
for his alleged involvement in the scandal involving the emperor’s granddaughter.
Changes in public sculpture also reflected the emperor’s supremacy. Augustus
preferred sculpture that had an idealized style. In the Prima Porta statue, Augustus
had himself portrayed as serene and dig-
nified, not weary and sick, as he often was.
As he did with architecture, Augustus used
REVIEW QUESTION How did the peace gained
through Augustus’s “restoration of the Roman
sculpture to project a calm and competent
Republic” affect Romans’ lives in all social image of himself as the “Restorer of the
classes? Roman Republic” and founder of a new age
for Rome.
Politics and Society in the Early Roman Empire

Since Augustus claimed his system was not a monarchy, his successor could inherit
his power only with the Senate’s approval. Augustus therefore decided to identify an
heir for the Senate to recognize as princeps after his death. This strategy succeeded
and kept rule in his family, called the Julio-Claudians, until the death in 68 c.e. of
Nero, Augustus’s last descendent. It established the tradition that family dynasties
ruled the principate.
The Julio-Claudian emperors worked to prevent unrest, maintain loyalty, finance
the administration and army, and govern the provinces. Augustus set the pattern for
effective imperial rule: take special care of the army, communicate the emperor’s
image as a just ruler and generous patron, and promote Roman law and culture as
universal standards. The citizens, in return for their loyalty, expected the emperors
to be generous patrons — but the difficulties of long-range communication imposed
practical limits on imperial support of or intervention in the lives of the residents
of the provinces.
The Perpetuation of the Principate after Augustus, 14–180 c.e.

Augustus needed the Senate to bestow legitimacy on his successor to continue his
disguised monarchy. Having no son, he adopted Livia’s son by a previous marriage,
Tiberius (42 b.c.e.–37 c.e.). Since Tiberius had a brilliant career as a general, the
army supported Augustus’s choice. Augustus had the Senate grant Tiberius the power
of a tribune and the power of a consul equal to his own; his hope was that the sena-
tors would recognize Tiberius as emperor after his death. The senators did just that
when Augustus died in 14 c.e.
[
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] Politics and Society in the Early Roman Empire 185
Tiberius (r. 14–37 c.e.) was able to stay in power for twenty-three years because
he retained the army’s loyalty. He built the praetorian guard a fortified camp in Rome
to help its soldiers protect the emperor. The guards would influence all future
successions — no emperor could come to power without their support.
Tiberius’s long reign made permanent the compromise between the elite and the
emperor that promoted political stability. The offices of consul, senator, and provin-
cial governor continued, with elite Romans filling them and enjoying their prestige,
but the emperors not only decided who received the offices but also controlled law
and government policy. The social elite supported the regime by staying loyal and
managing the collection of taxes while governing provinces. (The emperor used his
own assistants to govern the provinces that housed strong military forces.) Everyone
saved face by pretending that the republic’s traditional offices retained their original
power.
Tiberius paid a bitter price to rule. To strengthen their family tie, Augustus had
forced Tiberius to divorce his beloved wife, Vipsania, to marry Augustus’s daugh-
ter, Julia — a marriage that proved disastrously unhappy. When Tiberius’s sadness led
him to spend his reign’s last decade in seclusion far from Rome, his neglect of the
government permitted abuses in the capital and kept him from training a decent
successor.
Tiberius designated Gaius, better known as Caligula (r. 37–41 c.e.), to be the
next emperor, and the Senate approved him because the young man was Augustus’s
great-grandson. The third Julio-Claudian emperor might have been successful
because he knew about soldiering: Caligula means “baby boots,” the nickname the
soldiers gave him as a child because he wore little leather shoes like theirs when he
was growing up in the military garrisons his father commanded. Caligula, however,
bankrupted the treasury to satisfy his desires. His biographer labeled him a monster
for his murders and sexual crimes, which some said included incest with his sisters.
He outraged the elite by fighting in mock gladiatorial combats and appearing in
public in women’s clothing or costumes imitating gods. He once said, “I’m allowed
to do anything.” The praetorian commanders murdered him in his fourth year of
rule to avenge personal insults.
The senators then debated the idea of truly restoring the republic by refusing to
approve a new emperor. They backed down, however, when Claudius (r. 41–54 c.e.),
Augustus’s grandnephew, bribed the praetorian guard to support him. The soldiers’
insistence on having an emperor so that they would have a patron signaled that the
original republic was never coming back.
Claudius was an active emperor, commanding a successful invasion of Britain
in 43 c.e. that made much of the island into a Roman province. He promoted pro-
vincial elites’ participation in government by enrolling men from Gaul in the Senate.
In return for keeping their regions peaceful and ensuring tax payments, upper-class
provincials received offices and prestige at Rome. Claudius also transformed imperial
bureaucracy by employing freed slaves as powerful administrators who owed loyalty
only to the emperor.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Claudius’s successor, Nero (r. 54–68 c.e.), became emperor at sixteen. He loved
music and acting, not governing. The poor loved him for his public entertainments
and distributions of cash. His generals suppressed a revolt in Britain led by the woman
commander Boudica in 60 c.e. and fought the Jewish rebels against Roman rule in
Judaea beginning in 66 c.e., but he had no military career. A giant fire in 64 c.e.
(the event behind the legend that Nero fiddled while Rome burned) aroused suspi-
cions that he ordered the city burned to make space for a new palace. Nero emptied
the treasury by building a huge palace. To raise money, he faked treason charges
against senators and equites to seize their property. When his generals toppled his
regime in 68 c.e., Nero had a servant help him cut his own throat.
Nero’s death sparked a civil war in 69 c.e. during which four generals competed
for power. Vespasian (r. 69–79 c.e.) won. To give his new dynasty (the Flavians)
legitimacy, Vespasian had a law passed granting him the powers of previous good
emperors, pointedly leaving Caligula and Nero off the list. He encouraged the impe-
rial cult (worship of the emperor as a living god and sacrifices for his household’s
welfare) in the provinces beyond Italy but not in Italy itself, where it would have
disturbed traditional Romans. The imperial cult communicated the image of the
emperor as a superhuman who deserved Roman citizens’ loyalty because he provided
benefactions and salvation for them.
Vespasian’s sons, Titus (r. 79–81 c.e.) and Domitian (r. 81–96 c.e.), conducted
hardheaded fiscal policy and wars. Titus had suppressed the Jewish revolt, capturing
Jerusalem in 70 c.e. In his role as “first man” protecting the people, Titus sent relief
to Pompeii and Herculaneum when, in 79 c.e., Mount Vesuvius’s volcanic eruption
buried these towns. He built Rome’s Colosseum, outfitting the fifty-thousand-seat
amphitheater with awnings to shade the crowd. The Colosseum was constructed on
the site of the private fishpond in Nero’s palace to demonstrate the Flavian dynasty’s
commitment to the people.
When Titus died suddenly after only two years as emperor, his brother, Domi-
tian, stepped in. Domitian balanced the budget and campaigned against the Ger-
manic tribes threatening the empire’s northern frontiers. Domitian’s arrogance turned
the senators against him; once he sent them a letter announcing, “Our lord god,
myself, orders you to do this.” Domitian executed numerous upper-class citizens as
disloyal. Fearful that they, too, would become victims, his wife and members of his
court murdered him in 96 c.e.
The next five emperors gained reputations for ruling well: Nerva (r. 96–98 c.e.),
Trajan (r. 98–117 c.e.), Hadrian (r. 117–138 c.e.), Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161 c.e.),
and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 c.e.). Historians call this period the Roman political
Golden Age because it had peaceful successions for nearly a century. Wars and
rivalry among the elite continued, however. Trajan fought to expand Roman control
across the Danube River into Dacia (today Romania) and eastward into Mesopota-
mia (Map 6.1); Hadrian executed several senators as alleged conspirators, punished
a Jewish revolt by turning Jerusalem into a military colony, and withdrew Roman
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Conquered by Augustus, 30 B.C.E.–14 C.E.

Roman Empire by the death of Augustus, 14 C.E.
a
Se
Roman Empire at the end of Trajan’s reign, 117 C.E.
tic
North l
Sea Ba Conquered and lost by Trajan, 114–117 C.E.
Battle
BRITAIN
N
Cologne
G E R M A N IA W E
Trier
Se Danub S
in e
R.
eR
. SAR
MA
GAUL TI
A
ATLANTIC
Lyon
OCEAN
Ca
ITALY Black Sea
spia
Rome
n Se
Naples
a
SPAIN Mt. Vesuvius
Actium
31 B.C.E. Athens
Corinth
M
ES
Antioch
O
PARTHIAN
PO
Med
EMPIRE
TA
iter
Tig
M
MAURETANIA ranea Eu
IA hrat
n
ris
Sea p
R.
es
R
.
NO RTH A FR I CA
EGYPT ARABIA
ARABIAN
Ni l
Re
R.
S A H A R A
e
dS
0 250 500 miles DE SE RT

ea
MAP 6.1 The Expansion of the Roman Empire, 30 b.c.e.–117 c.e.

When Octavian (the future Augustus) captured Egypt in 30 B.C.E. after the suicides of Mark
Antony and Cleopatra, he greatly boosted Rome’s economic strength. The land produced enor-
mous amounts of grain and metals, and Roman power now almost encircled the Mediterra-
nean Sea. When Emperor Trajan took over the southern part of Mesopotamia in 114–117 C.E.,
imperial conquest reached its height; Rome’s control had never extended so far east. Egypt
remained part of the empire until the Arab conquest in 642 C.E., but Mesopotamia was imme-
diately abandoned by Hadrian, Trajan’s successor, probably because it seemed too distant
to defend. How did territorial expansion both strengthen and weaken the Roman Empire?
forces from Mesopotamia; and Marcus Aurelius fought off invaders from the Danube
region as the dangers to imperial territory along the northern frontiers kept
increasing.
Still, the five “good emperors” did preside over a political and economic Golden
Age. They succeeded one another without murder or conspiracy — the first four,
having no surviving sons, used adoption to find the best possible successor. The
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Roman Colosseum
The Roman Emperor Titus finished the construction of the Colosseum, so named because it
stood on the spot where the Emperor Nero had earlier erected a colossal statue of himself.
Seating some 50,000 spectators, with the most important men granted the best seats in the
lower rungs, it was used for gladiatorial combats and other forms of public entertainment. A
giant awning stretched out from the topmost level of the seats to protect spectators from the
sun. The ruins today reveal in the center the underground rooms and corridors used, for one
thing, to house wild animals that were raised by manual elevators to the sandy floor above to
be killed in bloody hunts. (© Alinari Archives / The Image Works.)
economy provided enough money to finance building projects such as the fortifica-
tion wall Hadrian built across Britain. Most important, the army remained obedient.
These reigns marked Rome’s longest stretch without a civil war since the second
century b.c.e.
Life in the Roman Golden Age, 96–180 c.e.

Peace and prosperity in Rome’s Golden Age depended on defense by a loyal military,
service by provincial elites in local administration and tax collection, common laws
enforced throughout the empire, and a healthy population reproducing itself. The
empire’s vast size and the relatively small numbers of soldiers and imperial officials
in the provinces meant that emperors had only limited control over these factors.
[
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
In theory, Rome’s military goal was to expand perpetually because conquest

brought land, money, and glory. In reality, the emperors lacked the resources to
expand the empire much beyond the territory that Augustus had controlled, and
they had to concentrate on defending imperial territory.
Most provinces were peaceful, housing few troops. Most legions (units of five
thousand troops) were stationed on frontiers to prevent invasions from Germanic
tribes to the north and Persians to the east. The peace allowed long-distance trade
to import luxury goods, such as spices and silk, from as far away as India and China.
Roman merchants regularly sailed from Egypt to India and back.
The army of both Romans and noncitizens reflected the population’s diversity.
Serving under Roman officers, the non-Romans learned to speak Latin and follow
Roman customs. Upon discharge, they received Roman citizenship. Thus the army
helped spread a common way of life.
Paying for defense became an impossible problem. Previously, foreign wars had
brought in revenue from riches and prisoners of war sold as slaves. Conquered ter-
ritory also provided regular income from taxes. Now the army was no longer making
conquests, but the soldiers had to be paid well to maintain discipline. This made a
soldier’s career desirable but cost the emperors dearly.
A tax on agriculture in the provinces (Italy was exempt) now provided the prin-
cipal source of revenue. The bureaucracy was inexpensive because it was small: only
several hundred officials governed a population of about fifty million. Most locally
collected taxes stayed in the provinces to pay expenses there, especially soldiers’ pay.
Governors with small staffs ran the provinces, which eventually numbered about forty.
The government’s finances depended on tax collection carried out by provincial
elites. Serving as decurions (members of municipal Senates), these wealthy men
were required personally to guarantee that their area’s financial responsibilities were
met. If there was a shortfall in tax collection or local finances, the decurions had to
pay the difference from their own pockets. Wise emperors kept taxes moderate. As
Tiberius put it when refusing a request for tax increases from provincial governors,
“I want you to shear my sheep, not skin them alive.” The financial liability in holding
civic office made that honor expensive, but the accompanying prestige made the elite
willing to take the risk. Rewards for decurions included priesthoods in the imperial
cult, an honor open to both men and women.
The system worked because it observed tradition: the local elites were their com-
munities’ patrons and the emperor’s clients. As long as there were enough rich, public-
spirited provincials participating, the principate functioned by fostering the old ideal
of community service by the upper class in return for respect and social status.
The provinces contained diverse peoples who spoke different languages, observed
different customs, dressed in different styles, and worshipped different divinities
(Map 6.2). In the countryside, Roman conquest only lightly affected local customs.
In new towns that sprang up around Roman forts or settlements of army veterans,
Roman influence predominated. Roman culture had the greatest effect on western
Europe, permanently rooting Latin (and the languages that would emerge from it)
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
a
Se
c 0 250 500 miles
North lti
Sea Ba 0 250 500 kilometers
CELTIC
BRITAIN N
Rh
W E
ine
Cologne
C
R.
S
GERMANIC
AR
Trier
PA
TH
Danu
IA
be R
N
.
CELTIC
M
GAUL P S
A L
TS
ATLANTIC
CAU ARAMAIC
.
Rhône R.
OCEAN CA
SUS
UE MT
SQ S. Black Sea S.
BA PYRE
NE N MT
ES Rome
ITALY BALKA
THRACIAN
SPAIN ARMENIAN
LATIN CELTIC
S.
MT
PHRYGIAN
Athens
RU S
Carthage TAU ISAURIAN
GREEK
PUNIC CILICIAN Antioch ARAMAIC/
LIBYAN Med
iterra SYRIA SYRIAC
nean Sea
ARAMAIC
HEBREW
N O RT H A F R I C A LIBYAN Alexandria
NABATAEAN
EGYPT
Main division between Latin and Greek as COPTIC/ ARABIC
predominant language of government and commerce DEMOTIC
CELTIC Local language
A R A B IA N
Northern limit of vine growing (for wine)
DE SE RT
S A H A R A
Re
Northern limit of olive growing

d
Sea
Northern limit of date palm growing .

eR
Open desert
l
Ni
Distribution of cities
MAP 6.2 Natural Features and Languages of the Roman World

The environment of the Roman world included a large variety of topography, climate, and lan-
guages. The inhabitants of the Roman Empire, estimated to have numbered as many as fifty
million, spoke dozens of different tongues, many of which survived well into the late empire. The
two predominant languages were Latin in the western part of the empire and Greek in the east-
ern. Latin remained the language of law even in the eastern empire. Vineyards and olive groves
were important agricultural resources because wine was regarded as an essential beverage,
and olive oil was the principal source of fat for most people as well as being used to make
soap, perfume, and other products for daily life. Dates and figs were popular sweets in the
Roman world, which had no refined sugar.
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
as well as Roman law and customs there. Eventually, emperors came from citizen-
families in the provinces; Trajan, from Spain, was the first.
Romanization, the spread of Roman law and culture in the provinces, raised
the standard of living by providing roads and bridges, increasing trade, and establish-
ing peaceful conditions for agriculture. The army’s need for supplies created business
for farmers and merchants. The prosperity that provincials enjoyed under Roman
rule made Romanization acceptable. In addition, Romanization was not a one-way
street. In western regions as diverse as Gaul, Britain, and North Africa, interaction
between the local people and Romans produced mixed cultural traditions, especially
in religion and art. Therefore, Romanization merged Roman and local culture.
The eastern provinces, however, largely retained their Greek and Near Eastern
characteristics. Huge Hellenistic cities such as Alexandria (in Egypt) and Antioch
(in Syria) rivaled Rome in size and splendor. The eastern provincial elites readily
accepted Roman governance because Hellenistic royal traditions had prepared them
to see the emperor as their patron and themselves as his clients.
The continuing vitality of Greek language and culture contributed to new trends
in Roman literature. Lucian (c. 117–180 c.e.) composed satirical dialogues in Greek
mocking stuffy and superstitious people. The essayist and philosopher Plutarch
(c. 50–120 c.e.) also used Greek to write paired biographies of Greek and Roman
men. His exciting stories made him favorite reading for centuries; William Shake-
speare based several plays on Plutarch’s biographies.
The late first century and early to mid-second century c.e. can be called the Silver
Age of Latin literature. Tacitus (c. 56–120 c.e.) wrote historical works that exposed
the Julio-Claudian emperors’ ruthlessness. Juvenal (c. 65–130 c.e.) wrote poems ridi-
culing pretentious Romans while complaining about living broke in the capital. Apu-
leius (c. 125–170 c.e.) excited readers with a sexually explicit novel called The Golden
Ass, about a man turned into a donkey who regains his body and his soul through
the kindness of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
The emperors made the laws for the entire empire based on the principle of
equity. This meant doing what was “good and fair” even if that required ignoring the
letter of the law. This principle taught that a contract’s intent outweighed its words,
and that accusers should prove the accused guilty because it was unfair to make
defendants prove their innocence. In dealing with accusations against Christians, the
emperor Trajan ruled that no one should be convicted on the grounds of suspicion
alone because it was better for a guilty person to go unpunished than for an innocent
person to be condemned.
The importance of hierarchy led Romans to continue formal distinctions in soci-
ety based on wealth. The elites constituted a tiny portion of the population. Only
about one in every fifty thousand had enough money to qualify for the senatorial
order, the highest-ranking class, while about one in a thousand belonged to the eques-
trian order, the second-ranking class. Different purple stripes on clothing identified
these orders. The third-highest order consisted of decurions, the local Senate mem-
bers in provincial towns.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
The legal distinction between the elite and the rest of the population now became
stricter. “Better people” included senators, equites, decurions, and retired army vet-
erans. Everybody else — except slaves, who counted as property — made up the vastly
larger group of “humbler people.” The law imposed harsher penalties on them than
on “better people” for the same crime. “Humbler people” convicted of serious crimes
were regularly executed by being crucified or torn apart by wild animals before a
crowd of spectators. “Better people” rarely received the death penalty, and those who
did were allowed a quicker and more dignified execution by the sword. “Humbler
people” could also be tortured in criminal investigations, even if they were citizens.
Romans regarded these differences as fair on the grounds that an elite person’s higher
status required of him or her a higher level of responsibility for the common good.
As one provincial governor expressed it, “Nothing is less equitable than mere equality
itself.”
Nothing mattered more to the empire’s strength than steady population levels.
Concerns about marriage and reproduction thus filled Roman society; remaining
single and childless represented social failure for both women and men. The proper-
tied classes usually arranged marriages. Girls often married in their early teens, to
Midwife’s Sign
Childbirth carried the danger of death from infection or internal hemorrhage. This terra-cotta
sign from Ostia, the ancient port city of Rome, probably hung outside a midwife’s room to
announce her expertise in helping women give birth. It shows a pregnant woman clutching the
sides of her chair, with an assistant supporting her from behind and the midwife crouched in
front to help deliver the baby. Why do you think the woman is seated for delivery instead of lying
down? Such signs were especially effective for people who were illiterate; a person did not have
to read to understand the ser vices that the specialist inside could provide. (Museo Ostiense, Ostia,
Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire 193
have as many years as possible to bear children. Because so many babies died young,
families had to produce numerous offspring to keep from disappearing. The tomb-
stone of Veturia, a soldier’s wife, tells a typical story: “Here I lie, having lived for
twenty-seven years. I was married to the same man for sixteen years and bore six
children, five of whom died before I did.”
The social pressure to bear numerous children created many health hazards for
women. Doctors possessed metal instruments for surgery and physical examinations,
but many were poorly educated former slaves with only informal training. There was
no official licensing of medical personnel. Complications in childbirth could easily
kill the mother because doctors and midwives could not stop internal bleeding or
cure infections. Romans controlled reproduction with contraception (by obstructing
the vagina or by administering drugs to the female partner) or by abandoning
unwanted infants.
The emperors tried to support reproduction. They gave money to feed needy
children, hoping they would grow up to have families. Wealthy people often adopted
children in their communities. One North
African man supported three hundred boys REVIEW QUESTION In the early Roman Empire,
and three hundred girls each year until what was life like in the cities and in the country
they grew up. for the elite and for ordinary people?
The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire

Christianity began as what scholars call “the Jesus movement,” a Jewish splinter group
in Judaea (today Israel and the Palestinian Territories). There, as elsewhere under
Roman rule, Jews were allowed to worship in their ancestral religion. The emergence
of the new religion was gradual: three centuries after the death of Jesus, Christians
were still a minority in the Roman Empire. Moreover, Roman officials suspected that
Christians’ beliefs made them disloyal. Christianity grew because of the attraction of
Jesus’s charismatic career, its message of individual spiritual salvation, its early mem-
bers’ sense of mission, and the strong bonds of community it inspired. Ultimately,
Christianity’s emergence proved the most significant development in Roman history.
Jesus and His Teachings

Jesus (c. 4 b.c.e.–30 c.e.) grew up in a troubled region. Harsh Roman rule in Judaea
had angered the Jews, and Rome’s provincial governors worried about rebellion.
Jesus’s execution reflected the Roman policy of eliminating any threat to social order.
In the two decades after his crucifixion, his followers, particularly Paul of Tarsus,
elaborated on and spread his teachings beyond his region’s Jewish community to the
wider Roman world.
Christianity offered an answer to the question about divine justice raised by the
Jews’ long history of oppression under the kingdoms of the ancient and Hellenistic
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Near East: If God was just, as Hebrew monotheism taught, how could he allow the
wicked to prosper and the righteous to suffer? Nearly two hundred years before
Jesus’s birth, persecution by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV (r. 175–164 b.c.e.) had
provoked the Jews into revolt, a struggle that generated the concept of apocalypticism
(see Chapter 2, page 49).
According to this doctrine, evil powers controlled the world, but God would end
their rule by sending the Messiah (“anointed one,” Mashiach in Hebrew, Christ in
Greek) to conquer them. A final judgment would follow, punishing the wicked and
rewarding the righteous for eternity. Apocalypticism especially influenced the Jews
living in Judaea under Roman rule and later inspired Christians and Muslims.
During Jesus’s life, Jews disagreed among themselves about what form Judaism
should take in such troubled times. Some favored cooperation with Rome, while
others preached rejection of the non-Jewish world. Unrest in Judaea led Augustus to
install a Roman governor to suppress disorder.
The writings that would later become the New Testament Gospels, composed
around 70 to 90 c.e., offer the earliest accounts of Jesus’s life. Jesus wrote nothing
down, and others’ accounts of his words and deeds are often inconsistent. He began
his career as a teacher and healer during the reign of Emperor Tiberius. He taught
through stories and parables that challenged his followers to reflect on what he meant.
Jesus’s public ministry began with his baptism by John the Baptist, who preached
a message of repentance before the approaching final judgment. After John was
executed as a rebel, Jesus traveled around Judaea’s countryside teaching that God’s
kingdom was coming and that people needed to prepare spiritually for it. Some saw
Jesus as the Messiah, but his apocalypticism did not call for immediate revolt against
the Romans. Instead, he taught that God’s true kingdom was to be found not on
earth but in heaven. He stressed that this kingdom was open to believers regardless
of their social status or sinfulness. His emphasis on God’s love for humanity and
people’s responsibility to love one another reflected Jewish religious teachings, such
as the scriptural interpretations and moral teachings of the scholar Hillel, who lived
in Jesus’s time.
Realizing that he had to reach more than country people, Jesus took his message
to the Jewish population of Jerusalem, the region’s main city. His miraculous healings
and exorcisms, combined with his powerful preaching, created a sensation. He
became so popular that his followers created the Jesus movement; it was not yet
Christianity but rather a Jewish sect, of which there were several, such as the Saduc-
cees and Pharisees, competing for authority at the time. Jesus attracted the attention
of Jewish leaders, who assumed that he wanted to replace them. Fearing Jesus might
lead a Jewish revolt, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate ordered his crucifixion in
Jerusalem in 30 c.e.
Jesus’s followers reported that they had seen him in person after his death, pro-
claiming that God had raised him from the dead. They convinced a few other Jews
that he would soon return to judge the world and begin God’s kingdom. At this time,
his closest disciples, the twelve Apostles (Greek for “messengers”), still considered
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Catacomb Painting of Christ as the Good Shepherd

Catacombs (tunnels with underground rooms) cut deep into soft rock outside major cities in the
Roman Empire served as meeting places and burial chambers for Jews and Christians. Rome
had 340 miles of catacombs. This painting from the catacomb at Rome named after Priscilla,
who was probably a Christian from the first century C.E., shows Jesus as the Good Shepherd
(John 10:10–11). He is carrying an animal back to the flock, symbolizing his role as savior; he
is dressed in the traditional fashion for a Roman man on a special occasion. Catacomb paint-
ings such as this one were the earliest form of Christian art. (Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, Italy /
photograph by Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
themselves faithful Jews and continued to follow the commandments of Jewish law.
Their leader was Peter, who won acclaim as the greatest miracle worker of the Apos-
tles, an ambassador to Jews interested in the Jesus movement, and the most impor-
tant messenger proclaiming Jesus’s teachings in the imperial capital. The later Chris-
tian church called him the first bishop of Rome.
A turning point came with the conversion of Paul of Tarsus (c. 10–65 c.e.), a
pious Jew and a Roman citizen who had violently opposed Jews who accepted Jesus
as the Messiah. A spiritual vision on the road to Damascus in Syria, which Paul
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
interpreted as a divine revelation, inspired him to become a follower of Jesus as the
Messiah, or Christ — a Christian, as members of the movement came to be known.
Paul taught that accepting Jesus as divine and his crucifixion as the ultimate sacrifice
for the sins of humanity was the only way of becoming righteous in the eyes of God.
In this way alone could one expect to attain salvation in the new world to come. Paul’s
mission opened the way for Christianity to become a new religion separate from
Judaism.
Seeking converts outside Judaea, Paul traveled to preach to Jews and Gentiles
(non-Jews) who had adopted some Jewish practices in Asia Minor (today Turkey),
Syria, and Greece. Although he stressed the necessity of ethical behavior as defined
by Jewish tradition, especially the rejection of sexual immorality and polytheism,
Paul also taught that converts did not have to live strictly according to Jewish law.
To make conversion easier, he did not require male converts to undergo the Jewish
initiation rite of circumcision. He also told his congregations that they did not have
to observe Jewish dietary restrictions or festivals. These teachings generated tensions
with Jewish authorities in Jerusalem as well as with followers of Jesus living there,
who still believed that Christians had to follow Jewish law. Roman authorities arrested
Paul as a troublemaker and executed him in 65 c.e.
Hatred of Roman rule provoked Jews to revolt in 66 c.e. After crushing the
rebels in 70 c.e., the Roman emperor Titus destroyed the Jerusalem temple and sold
most of the city’s population into slavery. Following this catastrophe, which cost Jews
their religious center, Christianity began to separate more and more clearly from
Judaism. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple created a crisis for Judaism that
eventually led to a reorientation of its teachings and interpretations through Jewish
oral law being committed to writing.
Paul’s importance in early Christianity shows in the number of letters — thirteen —
attributed to him among the twenty-seven Christian writings that were eventually put
together as the New Testament. Christians came to regard the New Testament as
having equal authority with the Jewish Bible, which they then called the Old Testa-
ment. Since teachers like Paul preached mainly in the cities, congregations of Chris-
tians sprang up in urban areas. In early Christianity, women in some locations could
be leaders — such as Lydia, a businesswoman who founded the congregation in
Philippi in Greece — but many men, including Paul, opposed women’s leadership.
Growth of a New Religion

Christianity faced serious obstacles as a new religion. Imperial officials, suspect-
ing Christians of being traitors, could prosecute them for refusing to perform tradi-
tional sacrifices. Christian leaders had to build an organization from the ground up
to administer their growing congregations. Finally, Christians had to decide whether
women could continue as leaders in their congregations.
The Roman emperors found Christians baffling and troublesome. Unlike Jews,
Christians professed a new faith rather than their ancestors’ traditional religion.
[
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Roman law therefore granted them no special treatment, as it did Jews out of respect
for the great age of Judaism. Most Romans feared that Christians’ denial of the old
gods and the imperial cult would bring divine punishment upon the empire. Secret
rituals in which Christians symbolically ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus
during communal dinners, called Love Feasts, led to accusations of cannibalism and
sexual promiscuity.
Romans were quick to blame Christians for disasters. Nero declared that Chris-
tian arsonists set Rome’s great fire, and he covered Christians in animal skins to be
torn to pieces by dogs or fastened to crosses and set on fire at night. Nero’s cruelty,
however, earned Christians sympathy from Rome’s population.
Persecutions like Nero’s were infrequent. There was no law specifically prohibit-
ing Christianity, but officials could punish Christians, as they could anyone, to pro-
tect public order. Pliny’s actions as a provincial governor in Asia Minor illustrated
the situation. In about 112 c.e., Pliny asked a group of people accused of following
this new religion if they were really Christians. When some said yes, he asked them
to reconsider. He freed those who denied Christianity, so long as they sacrificed to
the gods, swore loyalty to the imperial cult, and cursed Christ. He executed those
who refused these actions. Christians argued that Romans had nothing to fear from
their faith. Christianity, they insisted, taught morality and respect for authority. It
was the true philosophy, combining the best features of Judaism and Greek thought.
The occasional persecutions in the early empire did not stop Christianity. Chris-
tians like Vibia Perpetua regarded public executions as an opportunity to become a
martyr (Greek for “witness”), someone who dies for his or her religious faith. Mar-
tyrs’ belief that their deaths would send them directly to paradise allowed them to
face torture. Some Christians actively sought to become martyrs. Tertullian (c. 160–
240 c.e.) proclaimed that “martyrs’ blood is the seed of the Church.” Ignatius (c. 35–
107 c.e.), bishop of Antioch, begged Rome’s congregation, which was becoming the
most prominent Christian group, not to ask the emperor to show him mercy after
his arrest: “Let me be food for the wild animals [in the arena] through which I can
reach God,” he pleaded. “I am God’s wheat, to be ground up by the teeth of beasts
so that I may be found pure bread of Christ.” Stories reporting the martyrs’ courage
showed that the new religion gave its believers spiritual power to endure suffering.
First-century c.e. Christians expected Jesus to return to pass judgment on the
world during their lifetimes. When that did not happen, they began transforming
their religion from an apocalyptic Jewish sect expecting the immediate end of the
world into one that could survive indefinitely. This transformation was painful
because early Christians fiercely disagreed about what they should believe, how they
should live, and who had the authority to decide these questions. Some insisted
Christians should withdraw from the everyday world to escape its evil, abandoning
their families and shunning sex and reproduction. Others believed they could follow
Christ’s teachings while living ordinary lives. Many Christians worried they could
not serve as soldiers without betraying their faith because the army participated in
the imperial cult. This dilemma raised the further issue of whether Christians could
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
ea
Christian majority
cS
North
lti
Sea Ba Strong Christian minority
N
Christian minority
BRITAIN
W E Areas with few or no Christians
Borders of the Roman Empire
S
Danub
e
The missionary journeys of
.
Loire R Paul of Tarsus, 46–62 C.E.
R.
ATLANTIC GAUL
.
eR
Rhôn
OCEAN Ad
r
ITALY iatic Black Sea
Rome Se
a Philippi
Naples
SPAIN ASIA
Ephesus MINOR
Córdoba Sicily
Carthage Corinth Athens
Syracuse Tarsus Antioch
Cirta Me Crete Syria
dite Cyprus
rrane Tyre
an Sea
Cyrene Caesarea
NO RT H AF R I C A Palestine
EGYPT
0 250 500 miles
MAP 6.3 Christian Populations in the Late Third Century c.e.

Christians were still a minority in the Roman world three hundred years after Jesus’s crucifixion.
However, certain areas of the empire — especially Asia Minor, where Paul had preached — had a
concentration of Christians. Most Christians lived in cities and towns, where the missionaries
had gone to find crowds to hear their message. Paganus, a Latin word for “country person” or
“rural villager,” came to mean a believer in traditional polytheistic cults — hence the word pagan
that modern historians sometimes use to indicate traditional polytheism. Paganism lived on in
rural areas for centuries.
remain loyal subjects of the emperor. Disagreement over these doctrinal questions
raged in the many congregations that arose in the early empire around the Mediter-
ranean, from Gaul to Africa to the Near East (Map 6.3).
The need to deal with such tensions, to administer the congregations, and to
promote spiritual communion among believers led Christians to create an official
hierarchy of men, headed by bishops. They spearheaded the drive to build the con-
nection between congregations and Christ that promised salvation to believers. Bish-
ops possessed authority to define Christian doctrine and administer practical affairs
for congregations. The emergence of bishops became the most important institu-
tional development in early Christianity. Bishops received their positions accord-
ing to the principle later called apostolic succession, which states that the Apostles
appointed the first bishops as their successors, granting these new officials the
authority Jesus had originally given to the Apostles. Those designated by the Apostles
in turn appointed their own successors. Bishops had authority to ordain ministers
with the holy power to administer the sacraments, above all baptism and commu-
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
nion, which believers regarded as necessary for achieving eternal life. Bishops also
controlled their congregations’ memberships and finances. The money financing the
early church came from members’ donations.
The bishops tried to suppress the disagreements that arose in the new religion.
They used their authority to define orthodoxy (true doctrine) and heresy (false doc-
trine). The meetings of the bishops of different cities constituted the church’s organi-
zation in this period. Today this loose organization is referred to as the early Catho-
lic (Greek for “universal”) church. Since the bishops often disagreed about doctrine
and about which bishops should have greater authority than others, unity remained
impossible to achieve.
When the male bishops came to power, they demoted women from positions of
leadership. This change reflected their view that in Christianity women should be sub-
ordinate to men, just as in Roman imperial society in general. Some congregations took
a long time to accept this shift, however, and women still claimed authority in some
groups in the second and third centuries c.e. In late-second-century c.e. Asia Minor,
for example, Prisca and Maximilla declared themselves prophetesses with the power
to baptize believers in anticipation of the coming end of the world. They spread the
apocalyptic message that the heavenly Jerusalem would soon descend in their region.
Excluded from leadership posts, many women chose a life without sex to demon-
strate their devotion to Christ. Their commitment to celibacy gave these women the
power to control their own bodies. Other Christians regarded women who reached
this special closeness to God as holy and socially superior. By rejecting the traditional
roles of wife and mother in favor of spiritual excellence, celibate Christian women
achieved independence and status otherwise denied them.
Competing Religious Beliefs

Three centuries after Jesus’s death, traditional polytheism was still the religion of the
overwhelming majority of the Roman Empire’s population. Polytheists, who wor-
shipped a variety of gods in different ways in diverse kinds of sanctuaries, often
reflecting regional religious rituals and traditions, never created a unified religion.
Nevertheless, the stability and prosperity of the early empire gave traditional believ-
ers confidence that the old gods and the imperial cult protected them. Even those
who preferred religious philosophy, such as Stoicism’s idea of divine providence,
respected the old cults because they embodied Roman tradition. By the third century
c.e., the growth of Christianity, along with the persistence of Judaism and polythe-
istic cults, meant that people could choose from a number of competing beliefs.
Especially appealing were beliefs that offered people hope that they could change
their present lives for the better and also look forward to an afterlife.
Polytheistic religion aimed at winning the goodwill of all the divinities who could
affect human life. Its deities ranged from the state cults’ major gods, such as Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva, to spirits thought to inhabit groves and springs. International
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Mithras Slaying the Bull

Hundreds of shrines to the mysterious god Mithras have been found in the Roman Empire.
Scholars debate the symbolic meaning of the bull slaying that is prominent in art connected
to Mithras’s cult, as in this wall painting of about 200 C.E. from the shrine at Marino, south of
Rome. Here, a snake and a dog lick the sacrificial animal’s blood, while a scorpion pinches its
testicles as it dies in agony. The ancient sources do not clarify the scene’s meaning. What do you
think could be the explanation for this type of sacrifice? (Mitreo, Marino, Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
cults such as the mystery cults of Demeter and Persephone outside Athens remained
popular.
The cults of Isis and Mithras demonstrate how polytheism could provide a reli-
gious experience arousing strong emotions and demanding a moral way of life. The
Egyptian goddess Isis had already attracted Romans by the time of Augustus, who
tried to suppress her cult because it was Cleopatra’s religion. But the fame of Isis as
a kind, compassionate goddess who cared for her followers made her cult too popu-
lar to crush: the Egyptians said it was her tears for starving humans that caused the
Nile to flood every year and bring them good harvests. Her image was that of a loving
mother, and in art she was often depicted nursing her son. Her cult’s central doctrine
concerned the death and resurrection of her husband, Osiris. Isis also promised her
believers a life after death.
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Isis required her followers to behave righteously. Many inscriptions expressed

her high moral standards by listing her own civilizing accomplishments: “I broke
down the rule of tyrants; I put an end to murders; I caused what is right to be
mightier than gold and silver.” The hero of Apuleius’s novel The Golden Ass shouts
out his intense joy after his rescue and spiritual rebirth through Isis: “O holy and
eternal guardian of the human race, who always cherishes mortals and blesses them,
you care for the troubles of miserable humans with a sweet mother’s love. Neither
day nor night, nor any moment of time, ever passes by without your blessings.” Other
cults also required worshippers to lead upright lives. Inscriptions from Asia Minor,
for example, record people’s confessions to sins such as sexual transgressions for
which their local god had imposed severe penance.
Archaeology reveals that the cult of Mithras had many shrines under the Roman
Empire, but no texts survive to explain its mysterious rituals and symbols, which
Romans believed had originated in Persia. Mithras’s legend said that he killed a bull
in a cave, apparently as a sacrifice for the benefit of his worshippers. As pictures show,
this was an unusual sacrifice because the animal was allowed to struggle as it was
killed. Initiates in Mithras’s cult proceeded through rankings named, from bottom to
top, Raven, Male Bride, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Sun-runner, and Father — the latter a
title of great honor.
Many upper-class Romans also guided their lives by Greek philosophy. Most popu-
lar was Stoicism, which presented philosophy as the “science of living” and required
self-discipline and duty from men and women alike. (See Chapter 4, page 131.) Philo-
sophic individuals put together their own set of beliefs, such as those on duty expressed
by the emperor Marcus Aurelius in his memoirs expressing Stoic ideas, entitled To
Myself (or Meditations). In this moving personal journal, the most powerful man in
the Roman world told himself that “when it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning,
keep it in mind that you are getting up to do the work of a human being.”
Christian and polytheist intellectuals debated Christianity’s relationship to
Greek philosophy. Origen (c. 185–255 c.e.) argued that Christianity was superior
to Greek philosophical doctrines as a guide to correct living. At about the same
time, Plotinus (c. 205–270 c.e.) developed the philosophy that had the greatest
influence on religion. His spiritual philosophy was influenced by Persian religious
ideas and, above all, Plato’s philosophy, for which reason it is called Neoplatonism.
Plotinus’s ideas deeply influenced many Christian thinkers as well as polytheists.
He wrote that ultimate reality is a trinity of The One, of Mind, and of Soul. By
rejecting the life of the body and relying on reason, individual souls could achieve
a mystic union with The One, who in
Christian thought would be God. To suc-
REVIEW QUESTION Which aspects of social,
ceed in this spiritual quest required strenu-
cultural, and political life in the early Roman
ous self-discipline in personal morality and Empire supported the growth of Christianity,
spiritual purity as well as in philosophical and which opposed it?
contemplation.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
From Stability to Crisis in the Third Century c.e.
In the third century c.e., military expenses provoked a financial crisis that fed a
political crisis lasting from the 230s to the 280s c.e. Invasions on the northern and
eastern frontiers had forced the Roman emperors to expand the army for defense,
but no new revenues came in to meet the increased costs. The emperors’ desperate
schemes to pay for defense damaged the economy and infuriated the population.
This anger at the regime encouraged generals to repeat the behavior that had destroyed
the republic: commanding client armies to seize power in a prolonged civil war.
Earthquakes and regional epidemics added to people’s misery. By 284 c.e., this com-
bination of troubles had destroyed the Pax Romana.
Threats to the Northern and Eastern Frontiers

of the Early Roman Empire
Emperors since Domitian in the first century had combated invaders. The most
aggressive attackers were the multiethnic bands from northern Europe that crossed
the Danube and Rhine Rivers to raid Roman territory. These attacks perhaps resulted
from pressure on the northerners caused by wars in central Asia that disrupted trade
and the economy. These originally poorly organized northerners developed military
discipline through their frequent fighting against the Roman army. They mounted
especially damaging invasions during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 c.e.).
A major threat also appeared at the eastern edge of the empire, when a new Persian
dynasty, the Sasanids, defeated the Parthian Empire and fought to re-create the
ancient Persian Empire. By the early third century c.e., Persia’s renewed military
power forced the Roman emperors to deploy a large part of the army to protect the
rich eastern provinces, which took troops away from defense of the northern fron-
tiers. The Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Sahara Desert to the south meant that
threats to Roman territory were significantly less from those directions. (See Map-
ping the West: The Roman Empire in Crisis, 284 c.e., page 206.)
Recognizing the northern warriors’ bravery, the emperors had begun hiring
them as auxiliary soldiers for the Roman army in the late first century c.e. and set-
tling them on the frontiers as buffers against other invaders. By the early third cen-
tury, the army had expanded to enroll perhaps as many as 450,000 troops (the size
of the navy remains unknown). Training constantly, soldiers had to be able to carry
forty-pound packs twenty miles in five hours, swimming rivers on the way. Since
the early second century c.e., the emperors had built stone camps for permanent
garrisons, but while on the march an army constructed a fortified camp every night.
Soldiers transported all the makings of a wooden walled city everywhere they went.
As one ancient commentator noted, “Infantrymen were little different from loaded
pack mules.” At one temporary fort in a frontier area, archaeologists found a supply
of a million iron nails — ten tons’ worth. The same encampment required seventeen
miles of timber for its barracks’ walls. To outfit a single legion with tents required
fifty-four thousand calves’ hides.
[
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] From Stability to Crisis in the Third Century c.e. 203
Emperor Severus and His Family

This portrait of the emperor Septimius
Severus; his wife, Julia Domna; and
their sons, Caracalla (on the right)
and Geta (with his face obliter-
ated), was painted in Egypt
about 200 C.E. The males hold
scepters, symbolic of rule, but
all four family members wear
bejeweled golden crowns fit
for royalty. Severus arranged
to marry Julia without ever
meeting her because her
horoscope predicted she
would become a queen, and
she served as her husband’s
valued adviser. They hoped
their sons would share rule, but
when Severus died in 211 C.E.,
Caracalla murdered Geta so that
he could rule alone. Why do you think
the portrait’s owner rubbed out Geta’s
face? (Staaliche Museen, Berlin, Germany /
Bridgeman Images.)
The increased demand for pay and supplies strained imperial finances. The army
had become a source of negative instead of positive cash flow to the treasury, and
the economy had not expanded to make up the difference. To make matters worse,
inflation had driven up prices. The principate’s long period of peace promoted infla-
tion by increasing demand for goods and services to a level that outstripped the
supply.
In desperation, some emperors attempted to curb inflation by debasing imperial
coinage. Debasement of coinage meant putting less precious metal in each coin and
adding more metal of less worth without changing the coin’s face value. In this way,
the emperors created more cash from the same amount of precious metal. But mer-
chants soon raised prices to make up for the debased coinage’s reduced value; this
in turn produced more inflation, causing prices to rise even more. Still, the soldiers
demanded that their patrons, the emperors, pay them well. This pressure drove impe-
rial finances into collapse by the 250s c.e.
Uncontrolled Spending, Natural Disasters,

and Political Crisis, 193–284 c.e.
The emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193–211 c.e.) and his son and successor Caracalla
(r. 211–217 c.e.) made financial crisis unavoidable when they drained the treasury
to satisfy the army and their own dreams of glory. A soldier’s soldier from North
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
Africa, Severus became emperor when his predecessor’s incompetence caused a gov-
ernment crisis and civil war. Seeking to restore imperial prestige and acquire money
from foreign conquest, Severus campaigned beyond the frontiers of the provinces in
Mesopotamia and Scotland.
Since extreme inflation had reduced their wages to almost nothing, soldiers
expected the emperors to provide gifts of extra money. Severus spent large sums on
gifts and raised soldiers’ pay by a third. The army’s expanded size made this raise
more expensive than the treasury could handle. The out-of-control spending did not
trouble Severus. His deathbed advice to his sons, Caracalla and Geta, in 211 c.e. was
to “stay on good terms with each other, be generous to the soldiers, and pay no
attention to anyone else.”
Ignoring the first part of his father’s advice, Caracalla murdered his brother.
He then went on to end the Roman Golden Age of peace and prosperity with his
uncontrolled spending and cruelty. He increased the soldiers’ pay by another 40 to
50 percent and spent gigantic sums on building projects, including the largest pub-
lic baths Rome had ever seen, covering blocks and blocks of the city. These huge
expenses put unbearable pressure on the local provincial officials responsible for
collecting taxes and on the citizens, whom the officials in turn squeezed for ever
larger payments.
In 212 c.e., Caracalla tried to fix the budget by granting Roman citizenship to
almost every man and woman in imperial territory except slaves. Since only citizens
paid inheritance taxes and fees for freeing slaves, an increase in citizens meant an
increase in revenues, most of which was earmarked for the army. But too much was
never enough for Caracalla, whose cruelty to anyone who displeased him made his
contemporaries whisper that he was insane. His attempted conquests of new territory
failed to bring in enough funds, and he wrecked imperial finances. Once when his
mother reprimanded him for his excesses he replied, as he drew his sword, “Never
mind, we won’t run out of money as long as I have this.”
The financial crisis generated political instability that led to a half century of civil
war. This period of violent struggle destroyed the principate. More than two dozen
men, often several at once, held or claimed power in this period. Their only quali-
fication was their ability to command a frontier army and to reward the troops for
loyalty to their general instead of to the state.
The civil war devastated the population and the economy. Violence and hyper-
inflation made life miserable in many regions. Agriculture withered as farmers could
not keep up normal production when armies searching for food ravaged their crops.
City council members faced constantly escalating demands for tax revenues from the
swiftly changing emperors. The endless financial pressure destroyed members’ will
to serve their communities.
Earthquakes and epidemics also struck the provinces in the mid-third century.
In some regions, the population declined significantly as food supplies became less
dependable, civil war killed soldiers and civilians alike, and infection raged. The loss
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] Conclusion 205
of population meant fewer soldiers for the army,

North
Sea whose strength as a defense and police force had
been gutted by political and financial chaos. This
weakness made frontier areas more vulnerable to
Black Sea
raids and allowed roving bands of robbers to range
Med
iterra unchecked inside the borders.
nean Se
a
Foreign enemies to the north and east took
Spain was under Gallic
control until 269 advantage of the third-century crisis to attack.
Roman Palmyrene Roman fortunes hit bottom when Shapur I, king
Empire control
Gallic control Persia of the Sasanid Empire of Persia, invaded the prov-
ince of Syria and captured the emperor Valerian
The Fragmented Roman Empire (r. 253–260 c.e.). By this time, Roman imperial
of the Third Century territory was in constant danger of being captured.
Zenobia, the warrior queen of Palmyra in Syria,
for example, seized Egypt and Asia Minor. Emperor Aurelian (r. 270–275 c.e.) won
back these provinces only with great difficulty. He also had to encircle Rome with a
larger wall to ward off attacks from northern raiders, who were smashing their way
into Italy.
Polytheists explained the third-century crisis in the traditional way: the state
gods were angry about something. But what? To them, the obvious answer was the
presence of Christians, who denied the existence of the Roman gods and refused to
worship them. Emperor Decius (r. 249–251 c.e.) therefore launched a systematic per-
secution to eliminate Christians and restore the goodwill of the gods. He ordered all
the empire’s inhabitants to prove their loyalty to the state by sacrificing to its gods.
Christians who refused were killed. This persecution did not stop the civil war,
economic failure, and natural disasters that threatened Rome’s empire, and Emperor
Gallienus (r. 253–268 c.e.) ordered Chris-
tians to be left alone and their property
restored. The crisis in government contin- REVIEW QUESTION What were the causes
ued, however, and by the 280s c.e. the prin- and the effects of the Roman crisis in the
cipate had reached a political and financial third century C.E.?
dead end.
Conclusion
Augustus created the principate and the Pax Romana by constructing a disguised
monarchy while insisting that he was restoring the republic. He succeeded by ensur-
ing the loyalty of both the army and the people to him by becoming their patron.
He bought off the upper class by letting them keep their traditional offices and status.
The imperial cult provided a focus for building and displaying loyalty to the emperor.
The emperors provided food to the poor, built baths and arenas for public enter-
tainment, paid their troops well, and gave privileges to the elite. By the second century,
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
peace and prosperity created a Golden Age. Long-term financial difficulties set in,
however, because the army, now concentrating on defense, no longer brought in
money from conquests. Severe inflation made the situation desperate. Ruined by the
demand for more tax revenues, provincial elites lost their public-spiritedness and
avoided their communal responsibilities.
The emergence of Christianity generated tension because Romans doubted Chris-
tians’ loyalty. The new religion had evolved from Jewish apocalypticism to a hierar-
chical organization. Its believers argued with one another and with the authorities.
Martyrs such as Vibia Perpetua worried the government by placing their beliefs ahead
of loyalty to the state.
When financial ruin, natural disasters, and civil war combined to create a politi-
cal crisis in the mid-third century c.e., the emperors lacked the money and the
popular support to solve it. Not even their persecution of Christians had convinced
the gods to restore Rome’s good fortunes. Threatened with the loss of peace, pros-
perity, and territory, the empire needed a political transformation to survive. That
process began under the emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305 c.e.). Under his successor,
Constantine (r. 306–337 c.e.), the Roman Empire also began the slow process of
becoming officially Christian.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] Conclusion 207
N
Roman Empire
W E Principal trade routes
ea
cS
S Principal trade products:
lti
North
Sea Ba Grain
Wine
BRITAIN
Slaves
SAXONS FRANKS Olive oil
London
Cologne VANDALS Raids on the Roman Empire, c. 250–285
ALAMANNI
JUTHUNGI VISIGOTHS
JAZYGES GOTHS
CARPI
GAUL
ATLANTIC
OCEAN DACIA
Ad D a n u b e R.
ri Black Sea
Massilia ITALY atic
Se
a
Corsica Rome
Tarraco Byzantium
SPAIN Sardinia GREECE
Athens Ephesus
Gades
Carthage Sicily Antioch
Me
dit Cyprus
erra Crete Palmyra
nean Damascus
Sea
Leptis
Magna Cyrene
SASANID
Caesarea
NORTH AFRICA EMPIRE
NOMADIC Alexandria
RAIDERS
0 250 500 miles EGYPT NOMADIC

0 250 500 kilometers NOBADES BLEMMYES RAIDERS
MAPPING THE WEST The Roman Empire in Crisis, 284 c.e.

By the 280s C.E., fifty years of civil war had torn the principate apart. Imperial territory retained
the outlines inherited from the time of Augustus (compare Map 6.1 on page 188), except for
the loss of Dacia to the Goths a few years before. Attacks from the north and east had repeat-
edly penetrated the frontiers, however. Long-distance trade had always been important to the
empire’s prosperity, but the decades of violence had made transport riskier and therefore more
expensive, contributing to the crisis.
Chapter 6 Review
Pax Romana (Roman Peace) Colosseum (p. 186) apostolic succession (p. 198)
(p. 176) decurions (p. 189) orthodoxy (p. 199)
Augustus (p. 177) Romanization (p. 191) heresy (p. 199)
principate (p. 177) Christ (p. 194) Neoplatonism (p. 201)
praetorian guard (p. 178) martyr (p. 197) debasement of coinage
Julio-Claudians (p. 184) (p. 203)
Review Questions
1. How did the peace gained through Augustus’s “restoration of the Roman Republic” affect
Romans’ lives in all social classes?
2. In the early Roman Empire, what was life like in the cities and in the country for the elite
and for ordinary people?
3. Which aspects of social, cultural, and political life in the early Roman Empire supported
the growth of Christianity, and which opposed it?
4. What were the causes and the effects of the Roman crisis in the third century C.E.?
Making Connections
1. What were the similarities and differences between the crisis in the first century B.C.E. that
undermined the Roman Republic and the crisis in the third century C.E. that undermined
the principate?
2. If you had been a first-century Roman emperor under the principate, what would you have
done about the Christians and why? What if you had been a third-century emperor?
3. Do you think that the factors that caused the crisis in the Roman Empire could cause a
similar crisis in the Western world of today?
Scholars continue to debate the nature and the significance of the many social, cultural, and
(especially) religious changes that occurred under the early Roman Empire. Perhaps the most
difficult question to answer is to what extent life became better or worse for most people — and
indeed how to define better and worse in this context — once the empire stopped expanding into
new territories.
Ando, Clifford. The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire. 2008.
Challet, Claude-Emmanuelle C. Like Man, Like Woman: Roman Women, Gender Qualities, and
Conjugal Relationships at the Turn of the First Century. 2013.
Crossan, Dominic, and Jonathan Reed. In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s
Empire with God’s Kingdom. 2005.
Dennison, Matthew. Livia: Empress of Rome. 2010.
Denzey, Nicola. The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. 2007.
*Futrell, Allison. The Roman Games: Historical Sources in Translation. 2006.
*Primary source.
208
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
Important Events
30 B.C.E. Octavian (the future Augustus) conquers Ptolemaic Egypt

27 B.C.E. Augustus inaugurates the principate
30 C.E. Jesus is crucified in Jerusalem
64 C.E. Great fire in Rome; Nero blames Christians
69 C.E. Civil war after death of Nero in 68 C.E.
70 C.E. Titus captures Jerusalem; the Jewish temple is destroyed
70–90 C.E. New Testament Gospels are written
80s C.E. Domitian leads campaigns against multiethnic invaders on northern
frontiers
161–180 C.E. Marcus Aurelius battles multiethnic bands attacking northern
frontiers
212 C.E. Caracalla extends Roman citizenship to almost all free inhabitants of
the provinces
230s–280s C.E. Third-century financial and political crisis
249–251 C.E. Decius persecutes Christians
Consider three events: Great fire in Rome; Nero blames Christians (64 C.E.), New
Testament Gospels are written (70–90 C.E.), and Decius persecutes Christians (249–
251 C.E.). How were these events similar to and different from one another, and what
attitudes did they illustrate? How might polytheist and Christian ideas have contributed to
these events?
Galinsky, Karl, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus. 2005.
Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Complete Roman Army. 2003.
Green, Bernard. Christianity in Ancient Rome: The First Three Centuries. 2010.
Harris, W. V. Rome’s Imperial Economy. 2010.
*Kraemer, Ross Shephard. Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religion among Pagans, Jews,
and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. 1992.
*Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Trans. Robin Hard. Intro. Christopher Gill. 2011.
Mattingly, David J. Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire. 2010.
Matz, David. Life of the Ancient Romans: Daily Life through History. 2008.
Roman emperors: http://www.roman-emperors.org/startup.htm
*Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars. Trans. Catharine Edwards. 2009.
*Tacitus. The Complete Works. Trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. 1964.
The Transformation
7
of the Roman Empire
284 – 600 c.e.
A
round 300,* Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) proclaimed the reason why
the Roman Empire was endangered: “The immortal gods in their foresight
have taken care to proclaim and prescribe what is good and true, which the
sayings of many good and distinguished men have approved and confirmed, along
with the reasoned judgments of the wisest.
Vandal General Stilicho
It is wrong to oppose and resist these tradi-
and His Family tions, and a new cult should not find fault
This diptych (“folding tablet”) made of with ancient religion. It is a serious crime to
ivory around 400 shows Stilicho, the question matters that our ancestors estab-
top general in the Roman army in lished and fixed once and for all. . . . There-
Europe and close adviser to the western
fore, we are eager to punish the obstinate
Roman emperor, with his wife, Serena,
and their son Eucherius. Stilicho’s life and perverse thinking of these utterly worth-
reveals the mixing of cultures in the less people.”
later Roman Empire: his father was Diocletian had ended the third-century
from the Vandal tribe in Germany, and political crisis and kept the Roman Empire
his mother was Roman; he himself rose
from breaking into warring parts by appoint-
to prominence in Roman imperial gov-
ernment and society. Serena was the
ing a co-emperor and two assistant emper-
adoptive daughter of the emperor, and ors. Still, suspicions endured that nontradi-
Stilicho and Serena’s daughter Maria tional worshippers were responsible for the
married the emperor’s son. Stilicho is divine anger that, everyone believed, had
shown dressed in the richly decorated sent the crisis. Diocletian convinced his
clothing appropriate for a member of
co-rulers first to persecute the pagan Mani-
the Roman elite, and he wears a metal
clasp to fasten his robe, a symbol of chaeans (followers of the Iranian prophet
his father’s ethnicity. The images on his Mani and the objects of his proclamation)
shield of the two emperors then ruling and then the Christians. His successor
the divided Roman Empire proclaim his Constantine (r. 306–337) ended the perse-
loyalty even as they point to the political
cution by converting to Christianity and
and geographic fragmentation of the
time. (Basilica di San Giovanni Battista, Monza,
Italy / Bridgeman Images.) *From this point on, dates are c.e. unless otherwise
indicated.
211
212 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
supporting his new faith with imperial funds and a policy of religious freedom.
Nevertheless, it took a century more for Christianity to become the state religion.
The social and cultural transformations produced by the Christianization of the
Roman Empire came slowly because many Romans clung to their ancestral beliefs.
Diocletian’s reform of government only postponed the division of imperial terri-
tory. In 395, Emperor Theodosius I split the empire in two to try to provide better
defense against the barbarians pressing into Roman territory, especially from the
north. He appointed one of his sons to rule the west and the other the east. The two
emperors were supposed to cooperate, but in the long run this system of divided
rule could not cope with the different pressures affecting the two regions.
In the western Roman Empire, military and political events provoked social and
cultural change when barbarian immigrants began living side by side with Romans.
Both groups underwent changes: the barbarians created kingdoms and laws based
on Roman traditions yet adopted Christianity, and the wealthy Romans fled from
cities to seek safety in country estates when the western government became inef-
fective. These changes in turn transformed the political landscape of western Europe
in ways that foreshadowed the later development of nations there. In the east, how-
ever, the empire lived on for another thou-
sand years, passing on the memory of clas-
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the most impor-
sical traditions to later Western civilization.
tant sources of unity and of division in the
Roman Empire from the reign of Diocletian to The eastern half endured as the continu-
the reign of Justinian, and why? ation of the Roman Empire until Turkish
invaders conquered it in 1453.
From Principate to Dominate in the

Late Roman Empire, 284–395
Diocletian and Constantine pulled Roman government out of its extended crisis by
increasing the emperors’ authority, reorganizing the empire’s defense, restricting work-
ers’ freedom, and changing the tax system to try to increase revenues. The two emper-
ors firmly believed they had to win back divine favor to ensure their people’s safety.
Diocletian and Constantine believed that they could solve the empire’s problems
by becoming more autocratic. They transformed their appearance as rulers to make
their power seem awesome beyond compare, taking ideas from the self-presentation
of their most powerful rivals, the rulers of the Persian Empire. Diocletian and Con-
stantine hoped that their assertion of supremacy would keep their empire united; in
the long run, however, it proved impossible to preserve Roman imperial territory on
the scale once ruled by Augustus.
The Political Transformation and Division of the Roman Empire

No one could have predicted Diocletian’s rise to power: he began life as an uneducated
peasant in the Balkans, but his leadership, courage, and intelligence propelled him
[284–600 c.e.
] From Principate to Dominate in the Late Roman Empire, 284–395 213
through the ranks until the army made him emperor in 284. He ended a half a century
of civil war by imposing the most autocratic system of rule in Roman history.
Historians refer to Roman rule from Diocletian onward as the dominate because
he took the title dominus (“lord” or “master”) — what slaves called their owners. The
emperors of the dominate continued to refer to their government as the Roman
Republic, but in truth they ruled autocratically. This new system eliminated the prin-
cipate’s ideal of the princeps (“first man”) as the social equal of the senators. The
emperors of the dominate now recognized no equals. The offices of senator, consul,
and other traditional positions continued, but only as posts of honor. These officials
had the responsibility to pay for public services, especially chariot races and festivals,
but no power to govern. Imperial administrators were increasingly chosen from
lower ranks of society according to their competence and their loyalty to the emperor.
The dominate’s emperors took ideas for emphasizing their superiority from the
Sasanids in Persia, whose empire (224–651) they recognized as equal to their own
in power and whose king and queen they addressed as “our brother” and “our sister.”
The Roman Empire’s masters broadcast their majesty by surrounding themselves with
courtiers and ceremony, presiding from a raised platform, and sparkling in jeweled
crowns, robes, and shoes. Constantine took from Persia the tradition that emperors
set themselves apart by wearing a diadem, a purple gem-studded headband. In another
echo of Persian monarchy, a series of veils separated the palace’s waiting rooms from
the interior room where the emperor listened to people’s pleas for help or justice.
Officials marked their rank by wearing special shoes and belts and claiming grandi-
ose titles such as “Most Perfect.”
The dominate’s emperors also asserted their supreme power through laws and
punishments. They alone made law. To impose order, they raised punishments to
brutal levels. New punishments included Constantine’s order that the “greedy hands”
of officials who took bribes “shall be cut off by the sword.” The guardians of a young
girl who allowed a lover to seduce her were executed by having molten lead poured
into their mouths. Penalties grew ever harsher for the majority of the population,
legally designated as “humbler people,” who were punished more severely than the
“better people” for comparable offenses. In this way, the dominate strengthened the
divisions between ordinary people and the rich.
Diocletian appointed three “partners” (a co-emperor, Maximian, and two assis-
tant emperors, Constantius and Galerius, who were the designated successors) to
join him in ruling the empire in a tetrarchy (“rule by four”). Each ruler controlled
one of four districts. Diocletian served as supreme ruler and was supposed to receive
the loyalty of the others. He also created smaller administrative units, called dioceses,
under separate governors, who reported to the four emperors’ assistants, the prae-
torian prefects (Map 7.1). This system was Diocletian’s attempt to put imperial gov-
ernment into closer contact with the empire’s frontier regions, where the dangers of
invasion and rebellious troops loomed.
Diocletian’s reforms ended Rome’s thousand years as the empire’s most impor-
tant city. Diocletian did not even visit Rome until 303, nearly twenty years after
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
a
Se
c District of Constantius
North lt i
Sea Ba N District of Maximian
District of Galerius
BRITANNIAE W E
District of Diocletian
S ITALIA Dioceses and boundary
BRITAIN
GERMANIC
Rh
District capitals
ine
PEOPLES
Trier .R
Tours GALLIAE OSTROGOTHS

P S PANNONIAE
A L DACIA
ATLANTIC Milan ILLYRIA
Rhône R.
Ravenna Sirmium
OCEAN
VIENNENSIS DA Da n u b e R .
ITALIA LM
AT BA L K A N M T S .
IA Black Sea
Nursia
Corsica Rome MOESIAE THRACIA
Byzantium
Thessalonika Chalcedon ARMENIA
SPAIN Nicomedia
Sardinia MACEDONIA Nicaea
PONTICA
E
ASIANA Caesarea
ANIA
Athens
Ephesus Tyana
M
Hippo Carthage
ES
HISP
O
Antioch
PO
Med Crete SYRIA
TA
AFRICA iterra Cyprus
M
nean Sea ORIENS
IA
PALESTINE
Bethlehem
Alexandria
ARABIA
EGYPT
0 250 500 miles
Ni

le
R.
MAP 7.1 Diocletian’s Reorganization of 293

Trying to prevent civil war, Emperor Diocletian reorganized Rome’s imperial territory into a tetrar-
chy, to be ruled by himself, his co-emperor Maximian, and assistant emperors Constantius and
Galerius, each the head of a large district. He subdivided the preexisting provinces into smaller
units and grouped them into fourteen dioceses, each overseen by a regional administrator. The
four districts as shown here reflect the arrangement recorded by the imperial official Sextus
Aurelius Victor in about 360. What were the advantages and disadvantages of subdividing the
empire?
becoming emperor. Italy became just another section of the empire, now subject to
the same taxation as everywhere else.
Diocletian resigned in 305 for unknown reasons, after which rivals for power
abandoned the tetrarchy and fought a civil war until 324, when Constantine finally
won. At the end of his reign in 337, Constantine designated his three sons to rule as
co-emperors. Failing to cooperate, they waged war against one another.
Constantine’s warring sons unofficially split the empire on a north–south line
along the Balkan peninsula, a division that Theodosius made permanent in 395. In the
long run, the empire’s halves would be governed largely as separate territories despite
the emperors’ insistence that the empire remained one state.
[284–600 c.e.
PANNONIAE
0 100 200 miles Each half had its own capital city. Constanti-
0 200 kilometers nople (“Constantine’s City”) — formerly the ancient
ILLYRIA D a nu b e R . city of Byzantium (today Istanbul, Turkey) — was
Ravenna
the eastern capital. Constantine made it his capi-
ITALIA THRACIA tal, a “new Rome,” because of its strategic military
MOESIAE
Constantinople and commercial location: it lay at the mouth of the
Black Sea guarding principal routes for trade and
Sicily troop movements. To recall the glory of Rome,
Line of division
Constantine constructed a forum, an imperial pal-
between east and west
Crete ace, a hippodrome for chariot races, and monumen-
Mediterranean Sea
tal statues of the traditional gods in his refounded
city. Constantinople grew to be the most impor-
EGYPT tant city in the Roman Empire.
AFRICA ITALIA Dioceses
Honorius, Theodosius’s son and successor in the
west, wanted a headquarters that was easy to defend.
The Empire’s East/West
Division, 395
In 404, he chose the port of Ravenna, a commercial
center on Italy’s northeastern coast housing a naval
base. Marshes and walls protected Ravenna by land, while its harbor kept it from being
starved out in a siege. Though the emperors enhanced Ravenna with churches covered
in multicolored mosaics, it never rivaled Constantinople in size or splendor.
The Social Consequences of Financial Pressures

To try to control inflation and support his huge army, Diocletian imposed price and
wage controls and a new taxation system. These measures failed because they imposed
great financial pressures on both rich and poor. Diocletian also placed restrictions
on many people’s rights to choose their occupations.
Diocletian was desperate to reduce the hyperinflation resulting from the third-
century crisis. As prices escalated, people hoarded whatever they could buy. “Hurry
and spend all my money you have; buy me any kinds of goods at whatever prices
they are available,” wrote one official to his servant. Hoarding only worsened the
inflation.
In 301, the inflation was so severe that Diocletian imposed harsh price and wage
controls in the worst-hit areas. This mandate, which blamed high prices on mer-
chants’ “unlimited and frenzied avarice,” forbade hoarding of goods and set cost ceil-
ings for about a thousand goods and services. The mandate failed to change people’s
behavior, despite penalties of exile or death. Diocletian’s price and wage controls thus
only increased financial pressure on everyone.
The emperors increased taxes mostly to support the army, which required enor-
mous amounts of grain, meat, salt, wine, vegetable oil, military equipment, horses,
camels, and mules. The major sources of revenue were a tax on land, assessed accord-
ing to its productivity, and a head tax on individuals. To supplement taxes paid in
coin, the emperors began collecting some payments in goods and services.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
The empire was too large to enforce the tax system uniformly. In some areas
both men and women ages twelve to sixty-five paid the full tax, but in others women
paid only half the tax assessment, or none at all. The reasons for such differences
are not recorded. Workers in cities periodically paid “in kind,” that is, by laboring
without pay on public works projects such as cleaning municipal drains or repairing
buildings. People in commerce, from shopkeepers to prostitutes, still paid taxes in
money, while members of the senatorial class were exempt from ordinary taxes but
had to pay special levies.
The new tax system could work only if agricultural production remained stable
and the government kept track of the people who were liable for the head tax. Dio-
cletian therefore restricted the movement of tenant farmers, called coloni (“culti-
vators”), whose work provided the empire’s economic base. Now male coloni, as well
as their wives in areas where women were assessed for taxes, were increasingly tied
to a particular plot of land. Their children, too, were bound to the family plot, mak-
ing farming a hereditary obligation.
The government also regulated other occupations deemed essential. Bakers,
who were required to produce free bread for Rome’s poor, a tradition begun under
the republic to prevent food riots, could not leave their jobs. Under Constantine, the
sons of military veterans were obliged to serve in the army. However, conditions
were not the same everywhere in the empire. Free workers who earned wages appar-
ently remained important in the economy of Egypt in the late Roman Empire, and
archaeological evidence suggests that some regions may actually have become more
prosperous.
The emperors also decreed oppressive regulations for the curials, the social elite
in the cities and towns. During this period, many men in the curial class were obliged
to serve as decurions (unsalaried members of their city Senate) and to spend their
own funds to support the community. Their financial responsibilities ranged from
maintaining the water supply to feeding troops, but their most expensive duty was
paying for shortfalls in tax collection. The emperors’ demands for revenue made this
a crushing obligation.
The empire had always depended on property owners to fill local offices in
return for honor and the emperor’s favor. Now this tradition broke down as some
wealthy people avoided public service to escape financial ruin. Service on a munici-
pal council could even be imposed as punishment for a crime. Eventually, to prevent
curials from escaping their obligations, imperial policy decreed that they could not
move away from the town where they had been born. Members of the elite sought
exemptions from public service by petitioning the emperor, bribing imperial officials,
or taking up an occupation that freed them from curial obligations (the military,
imperial administration, or church governance). The most desperate simply aban-
doned their homes and property.
These restrictions eroded the communal values motivating wealthy Romans. The
drive to increase revenues also produced social discontent among poorer citizens:
the tax rate on land eventually reached one-third of the land’s gross yield, impover-
[284–600 c.e.
ishing small farmers. Financial troubles, especially severe in the west, kept the empire
from ever regaining the prosperity of its Golden Age.
From the Great Persecution to Religious Freedom

To eliminate what he saw as a threat to national security, Diocletian in 303 launched
the so-called Great Persecution to please the gods by suppressing Christianity. He
expelled Christians from official posts, seized their property, tore down churches,
and executed anyone who refused to participate in official religious rituals.
His three partners in the tetrarchy applied the policy unevenly. In the western
empire, official violence against Christians stopped after about a year; in the east, it
continued for a decade. The public executions of Christians were so gruesome that
they aroused the sympathy of some polytheists. The Great Persecution ultimately
failed: it undermined social stability without destroying Christianity.
Constantine changed the world’s religious history forever by converting to the
new faith. During the civil war after Diocletian’s resignation, right before the crucial
battle of the Milvian Bridge in Rome in 312, Constantine reportedly experienced a
dream promising him God’s support and saw Jesus’s cross in the sky surrounded by
the words “Under this sign you will win the victory.” Constantine ordered his soldiers
to paint “the sign of the cross of Christ” on their shields. When his soldiers won a
great victory in that battle, Constantine attributed his success to the Christian God
and declared himself a Christian.
However, Constantine did not make polytheism illegal and did not make Chris-
tianity the official state religion. Instead, he and his polytheist co-emperor Licinius
enforced religious freedom, as shown by the Edict of Milan of 313. The edict pro-
claimed free choice of religion for everyone and referred to protection of the empire
by “the highest divinity” — a general term meant to satisfy both polytheists and
Christians.
Coin Portrait of Emperor Constantine

Constantine had these special, extra-large coins
minted to depict him for the first time as an
overtly Christian emperor. The jewels on his
helmet and crown, the fancy bridle on the
horse, and the scepter indicate his status
as emperor, while his armor and shield
signify his military accomplishments.
He proclaims his Christian rule with his
scepter’s new design — a cross with a
globe — and the round badge sticking up
from his helmet that carries the monogram
signifying “Christ” that he had his soldiers
paint on their shields to win God’s favor in
battle. (The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Constantine promoted his newly chosen religion while trying to placate tradi-
tional polytheists, who still greatly outnumbered Christians. For example, he returned
all property confiscated from Christians during the Great Persecution, but he had
the treasury compensate those who had bought it. When in 321 he made the Lord’s
Day of each week a holy occasion on which no official business or manufacturing
work could be performed, he called it Sunday to blend Christian and traditional
notions in honoring two divinities, God and the sun. He decorated his new capital of
Constantinople with statues of traditional
gods. Above all, he respected tradition by
REVIEW QUESTION What were Diocletian’s
policies to end the third-century crisis, and how continuing to hold the office of pontifex
successful were they? maximus (“chief priest”), which emperors
had filled ever since Augustus.
The Official Christianization of the Empire, 312–c. 540

The process of Christianization of the Roman Empire was gradual: Christianity was
not officially made the state religion until the end of the fourth century, and even
then many people continued to worship the traditional gods in private. Eventually,
Christianity became the religion of most people by attracting converts among women
and men of all classes, assuring believers of personal salvation, offering the social
advantages and security of belonging to the emperors’ religion, nourishing a strong
sense of shared identity and community, developing a hierarchy to govern the church,
and creating communities of devoted monks (male and female). The transformation
from a polytheist into a Christian state was the Roman Empire’s most important
long-term influence on Western civilization.
Polytheism and Christianity in Competition

Polytheism and Christianity competed for people’s faith. They shared some similar
beliefs. Both, for example, regarded spirits and demons as powerful and ever-present
forces in life. Some polytheists focused their beliefs on a supreme god who seemed
almost monotheistic; some Christians took ideas from Neoplatonist philosophy, which
was based on Plato’s ideas about God and spirituality.
Unbridgeable differences remained, however, between the beliefs of traditional
polytheists and Christians. People disagreed over whether there was one God or
many, and what degree of interest the divinity (or divinities) paid to the human
world. Polytheists could not accept a divine savior who promised eternal salvation
for believers but had apparently lacked the will or the power to overthrow Roman
rule and prevent his own execution. The traditional gods by contrast, they believed,
had given their worshippers a world empire. Moreover, polytheists could say, cults
such as that of the goddess Isis and philosophies such as Stoicism insisted that only
the pure of heart and mind could be admitted to their fellowship. Christians, by
contrast, embraced sinners. Why, wondered perplexed polytheists, would anyone
[284–600 c.e.
] The Official Christianization of the Empire, 312–c. 540 219
want to associate with such people? In short, as the Greek philosopher Porphyry
argued, Christians had no right to claim they possessed the sole version of religious
truth, for no one had ever discovered a doctrine that provided “the sole path to the
liberation of the soul.”
The slow pace of Christianization revealed how strong polytheism remained in
this period, especially at the highest social levels. In fact, the emperor known as
Julian the Apostate (r. 361–363) rebelled against his family’s Christianity — the word
apostate means “renegade from the faith” — by trying to reverse official support of
the new religion in favor of his own less traditional and more philosophical inter-
pretation of polytheism. Like Christians, he believed in a supreme deity, but he based
his religious beliefs on Greek philosophy when he said, “This divine and completely
beautiful universe, from heaven’s highest arch to earth’s lowest limit, is tied together
by the continuous providence of god, has existed ungenerated eternally, and is imper-
ishable forever.”
Emperors after Julian provided financial support for Christianity, dropped the
title pontifex maximus, and stopped paying for sacrifices. Symmachus (c. 340–402),
a polytheist senator who also served as prefect (mayor) of Rome, objected to the
suppression of religious diversity: “We all have our own way of life and our own way
of worship. . . . So vast a mystery cannot be approached by only one path.”
Christianity officially replaced polytheism as the state religion in 391 when
Theodosius I (r. 379–395) enforced a ban on privately funded polytheist sacrifices.
In 395, he also announced that all polytheist temples had to close. Nevertheless, some
famous shrines, such as the Parthenon in Athens, remained open for a long time.
Pagan temples were gradually converted to churches during the fifth and sixth cen-
turies. Non-Christian schools were not forced to close — the Academy, founded by
Plato in Athens in the early fourth century b.c.e., endured for 140 years more.
Jews posed a special problem for the Christian emperors. They seemed entitled
to special treatment because Jesus had been a Jew. Previous emperors had allowed
Jews to practice their religion, but the rulers now imposed legal restrictions. They
banned Jews from holding office but still required them to assume the financial
burdens of curials without the status. By the late sixth century, the law barred Jews
from marrying Christians, making wills, receiving inheritances, or testifying in
court.
These restrictions began the long process that turned Jews into second-class citi-
zens in later European history, but they did not destroy Judaism. Magnificent syna-
gogues had been built in Palestine, though most Jews had been dispersed throughout
the cities of the empire and the lands to the east. Written Jewish teachings and
interpretations proliferated in this period, culminating in the vast fifth-century c.e.
texts known as the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds (learned opinions on
the Mishnah, a collection of Jewish law) and the Midrash (commentaries on parts
of Hebrew Scripture).
As the official religion, Christianity attracted more believers, especially in the mili-
tary. Soldiers could convert and still serve in the army. Previously, some Christians
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
N
Extent of Christianity, c. 300 C.E.
W
Extent of Christianity, 300–600 C.E.
BRITAIN
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MAP 7.2 The Spread of Christianity, 300–600

Christians were a minority in the Roman Empire in 300, although congregations existed in
many cities and towns, especially in the eastern provinces. The emperor Constantine’s conver-
sion to Christianity in the early fourth century gave a boost to the new religion. It gained further
strength during that century as the Christian emperors supported it financially and eliminated
subsidies for the polytheist cults that had previously made up the religion of the state. By 600,
Christians were numerous in all parts of the empire. (From Henry Chadwick and G. R. Evans,
Atlas of the Christian Church [Oxford: Andromeda Oxford Ltd., 1987], 28. Reproduced by permis-
sion of Andromeda Oxford Limited.)
had felt a conflict between the military oath and their allegiance to Christ. Once the
emperors were Christians, however, soldiers viewed military duty as serving Christ’s
regime.
Christianity’s social values contributed to its appeal by offering believers a strong
sense of shared identity and community. When Christians traveled, they could find
a warm welcome in the local congregation (Map 7.2). The faith also won converts
by promoting the tradition of charitable works characteristic of Judaism and some
polytheist cults, which emphasized caring for poor people, widows, and orphans. By
the mid-third century, Rome’s Christian congregation was supporting fifteen hun-
dred widows and poor people.
[
284–600 c.e.
Women were deeply involved in the new faith. Augustine (354–430), bishop
of Hippo in North Africa and perhaps the most influential theologian in Western
civilization, recognized women’s contribution to the strengthening of Christianity in
a letter he wrote to the unbaptized husband of a baptized woman: “O you men, who
fear all the burdens imposed by baptism! Your women easily best you. Chaste and
devoted to the faith, it is their presence in large numbers that causes the church to
grow.” Women could earn respect by giving their property to their congregation or
by renouncing marriage to dedicate themselves to Christ. Consecrated virgins reject-
ing marriage and widows refusing to remarry joined donors of large amounts of
money as especially admired women. Their choices challenged the traditional social
order, in which women were supposed to devote themselves to raising families. Even
these sanctified women, however, were largely excluded from leadership positions as
the church’s hierarchy came more closely to resemble the male-dominated world of
imperial rule. There were still some women leaders in the church even in the fourth
century, but they were a small minority.
The hierarchy of male bishops replaced early Christianity’s relatively loose com-
munal organization, in which women held leadership posts. Over time, the bishops
replaced the curials as the emperors’ partners in local rule, taking control of the dis-
tribution of imperial subsidies to the people. Regional councils of bishops appointed
new bishops and addressed doctrinal disputes. Bishops in the largest cities became
the most powerful leaders in the church. The bishop of Rome eventually emerged
as the church’s supreme leader in the western empire, claiming for himself a title
previously applied to many bishops: pope (from pappas, a child’s word for “father”
in Greek), the designation still used for the head of the Roman Catholic church.
Christians in the eastern empire never conceded this title to the bishop of Rome.
The bishops of Rome claimed they had leadership over other bishops on the
basis of the New Testament, where Jesus addresses Peter, his head apostle: “You are
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. . . . I will entrust to you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.
Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18–19). Noting
that Peter’s name in Greek means “rock” and that Peter had founded the Roman
church, bishops in Rome eventually argued that they had the right to command the
church as Peter’s successors.
The Struggle for Clarification in Christian Belief

The bishops struggled to establish clarity concerning what Christians should believe
to ensure their spiritual purity. They often disagreed about theology, however, as did
ordinary Christians, and doctrinal disputes repeatedly threatened the church’s unity.
Controversy centered on what was orthodoxy and what was heresy. (See Chap-
ter 6, page 199.) The emperor became ultimately responsible for enforcing orthodox
creed (a summary of correct beliefs) and could use force to compel agreement when
disputes led to violence.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Theological questions about the nature of the Christian Trinity — Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, three seemingly separate deities nevertheless conceived by orthodox
believers to be a unified, co-eternal, and identical divinity — proved the hardest to
clarify. The doctrine called Arianism generated fierce controversy for centuries.
Named after its founder, Arius (c. 260–336), a priest from Alexandria, it maintained
Jesus as Sun God

This heavily damaged mosaic, perhaps from the mid-third century, depicts Jesus like the Greek
god of the sun, Apollo, riding in a chariot pulled by horses with rays of light shining forth around
his head. This symbolism — God is light — reached back to ancient Egypt. Christian artists used
it to portray Jesus because he had said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The mosaic
artist arranged the sunbeams to suggest the shape of the Christian cross. The cloak flaring
from Jesus’s shoulder suggests the spread of his motion across the heavens. (Grotte, St. Peter’s
Basilica, Vatican State / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
[
284–600 c.e.
that God the Father begot (created) his son Jesus from nothing and gave him his
special status. Thus, Jesus was not identical with God the Father and was, in fact,
dependent on him. Arianism found widespread support — the emperor Valens and
his barbarian opponents were Arian Christians. Many people found Arianism appeal-
ing because it eliminated the difficulty of understanding how a son could be the
equal of his father and because its subordination of son to father corresponded to
the norms of family life. Arius used popular songs to make his views known, and
people everywhere became engaged in the controversy. “When you ask for your
change from a shopkeeper,” one observer remarked in describing Constantinople,
“he harangues you about the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you inquire how much
bread costs, the reply is that ‘the Father is superior and the Son inferior.’ ”
Disputes such as this led Constantine to try to determine religious truth. In 325,
he convened 220 bishops at the Council of Nicaea to discuss Arianism. The majority
voted to banish Arius to the Balkans and declared in the Nicene Creed that the
Father and the Son were homoousion (“of one substance”) and co-eternal. So difficult
were the issues, however, that Constantine later changed his mind twice, first recall-
ing Arius from exile and then reproaching him again not long after.
Numerous other disputes divided believers. Orthodoxy taught that Jesus’s divine
and human natures commingled within his person but remained distinct. Monophy-
sites (a Greek term for “single-nature believers”) argued that the divine took prece-
dence over the human in Jesus and that he therefore had essentially only a single
nature. They split from the orthodox hierarchy in the sixth century to found inde-
pendent churches in Egypt (the Coptic church), Ethiopia, Syria, and Armenia.
Nestorius, made bishop of Constantinople in 428, argued that Mary, in giving
birth to Jesus, had produced the human being who became the temple for God
dwelling within him. Nestorianism therefore offended Christians who accepted the
designation of theotokos (Greek for “bearer of God”) for Mary. The bishops of Alex-
andria and Rome had Nestorius deposed and his doctrines officially rejected at coun-
cils held in 430 and 431. Nestorian bishops then established a separate church cen-
tered in the Persian Empire, where for centuries Nestorian Christians flourished
under the tolerance of non-Christian rulers. They later became important agents of
cultural diffusion by establishing communities that still endure in Arabia, India, and
China.
The heresy of Donatism best illustrates the ferocity that Christian disputes could
generate. A conflict erupted in North Africa over whether to readmit to their old
congregations Christians who had cooperated with imperial authorities during the
Great Persecution. The Donatists (followers of the North African priest Donatus)
insisted that the church should not be polluted with such “traitors.” So bitter was the
clash that it even broke apart Christian families. One son threatened his mother, “I
will join Donatus’s followers, and I will drink your blood.”
A council organized in Chalcedon (a suburb of Constantinople) in 451 to settle
the still-raging disagreement over Nestorius’s views was the most important attempt
to clarify orthodoxy. The conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon form the basis of
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Mosaic of a Family from Edessa

This mosaic, found in a cave tomb from c. 218–238 C.E., depicts an elite family from Edessa in
the late Roman Empire. Their names are given in Syriac, the dialect of Aramaic spoken in their
region, and their colorful clothing reflects local Iranian traditions. The mosaic’s border uses dec-
orative patterns from Roman art, illustrating the combining of cultural traditions in the Roman
Empire. Edessa was the capital of the small kingdom of Osrhoëne, annexed by Rome in 216. It
became famous in Christian history because its king Abgar (r. 179–216) was the first monarch
to convert to Christianity, well before Constantine. The eastern Roman emperors proclaimed
themselves the heirs of King Abgar. (© World History Archive / Alamy.)
the doctrine of most Christians in the West today. At the time, however, it failed to
create unanimity, especially in the eastern empire, where Monophysites flourished.
By around 500, Augustine and other influential theologians such as Ambrose
(c. 339–397) and Jerome (c. 345–420) earned the informal title church fathers because
their views were cited as authoritative in disputes over orthodoxy. Augustine became
the most famous of this group of patristic (from pater, Greek for “father”) authors,
[284–600 c.e.
and for the next thousand years his many works would be the most influential texts
in western Christianity aside from the Bible.
In The City of God, Augustine expressed his views on the need for order in
human life and asserted that the basic human dilemma lay in the conflict between
desiring earthly pleasures and desiring spiritual purity. Emotion, especially love, was
natural and commendable, but only when directed toward God. Humans were mis-
guided to look for any value in life on earth. Only life in God’s eternal city at the
end of time had meaning.
Nevertheless, Augustine wrote, law and government are required on earth
because humans are imperfect. God’s original creation was perfect, but after Adam
and Eve disobeyed God, humans lost their initial perfection and inherited a perma-
nently flawed nature. According to this doctrine of original sin — a subject of theo-
logical debate since at least the second century — Adam and Eve’s disobedience
passed down to human beings a hereditary moral disease that made the human will
a divisive force. This corruption necessitated governments that could suppress evil.
The state therefore had a duty to compel people to remain loyal to the church, by
force if necessary.
Christians, he argued, had a duty to obey the emperor and participate in political
life. Soldiers, too, had to follow their orders. Order was so essential, Augustine
argued, that it even justified what he admitted was the unjust institution of slavery.
Although he detested slavery, he believed it was a lesser evil than the social disorder
that he thought its abolition would create.
In The City of God, Augustine argued that history has a divine purpose, even if
people could not see it. History progressed toward an ultimate goal, but only God
knew the meaning of his creation:
To be truthful, I myself fail to understand why God created mice and frogs,
flies and worms. Nevertheless, I recognize that each of these creatures is
beautiful in its own way. For when I contemplate the body and limbs of any
living creature, where do I not find proportion, number, and order exhibit-
ing the unity of concord? Where one discovers proportion, number, and
order, one should look for the craftsman.
The question of how to understand and regulate sexual desire perplexed Chris-
tians in the search for religious truth. Augustine wrote that sex trapped human
beings in evil and that they should therefore strive for asceticism, the practice of
self-denial and spiritual discipline. Augustine knew from personal experience how
difficult it was to accept this doctrine. In his autobiographical work Confessions,
written about 397, he described the deep conflict he felt between his sexual desires
and his religious beliefs. Only after a long period of reflection and doubt, he wrote,
did he find the inner strength to commit to chastity as part of his conversion to
Christianity.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
He advocated sexual abstinence as the highest course for Christians because he
believed that Adam and Eve’s disobedience had forever ruined the perfect harmony
God created between the human will and human passions. According to Augustine,
God punished his disobedient children by making sexual desire a disruptive force
that human will would always struggle to control. He reaffirmed the value of mar-
riage in God’s plan, but he insisted that sexual intercourse even between loving
spouses carried the unhappy reminder of humanity’s fall from grace. Reproduction,
not pleasure, was the only acceptable reason for sex.
This doctrine ennobled virginity and sexual renunciation as the highest virtues.
By the end of the fourth century, Christians valued virginity so highly that congrega-
tions began to request virgin ministers and bishops.
The Emergence of Christian Monks

Christian asceticism peaked with the emergence of monks: men and women who
withdrew from everyday society to live a life of extreme self-denial imitating Jesus’s
suffering, while praying for divine mercy on the world. In monasticism, monks origi-
nally lived alone, but soon they formed communities for mutual support in the
pursuit of holiness.
Polytheists and Jews had strong ascetic traditions, but Christian monasticism
was distinctive for the huge numbers of people drawn to it and the high status that
they earned in the Christian population. Monks’ fame came from their rejection of
ordinary pleasures and comforts. They left their families and congregations,
renounced sex, worshipped almost constantly, wore rough clothes, and ate so little
they were always starving. To achieve inner peace, monks fought a constant spiritual
battle against fantasies of earthly delights — plentiful, tasty food and the joys of sex.
The earliest monks emerged in Egypt in the second half of the third century.
Antony (c. 251–356), the son of a well-to-do family, was among the first to renounce
regular existence. After hearing a sermon stressing Jesus’s command to a rich young
man to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor (Matt. 19:21), he left
his property in about 285 and withdrew into the desert to devote the rest of his life
to worshipping God through extreme self-denial.
The opportunity to gain fame as a monk seemed especially valuable after the
end of the Great Persecution. Becoming a monk — a living martyrdom — not only
served as the substitute for dying a martyr’s death but also emulated the sacrifice of
Christ. In Syria, “holy women” and “holy men” sought fame through feats of pious
endurance; Symeon (390–459), for example, lived atop a tall pillar for thirty years,
preaching to the people gathered at the foot of his perch. Egyptian Christians came
to believe that their monks’ supreme piety made them living heroes who ensured
the annual flooding of the Nile (which enriched the soil, aiding agriculture), an event
once associated with the pharaohs’ religious power.
In a Christian tradition originating with martyrs, the relics of dead holy men
and women — body parts or clothing — became treasured sources of protection and
[284–600 c.e.
Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai

The sixth-century eastern Roman emperor Justinian built a wall to protect this monastery in the
desert at the foot of Mount Sinai (on the peninsula between Egypt and Arabia). Justinian forti-
fied the monastery to promote orthodoxy in a region dominated by Monophysite Christians. The
monastery gained its name in the ninth century when the story was circulated that angels had
recently brought the body of Catherine of Alexandria there. Catherine was said to have been
martyred in the fourth century for refusing to marry the emperor because, in her words, she was
the bride of Christ. (Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
healing. The power associated with the relics of saints (people venerated after their
deaths for their holiness) gave believers faith in divine favor.
In about 323, an Egyptian Christian named Pachomius organized the first
monastic community, establishing the tradition of single-sex settlements of male or
female monks. This communal monasticism dominated Christian asceticism ever
after. Communities of men and women were often built close together to share labor,
with women making clothing, for example, while men farmed.
Some monasteries imposed military-style discipline, but there were large differ-
ences in the degree of control of the monks and the extent of contact allowed with
the outside world. Some groups strove for complete self-sufficiency and strict rules
to avoid transactions with outsiders. Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), in Asia Minor,
started an alternative tradition of monasteries in service to society. Basil (later dubbed
“the Great”) required monks to perform charitable deeds, especially ministering to
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
the sick, a development that led to the foundation of the first hospitals, which were
attached to monasteries.
A milder code of monastic conduct became the standard in the west beginning
about 540. Called the Benedictine rule after its creator, Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–
553), it mandated the monastery’s daily routine of prayer, scriptural readings, and
manual labor. This was the first time in Greek and Roman history that physical work
was seen as noble, even godly. The rule divided the day into seven parts, each with
a compulsory service of prayers and lessons, called the office. Unlike the harsh regula-
tions of other monastic communities, Benedict’s code did not isolate the monks from
the outside world or deprive them of sleep, adequate food, or warm clothing. Although
it gave the abbot (the head monk) full authority, it instructed him to listen to other
members of the community before deciding important matters. He was not allowed
to beat disobedient monks. Communities of women, such as those founded by Basil’s
sister Macrina and Benedict’s sister Scholastica, generally followed the rules of the
male monasteries, with an emphasis on the decorum thought necessary for women.
Monastic piety held special appeal for women and the rich because women could
achieve greater status and respect for their holiness than ordinary life allowed them,
and the rich could win fame on earth and hope for favor in heaven by endowing
monasteries with large gifts of money. Jerome wrote, “[As monks,] we evaluate
people’s virtue not by their gender but by their character, and judge those to be
worthy of the greatest glory who have renounced both status and riches.” Some
monks did not choose their life; monasteries took in children from parents who
could not raise them or who, in a practice called oblation, gave them up to fulfill
pious vows. Jerome once advised a mother regarding her young daughter:
Let her be brought up in a monastery, let her live among virgins, let her learn
to avoid swearing, let her regard lying as an offense against God, let her be
ignorant of the world, let her live the angelic life, while in the flesh let her be
without the flesh, and let her suppose that all human beings are like herself.
When the girl reached adulthood as a virgin, he added, she should avoid the baths
so that she would not be seen naked or give her body pleasure by dipping in the
warm pools. Jerome emphasized traditional values favoring males when he promised
that God would reward the mother with the birth of sons in compensation for the
dedication of her daughter.
Monasteries could come into conflict with the church leadership. Bishops
resented members of their congregations who withdrew into monasteries, especially
because they then gave money and property to their new community instead of to
their local churches. Monks represented a threat to bishops’ authority because holy
men and women earned their special sta-
REVIEW QUESTION How did Christianity both
tus not by having it bestowed from the
unite and divide the Roman Empire? church hierarchy but through their own
actions.
[
284–600 c.e.
] Non-Roman Kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire, c. 370–550s 229
Non-Roman Kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire,

c. 370–550s
The western Roman Empire came under great pressure from the incursions of
non-Roman peoples — barbarians, the Romans called them, meaning “brave but
uncivilized” — that took place in the fourth and fifth centuries. The emperors had
traditionally admitted some multiethnic groups from east of the Rhine River and
north of the Danube River into the empire to fight in the Roman army, but eventu-
ally other barbarians fought their way in from the northeast. The barbarians wanted
to flee attacks by the Huns (nomadic warriors from central Asia) and share in Roman
prosperity. By the 370s, this human tide provoked violence and a loss of order in the
western empire.
The immigrants slowly transformed themselves from loosely organized tribes
into kingdoms with newly defined identities. By the 470s, one of their commanders
ruled Italy — the political change that has been said to mark the fall of the Roman
Empire. However, the interactions of these non-Roman peoples with the empire’s
residents in western Europe and North Africa seem closer to a political, social, and
cultural transformation — based on force more than cooperation — that made the
immigrants the heirs of the western Roman Empire and led to the formation of
medieval Europe.
Non-Roman Migrations into the Western Roman Empire

The non-Roman peoples who flooded into the empire had diverse origins; simply
labeling them “Germanic peoples” misrepresents the diversity of their multiethnic
languages and customs. These diverse barbarian peoples had no previously established
sense of ethnic identity, and many of them had had long-term contact with Romans
through trade across the frontiers and service in the Roman army. By encouraging
this contact, the emperors unwittingly set in motion forces that they could not in
the end control. By late in the fourth century, attacks by the Huns had destabilized
life for these bands across the Roman frontiers, and the families of the warriors fol-
lowed them into the empire seeking safety. Hordes of men, women, and children
crossed into the empire as refugees, fleeing the Huns. They came with no political
or military unity and no clear plan. They shared only their terror of the Huns and
their custom of conducting raids for a living in addition to farming small plots.
The inability to prevent immigrants from crossing the border or to integrate
them into Roman society once they had crossed put great stress on the western
central government. Persistent economic weakness rooted in the third-century crisis
worsened this pressure. Tenant farmers and landlords fleeing crushing taxes had left
as much as 20 percent of farmland unworked in the most seriously affected areas.
The loss of revenue made the government unable to afford enough soldiers to control
the frontiers. Over time, the immigrating non-Roman peoples forced the Roman
government to grant them territory in the empire. Remarkably, they then began to
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
develop separate ethnic identities and create new societies for themselves and the
Romans living under their control.
In their homelands the barbarians had lived in chiefdom societies, whose mem-
bers could only be persuaded, not ordered, to follow the chief. Chiefs maintained
their status by giving gifts to their followers and leading raids to capture cattle and
slaves. They led clans — groups of households organized by kinship lines, following
maternal as well as paternal descent. Violence against a fellow clan member was the
worst possible offense. Clans in turn grouped themselves into tribes — fluctuating
coalitions that anyone could join. Tribes differentiated themselves by their clothing,
hairstyles, jewelry, weapons, religious cults, and oral stories.
Family life was patriarchal: men headed households and held authority over
women, children, and slaves. Warfare preoccupied men, as their ritual sacrifices of
weapons preserved in northern European bogs have shown. Women were valued for
their ability to bear children, and rich men could have more than one wife and
perhaps concubines as well. A division of labor made women responsible for growing
crops, making pottery, and producing textiles, while men worked iron and herded
cattle. Women enjoyed certain rights of inheritance and could control property, and
married women received a dowry of one-third of their husband’s property.
Assemblies of free male warriors made major decisions in the tribes. Their lead-
ers’ authority was restricted mostly to religious and military matters. Tribes could
be unstable and prone to internal conflict — clans frequently feuded, with bloody
consequences. Tribal law tried to determine what forms of violence were and were
not acceptable in seeking revenge, but laws were oral, not written, and thus open to
wide dispute. Tribes frequently attacked other tribes.
The migrations became a flood of people when the Huns invaded eastern Europe
in the fourth century. The Huns arrived on the Russian steppes shortly before 370
as the vanguard of Turkish-speaking nomads moving west. Their warriors’ appear-
ance terrified their victims, who reported their attackers had skulls elongated from
having been bound between boards in infancy, faces grooved with decorative scars,
and arms fearsome with elaborate tattoos. Huns excelled as raiders, launching cavalry
attacks without warning. Skilled as horsemen, they could shoot their powerful bows
accurately while riding full tilt and stay mounted for days, sleeping atop their horses
and carrying snacks of raw meat between their thighs and the animal’s back.
By later in the fourth century the Huns had moved as far west as the Hungarian
plain north of the Danube, terrifying the peoples there and launching raids south-
ward into the Balkans. The emperors in Constantinople began paying the Huns to
spare their territory, so the most ambitious Hunnic leader, Attila (r. c. 440–453),
pushed his domain westward toward the Alps. He led his forces as far west as central
France and into northern Italy. At Attila’s death in 453, the Huns lost their fragile
unity and faded from history. By this time, however, the terror that they had inspired
in the peoples living in eastern Europe had provoked the migrations that eventually
transformed the western empire.
[ 284–600 c.e.
The first non-Roman group that created a new identity and society inside the
empire were barbarians from the north. Their history illustrates the pattern of the
migrations: desperate barbarians in barely organized groups with no uniform ethnic
identity, who sought protection in the Roman Empire in return for military service
but were brutalized, and then rebelled to form their own, new kingdom. Abused by
the officers of the emperor Valens, these barbarians defeated and killed him at the
battle of Adrianople in 378 (Map 7.3).
Frankish kingdom in 486 C.E. Visigoths

N
Areas conquered by Clovis Lombards
W
E No r th Battle Angles and Saxons
CELTS Se a Franks Huns
S
IRELAND BRITAIN 376–500 Vandals Celts
ANGLES
Ostrogoths
WALES –500
376 SAXONS
FRANKS
Dnieper
LOMBARDS
Rhi
358
ne
HUNS
Rouen
R.
375
ATLANTIC 406
R
486 340
.
OSTROGOTHS
Paris 400
OCEAN 451 –50 VANDALS
0
L oir
HUNS
eR
.
Lyon 568
409 Da
489 nub
452 e R.
Ravenna VISIGOTHS
397 Bla ck Sea
Toulouse Ad 375
410 ria Adrianople
Corsica tic 378 378
Rome Se
a THRACE Constantinople
418 455 Nicaea
Sardinia
395 EASTERN
ROMAN EMPIRE Eu p
Ephesus
Sicily
hr
Hippo ate
s R.
Carthage
429 439
Cyprus
Crete
Me d iterranean S ea
NORTH AFRICA
0 200 400 miles

Nile R.
MAP 7.3 Migrations and Invasions of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
The movements of non-Roman peoples into imperial territory transformed the Roman Empire.
These migrations had begun as early as the reign of Domitian (r. 81–96), but in the fourth cen-
tury they increased greatly when the Huns’ attacks pushed numerous barbarian bands into the
empire’s northern provinces. Print maps offer only a static representation of dynamic processes
such as movements of populations, but this map helps illustrate the variety of peoples involved,
the wide extent of imperial territory that they affected, and their prominence in the western
empire.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
When the emperor Theodosius died in 395, the barbarians whom he had allowed
to settle in the empire rebelled. United by the Gothic chief Alaric into a tribe known
as the Visigoths, they fought their way into the western empire. In 410, they stunned
the world by sacking Rome itself. For the first time since the Gauls eight hundred
years before, a foreign force occupied the ancient capital. They terrorized the popula-
tion: “What will be left to us?” the Romans asked when Alaric demanded all the
citizens’ goods. “Your lives,” he replied.
Too weak to fend off the invaders, the western emperor Honorius in 418 reluc-
tantly agreed to settle the newcomers in southwestern Gaul (present-day France),
where they completed their unprecedented transition from tribe to kingdom, orga-
nizing a political state and creating their identity as Visigoths. They had no prece-
dents to follow from their previous existence, so they adapted the only model avail-
able: Roman tradition, including a code of written law. The Visigoths established
mutually beneficial relations with local Roman elites, who used time-tested ways of
flattering their new superiors to gain advantages. Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430–479),
for example, a well-connected noble from Lyon, once purposely lost a backgammon
game to the Visigothic king as a way of winning a favor.
How the new non-Roman kingdoms raised revenues is uncertain. Did the new-
comers become landlords by forcing Roman property owners to redistribute a por-
tion of their lands, slaves, and movable property as “ransom” to them? Or did
Romans directly pay the expenses of the kingdom’s soldiers, who lived mostly in
urban garrisons? Whatever the new arrangements were, the Visigoths found them
profitable enough to expand into Spain within a century of establishing themselves
in southwestern Gaul.
The western government’s concessions to the Visigoths led other groups to seize
territory and create new kingdoms and identities. In 406, the Vandals cut a swath
through Gaul all the way to the Spanish coast. (The modern word vandal, meaning
“destroyer of property,” perpetuates their reputation for destruction.)
In 429, eighty thousand Vandals ferried to North Africa, where they broke their
agreement to become federate allies with the western empire and captured the region.
They crippled the western empire by seizing North Africa’s tax payments of grain
and vegetable oil and disrupting the importation of food to Rome. They threatened
the eastern empire with their navy and in 455 sailed to Rome, plundering the city.
Back in the Roman province of Africa, the Vandals caused tremendous hardship for
local people by confiscating property rather than allowing owners to make regular
payments on the land. As Arian Christians, they persecuted North African Chris-
tians whose doctrines they considered heresy.
Small non-Roman groups took advantage of the disruption caused by bigger
bands to break off distant pieces of the empire. The Anglo-Saxons, for example, were
composed of Angles from what is now Denmark and Saxons from northwestern
Germany. This mixed group invaded Britain in the 440s after the Roman army had
been recalled from the province to defend Italy against the Visigoths. The Anglo-
[284–600 c.e.
Saxons captured territory from the local Celtic peoples and the remaining Roman
inhabitants. Gradually, their culture replaced the local traditions of the island’s east-
ern regions. The Celts there lost most of their language, and Christianity gave way
to Anglo-Saxon beliefs except in Wales and Ireland. Another barbarian group, the
Ostrogoths, carved out a kingdom in Italy in the fifth century. By the time their king
Theodoric (r. 493–526) came to power, there had not been a western Roman emperor
for nearly twenty years, and there never would be again.
The details of the change in the later fifth century that has traditionally, but
simplistically, been called the fall of the Roman Empire reveal the complexity of the
political transformation of the western empire under the new kingdoms. The weak-
ness of the western emperors’ army had obliged them to hire foreign officers to lead
the defense of Italy. By the middle of the fifth century, one non-Roman general after
another had come to decide who would serve as a puppet emperor under his
control.
The last such unfortunate puppet was only a child. His father, a former aide to
Attila, tried to establish a royal house by proclaiming his young son as western
emperor in 475. He gave the boy ruler the name Romulus Augustulus (“Romulus
the Little Augustus”) to match his young age and to recall both Rome’s founder and
its first emperor. In 476, following a dispute over pay, the boy emperor’s non-Roman
soldiers murdered his father and deposed him. Little Augustus was given refuge and
a pension. The rebels’ leader, Odoacer, had the Roman Senate petition Zeno, the
eastern emperor, to recognize his leadership in return for his acknowledging Zeno
as sole emperor over west and east. Odoacer thereafter oversaw Italy nominally as
the eastern emperor’s subordinate, but he ruled on his own.
Theodoric established the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy by eliminating Odoacer.
He and his nobles wanted to enjoy the luxurious life of the empire’s elite and to
preserve the empire’s prestige; they therefore left the Senate and consulships intact.
An Arian Christian, Theodoric announced a policy of religious freedom. Like the
other non-Romans, the Ostrogoths adopted and adapted Roman traditions that sup-
ported the stability of their own rule.
The Franks were especially significant in the reshaping of the western Roman
Empire because they transformed Roman Gaul into Francia (from which comes the
name France). In 507, their king Clovis (r. 485–511), with support from the eastern
Roman emperor, overthrew the Visigothic king in Gaul. When the emperor named
Clovis an honorary consul, Clovis celebrated this honor by having himself crowned
with a diadem in the style of the emperors. He established western Europe’s largest
new kingdom in what is today mostly France, overshadowing the neighboring and
rival kingdoms of the Burgundians and Alemanni in eastern Gaul. Probably per-
suaded by his wife, Clotilda, a Christian, to believe that God had helped him defeat
the Alemanni, Clovis proclaimed himself an orthodox Christian and renounced Ari-
anism. To build stability, he carefully fostered good relations with the bishops as the
regime’s intermediaries with the population.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Clovis’s dynasty, called Merovingian after the legendary Frankish ancestor Mer-
ovech, endured for another two hundred years, foreshadowing the kingdom that
would emerge much later as the forerunner of modern France. The Merovingians
survived so long because they successfully combined their own traditions of military
bravery with Roman social and legal traditions. In addition, their location in far
western Europe kept them out of the reach of the destructive invasions sent against
Italy by the eastern emperor Justinian in the sixth century to reunite the Roman
world.
Social and Cultural Transformation in the Western Roman Empire

The gradual replacement of government in the western Roman Empire by barbarian
kingdoms set in motion social and cultural transformations. The newcomers and
their Roman subjects created novel ways of life by combining old traditions, as
Athaulf, king of the Visigoths (r. 410–415), explained after marrying a Roman
noblewoman:
At the start I wanted to erase the Romans’ name and turn their land into a
Gothic empire, doing myself what Augustus had done. But I have learned
that the Goths’ freewheeling wildness will never accept the rule of law, and
that state with no law is no state. Thus, I have more wisely chosen another
path to glory: reviving the Roman name with Gothic vigor. I pray that future
generations will remember me as the founder of a Roman restoration.
This process of social and cultural transformation promoted stability by producing

new law codes but undermined long-term security by weakening the economic
situation.
Roman law was the most influential precedent for the new kings in constructing
states. Their tribes had never possessed written laws, but their new states required
legal codes to create a sense of justice and keep order. The Visigothic kings issued
the first “barbarian law code.” Published in Latin in about 475, it made fines and
compensation the primary method for resolving disputes. Clovis also emphasized
written law for the Merovingian kingdom. His code, also published in Latin between
about 507 and 511, promoted social order through clear penalties for specific crimes,
formalizing a system of fines intended to defuse feuds and vendettas between indi-
viduals and clans. The most prominent component of this system was wergild, the
payment a murderer had to make as compensation for his crime, to prevent endless
cycles of revenge. The king received about one-third of the fine, with the rest paid
to the victim’s family.
Since laws indicate social values, the differing amounts of wergild in Clovis’s
code suggest the relative values of different categories of people in his kingdom.
Murdering a woman of childbearing age, a boy under twelve, or a man in the king’s
[284–600 c.e.
retinue brought a massive fine of six hundred gold coins, enough to buy six hundred
cattle. A woman past childbearing age (specified as sixty years), a young girl, or a
freeborn man was valued at two hundred gold coins. Ordinary slaves rated
thirty-five.
The migrations of new groups into Roman territory had the unintended conse-
quence of harming the empire’s already weakened economy. The Vandals’ violence
battered many towns in Gaul, hastening a decline in urban population. In the coun-
tryside, now beyond the control of any central government, wealthy Romans built
sprawling villas on extensive estates, staffed by tenants bound to the land like slaves.
These establishments aimed to operate as self-sufficient units by producing all they
needed, defending themselves against barbarian raids, and keeping their distance
from any authorities. The owners shunned municipal offices and tax collection, the
public services that had supplied the lifeblood of Roman administration. Provincial
government slowly disappeared.
Mosaic of Women Exercising

This picture covered a floor in a fourth-century country villa in Sicily that had more than forty
rooms decorated with thirty-five hundred square meters of mosaics. The women shown in this
mosaic were perhaps dancers getting in shape for public appearances or athletes performing
as part of a show. Members of the Roman elite built such enormous and expensive houses as
the centerpieces of estates meant to insulate them from increasingly dismal conditions in cities
and protect them from barbarian attack. In this case, the strategy apparently failed: the villa
was likely seriously damaged by Vandal invaders. (Villa del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Italy / Erich
Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
In some areas now outside reach of the central government, the infrastructure
of trade — roads and bridges — fell into disrepair with no public-spirited elite to
maintain them. The elite holed up in their fortress-like households. They could
afford to protect themselves: the annual income of the richest of them rivaled the
revenue of an entire province in the old western empire.
In some cases, these fortunate few helped pass down Roman learning to later
ages. Cassiodorus (c. 490–585) founded a monastery on his ancestral estate in Italy
in the 550s after a career in imperial administration. He gave the monks the task of
copying manuscripts to keep their contents from disappearing as old ones disinte-
grated. His own book, Institutions, summed
up what he saw as the foundation of
ancient Greek and Roman culture by list-
REVIEW QUESTION How did their migrations
and invasions change the barbarians them- ing the books an educated person should
selves and the Roman Empire? read; it included ancient classical literature
as well as Christian texts.
The Roman Empire in the East, c. 500–565

The eastern Roman Empire (later called the Byzantine Empire — see Chapter 8)
avoided the massive transformations that reshaped the western Roman Empire.
Trade and agriculture kept the eastern empire from poverty, while its emperors used
force, diplomacy, and bribery to prevent invasions from the north and repel attacks
by the powerful Sasanid Empire in Persia.
The eastern emperors believed it was their duty to rule a united Roman Empire
and prevent barbarians from degrading its culture. The most famous eastern Roman
emperor, Justinian (r. 527–565), and his wife and partner in rule, Theodora (500–
548), waged war against the barbarian kingdoms in the west, aiming to reunite the
empire and restore the imperial glory of the Augustan period. Justinian increased
imperial authority and tried to purify religion to satisfy what he saw as his duty to
provide strong leadership and God’s favor. He and his successors in the eastern
empire contributed to the preservation of the memory of classical Greek and Roman
culture by preserving a great deal of earlier literature, non-Christian and Christian.
Imperial Society in the Eastern Roman Empire

The sixth-century eastern empire enjoyed a vitality that had vanished in the west.
Its social elite spent freely on luxuries such as silk, precious stones, and pepper and
other spices imported from India and China. Markets in its large cities teemed with
merchants from abroad. Its churches’ soaring domes testified to its confidence in the
Christian God as its divine protector.
The eastern emperors sponsored religious festivals and entertainments on a mas-
sive scale to rally public support. Rich and poor alike crowded city squares, theaters,
[
284–600 c.e.
] The Roman Empire in the East, c. 500–565 237
and hippodromes on these lively occasions. Chariot racing aroused the hottest pas-
sions. Constantinople’s residents divided themselves into competitive factions called
Blues and Greens after the racing colors of their favorite charioteers. Emperors some-
times backed one gang or the other to intimidate potential rivals.
The eastern emperors worked to maintain Roman tradition and identity, believ-
ing that “Romanness” was the best defense against what they saw as the barbarization
of the western empire. They hired foreign mercenaries but also tried to keep their
subjects from adopting foreign ways. The emperors ordered Constantinople’s resi-
dents not to wear barbarian-style clothing (especially heavy boots and furs, which
the chariot racing fans favored) instead of traditional Roman attire (sandals or light
shoes and cloth robes).
The emperors’ push for cultural unity was doomed to failure because everyday
society in the eastern empire was widely multilingual and multiethnic. The inhabit-
ants referred to themselves as Romans, but most of them spoke Greek as their native
language and used Latin only for government and military communication. Many
people retained their traditional languages, such as Phrygian and Cappadocian in
western Asia Minor, Armenian farther east, and Syriac and other Aramaic dialects
along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The streets of Constantinople reportedly rang
with seventy-two languages.
Romanness definitely included Christianity, but the eastern empire’s theological
diversity rivaled its ethnic and linguistic complexity. Bitter controversies over doc-
trine divided eastern Christians; emperors used violence against Christians with dif-
ferent beliefs — heretics they called them — when persuasion failed. They had to
employ force, they believed, to save lost souls and preserve the empire’s religious
purity and divine goodwill.
Most women in eastern Roman society lived according to ancient Mediterranean
tradition, concentrating on their households and minimizing contact with men out-
side that circle. Law barred them from performing many public functions, such as
witnessing wills. Subject to the authority of their fathers and husbands, women veiled
their heads (though not their faces) to show modesty. The strict views of Christian
theologians on sexuality and reproduction made divorce more difficult and discour-
aged remarriage even for widows. Sexual offenses carried harsher legal penalties.
Female prostitution remained legal and common, but emperors raised the penalties
for those who forced girls or female slaves under their control into prostitution.
Women in the imperial family could achieve prominence unattainable for ordi-
nary women. Empress Theodora demonstrated the influence high-ranking women
could have in the eastern empire. Uninhibited by her humble origins (she was the
daughter of a bear trainer and had been an actress with a scandalous reputation),
she came to rival anyone in influence and wealth. She participated in every aspect
of Justinian’s rule, advising him on personnel for his administration, advocating for
her doctrinal views in Christian disputes, and rallying Justinian’s courage at times of
crisis. A contemporary called her “superior in intelligence to any man.”
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Theodora and Her Court in Ravenna

This mosaic shows the empress Theodora and members of her court presenting a gift to the
church at San Vitale in Ravenna. It faced the matching scene of her husband Justinian and his
attendants (page 239). Theodora wears the jewels, pearls, and rich robes characteristic of east-
ern Roman monarchs. She extends in her hands a gem-encrusted wine cup as her present. Her
gesture imitates the gift-giving of the Magi to the baby Jesus, the scene illustrated on the hem
of her garment. The circle around her head, called a nimbus (Latin for “cloud”), indicates
special holiness. (Basilica San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy / Bridgeman Images.)
Government in the eastern empire increased social divisions because it provided

services according to people’s wealth. Officials received fees for activities from com-
mercial permits to legal grievances. People with money and status certainly found
this situation useful: they relied on their social connections and wealth to get what
they wanted. The poor had trouble affording the payments that government officials
expected.
This fee-based system allowed the emperors to pay their civil servants tiny sala-
ries and spend imperial funds for other purposes. One top official reported that he
earned thirty times his annual salary in payments from people seeking services. To
keep the system from destroying itself through extortion, the emperors published an
official list of the maximum fees that their employees could charge.
[284–600 c.e.
Justinian and His Court in Ravenna

This mosaic scene dominated by the eastern Roman emperor Justinian stands opposite Theo-
dora’s mosaic (page 238) in San Vitale’s Church in Ravenna. The emperor is shown presenting
a gift to the church. Justinian and Theodora finished building the church, which the Ostrogothic
king Theodoric had started, to commemorate their successful campaign to restore Italy to the
Roman Empire and reassert control of the western capital, Ravenna. The inclusion of the por-
trait of Maximianus, bishop of Ravenna, standing on Justinian’s left and identified by name,
stresses the theme of cooperation between bishops and emperors in ruling the world. What do
you think the inclusion of the soldiers at the left is meant to indicate? (Basilica San Vitale, Ravenna,
Italy / Bridgeman Images.)
The Reign of Emperor Justinian, 527–565

Justinian became the most famous eastern emperor by waging war to reunite the
empire as it had been in the days of Augustus, making imperial rule more autocratic,
constructing costly buildings in Constantinople, and instituting legal and religious
reforms. Justinian had the same aims as all his predecessors: to preserve social order
based on hierarchy and maintain divine goodwill. The cost of his plans, however,
forced him to raise taxes, generating civil strife.
Justinian’s unpopular taxes provoked the Nika Riot in 532, when the Blue and
Green factions, gathering to watch chariot races, united against the emperor, shouting
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
“Nika! Nika!” (“Win! Win!”). After nine days of violence had left much of Constan-
tinople in ashes, Justinian prepared to flee in panic. But Theodora sternly rebuked
him: “Once born, no one can escape dying, but for one who has held imperial power
it would be unbearable to be a fugitive. May I never take off my imperial robes of
purple, nor live to see the day when those who meet me will not greet me as their
ruler.” Her reproach convinced her husband to send in troops, who ended the rioting
by slaughtering thirty thousand rioters trapped in the racetrack.
Justinian’s most ambitious goal was to restore the empire to a unified territory,
religion, and culture. Invading the former western provinces, his generals defeated
the Vandals and Ostrogoths after campaigns that in some cases took decades to
complete. At an enormous cost in lives and money, Justinian’s armies restored the
boundaries of the Roman Empire as in the time of Augustus, with its territory
stretching from the Atlantic to the western edge of Mesopotamia. His successors,
however, would not be able to retain these reconquests.
Justinian’s success in reuniting the western and eastern empires had unintended
consequences: severe damage to the west’s infrastructure and the east’s finances. Italy
endured the most physical destruction, while the eastern empire suffered because
Justinian demanded even more taxes to finance his wars and pay the Persian king-
dom not to attack. The tax burden crippled the economy, leading to constant ban-
ditry in the countryside. Crowds poured into the capital from rural areas, seeking
relief from poverty and robbers.
Natural disaster compounded Justinian’s problems. In the 540s, a horrific epi-
demic killed a third of his empire’s inhabitants; a quarter of a million, half the capi-
tal’s population, died in Constantinople alone. This was the first of many pandemics
that erased millions of people in the eastern empire over the next two centuries.
Serious earthquakes increased the death toll. The loss of so many people created a
shortage of army recruits, requiring the emperor to hire expensive mercenaries, and
left countless farms vacant, reducing tax revenues.
Justinian sought stability by emphasizing his closeness to God and increasing
the autocratic power of his rule. Moreover, he proclaimed the emperor the “living
law,” recalling the Hellenistic royal doctrine that the ruler’s decisions defined law.
He communicated his supremacy and piety through his building program in
Constantinople, especially in Hagia Sophia (“Church of the Holy Wisdom”). Creating
a new design for churches, Justinian’s architects erected a huge building on a square
plan capped by a dome 107 feet across and 160 feet high. Its interior walls glowed
like the sun from the light reflecting off their four acres of gold mosaics. Imported
marble of every color added to the sparkling effect. When he first entered his mas-
terpiece, dedicated in 538, Justinian exclaimed, “I have defeated you, Solomon,”
claiming to have outdone the glory of the temple that the ancient king built for the
Hebrews.
Justinian’s autocratic rule reduced the autonomy of cities: imperial officials gov-
erned instead of their councils. Provincial elites still had to ensure full payment of
their area’s taxes, but they no longer controlled local matters or social status. Men
[
284–600 c.e.
of property from the provinces who aspired to power and prestige could satisfy their
ambitions only by joining the imperial administration in the capital.
To streamline the mass of decisions that earlier emperors had made, Justinian
codified the laws. His Codex appeared in 529, with a revised version completed in
534. A team of scholars also condensed millions of words of regulations to produce
the Digest in 533, intended to expedite legal cases and provide a syllabus for law
schools. This collection, like the Codex written in Latin and therefore readable in
the western empire, influenced legal scholars for centuries. Justinian’s legal experts
also compiled a textbook for students, the Institutes, which appeared in 533 and
remained on law-school reading lists until modern times.
To fulfill the emperor’s sacred duty to the welfare of his people, Justinian acted
to enforce religious purity. He believed his world could not flourish if its god became
angered by the presence of religious offenders. As emperor, Justinian decided who
the offenders were. Zealously enforcing laws against polytheists, he compelled them
to be baptized or forfeit their lands and official positions. He also purged heretical
Christians opposing his version of orthodoxy.
Justinian’s laws made male homosexual relations illegal for the first time in
Roman history. Male same-sex unions had apparently been allowed, or at least
officially ignored, until they were prohibited in 342 after Christianity became the
emperors’ religion. There had never before been any civil penalties imposed on men
engaging in homosexual activity, perhaps because previous rulers considered it
impractical to regulate men’s sexuality, given that adult men lived their private lives
free of direct oversight. All the previous emperors had, for example, simply taxed
male prostitutes. The legal status of homosexual activity between women is uncer-
tain, but homosexual activity between married women probably counted as adultery
and thus as a crime.
Justinian tried to reconcile orthodox and Monophysite Christians by revising the
creed of the Council of Chalcedon. But the church leaders in Rome and Constanti-
nople could not agree. The eastern and western churches were therefore launched
on diverging courses that would result in formal schism five hundred years later.
Justinian’s own ecumenical council in Constantinople ended in conflict in 553 when
it jailed Rome’s defiant pope Vigilius while also managing to alienate Monophysite
bishops. Justinian’s efforts to impose religious unity only drove Christians further
apart and undermined his vision of a restored Roman world.
The Preservation of Classical Traditions in the Late Roman Empire

Christianization of the late Roman Empire endangered the memory of classical tradi-
tions. The plays, histories, philosophical works, poems, speeches, and novels of clas-
sical Greece and Rome were polytheist and therefore potentially subversive of Chris-
tian belief, but the threat to their survival stemmed more from neglect than
suppression. As many Christians became authors, their works displaced ancient
Greek and Roman texts as the most important literature of the age.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Some classical texts survived, however, because Christian education and litera-
ture depended on non-Christian models, both Latin and Greek. Latin scholarship in
the east received a boost when Justinian’s Italian wars caused Latin-speaking scholars
to flee to Constantinople. There they helped conserve many ancient Roman texts.
Scholars preserved classical literature because they regarded it as a crucial part of an
elite education. Some knowledge of pre-Christian classics was required for a success-
ful career in government service, the goal of every ambitious student. An imperial
decree from 360 stated, “No person shall obtain a post of the first rank unless it shall
be shown that he excels in long practice of liberal studies, and that he is so polished
in literary matters that words flow from his pen faultlessly.”
Another factor promoting the preservation of classical literature was the use of
classical rhetoric and its techniques for making persuasive arguments to present
Christian theology. When Ambrose, bishop of Milan from 374 to 397, composed the
first systematic description of Christian ethics for young ministers, he imitated the
great Roman orator Cicero. Theologians refuted heresies among Christians by
employing the dialogue form pioneered by Plato. Authors of the biographies of saints
found inspiration in ancient literature that praised the heroes of traditional polytheist
An Author or Scribe at Work

This illustration from a book
produced in late Roman/early
medieval times shows either an
author writing a book or a scribe
making a copy of a book by hand.
This was the painstaking and
slow process necessary to
produce books in antiquity;
mechanical printing had not yet
been invented, and therefore
mass production of books was
not possible. As a result, books
were expensive and precious
objects, as indicated in the paint-
ing by their being carefully placed
on their sides in the cabinet
behind the writer to keep their
weight from warping their spines
and pages. (Holy Bible [Biblia Sacra],
Codex Amiatinus, 690–716 [parchment] /
Anglo-Saxon / Biblioteca Medicea-
Laurenziana, Florence, Italy / Mondadori
Portfolio / Electa / Sergio Anelli / Bridge-
man Images.)
[284–600 c.e.
religion. Choricius, a Christian who held the official position of professor of rhetoric
in Gaza, wrote works based on subjects from pre-Christian Greek mythology and
history, such as the Trojan War or the Athenian general Miltiades. Similarly, Chris-
tian artists incorporated polytheist traditions in communicating their beliefs and
emotions in paintings, mosaics, and carved reliefs. A favorite artistic motif of Christ
with a sunburst surrounding his head, for example, took its inspiration from polythe-
ist depictions of the radiant Sun as a god. (See the illustration on page 222.)
The growth of Christian literature generated a technological innovation that
helped preserve classical literature. Polytheist scribes had written books on sheets of
parchment (made from animal skin) or paper (made from papyrus). They then glued
the sheets together and attached rods at both ends to form a scroll. Readers faced
an awkward task in unrolling scrolls to read. For ease of use, Christians produced
their literature in the form of the codex — a book with bound pages. Eventually the
codex became the standard form of book production.
Despite its continuing importance in education and rhetoric, classical Greek and
Latin literature barely survived the war-torn world dominated by Christians. Knowl-
edge of Greek in the west faded so drastically that by the sixth century almost no
one there could read the original versions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the founda-
tions of a classical literary education. Latin fared better, and scholars such as Augus-
tine and Jerome knew Rome’s ancient literature extremely well. But they also saw its
classics as potentially too seductive for a pious Christian because the pleasure that
came from reading them could be a distraction from the worship of God. Jerome in
fact once had a nightmare of being condemned on Judgment Day for having been
more dedicated to Cicero than to Christ.
The closing around 530 of the Academy, founded in Athens by Plato more than
nine hundred years earlier, demonstrated the dangers for classical learning in the
later Roman Empire. This most famous of classical schools finally went out of busi-
ness when many of its scholars emigrated to Persia to escape Justinian’s tightened
restrictions on polytheist teachers and its revenues dwindled because the Athenian
elite, its traditional supporters, were increasingly Christianized. The Neoplatonist
school at Alexandria, by contrast, continued. Its leader John Philoponus (c. 490–570)
was a Christian. In addition to Christian theology, Philoponus wrote commentaries
on the works of Aristotle. Some of his ideas anticipated those of Galileo a thousand
years later. He achieved the kind of synthesis of old and new that was one of the
innovative outcomes of the cultural transformation of the late Roman world — he
was a Christian subject of the eastern Roman Empire in sixth-century Egypt, heading
a school founded long before by polytheists, studying the works of an ancient Greek
philosopher as the inspiration for his for-
ward-looking scholarship. The strong pos-
sibility that present generations could learn
REVIEW QUESTION What policies did Justin-
from the past would continue as Western ian undertake to try to restore and strengthen
civilization once again remade itself in the Roman Empire?
medieval times.
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
Conclusion
Diocletian ended the third-century crisis of the Roman Empire, but his reforms only
delayed its fragmentation. In the late fourth century, migrations of barbarians fleeing
the Huns weakened the Roman imperial government. Emperor Theodosius I divided
the empire into western and eastern halves in 395 to try to improve its administra-
tion and defense. When Roman authorities bungled the task of integrating barbarian
tribes into Roman society, the newcomers created kingdoms that eventually replaced
Roman rule in the west.
Large-scale and violent immigration transformed the western empire’s politics,
society, and economy. The political changes and economic deterioration accompany-
ing this transformation destroyed the public-spiritedness of the elite, as wealthy
nobles retreated to self-sufficient country estates and shunned municipal office.
The eastern empire fared better economically than the western and avoided the
worst violence of the migrations. Eastern emperors attempted to preserve “Roman-
ness” by maintaining Roman culture and political traditions. The financial pressure
of wars to reunite the empire drove tax rates to unbearable levels, while the concen-
tration of authority in the capital weakened local communities.
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312 marked a turning point in West-
ern history. Christianization of the empire occurred gradually, and Christians dis-
agreed among themselves over doctrines of faith, even to the point of deadly vio-
lence. Monastic life redefined the meaning of holiness by creating communities of
“God’s heroes” who withdrew from this world to devote their service to glorifying
the next. In the end, the quest for unity fell short through the powerful effects of
political and social transformation. Nevertheless, the memory of Roman power and
culture remained potent, providing an influential inheritance to the peoples and
states that would become Rome’s heirs in the next stage of Western civilization.
[ 284–600 c.e.
] Conclusion 245
CELTS ANGLES No r th
N Se a 0 200 400 miles
S SAX
W ON 0 200 400 kilometers
E SAX ON
S
Rhi
Cologne
ne R
S
.
ATLANTIC ALEMANNI
OCEAN FRANKISH LOMBA
KINGDOM RDS AVARS
Ravenna BULGARS R.
DA D a nube B l ac k Sea
LM
VISIGOTHIC AT
IA
Toledo KINGDOM
Rome Constantinople
Córdoba
SASANID
Ephesus EMPIRE
Athens
Antioch
Syracuse
VANDAL Carthage
KINGDOM
(429–534 C.E.)
M e dite r ran ean Sea Damascus
Leptis
Magna Jerusalem
Alexandria
NORTH AFRICA
ARABS
EGYPT
Ni
R.
le
The eastern Roman Empire at the accession of Justinian, 527 C.E.
The eastern Roman Empire at the death of Justinian, 565 C.E.
MAPPING THE WEST Western Europe and the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, c. 600
The eastern Roman emperor Justinian employed brilliant generals and expended huge sums of
money to reconquer Italy, North Africa, and part of Spain to reunite the western and eastern
halves of the former Roman Empire. His wars to regain Italy and North Africa eliminated the
Ostrogothic and Vandal kingdoms, respectively, but at a huge cost in effort, time — the war in
Italy took twenty years — and expense. The resources of the eastern empire were so depleted
that his successors could not maintain the reunification. By the early seventh century, the
Visigoths had taken back all of Spain. Africa, despite serious revolts by indigenous Berber
tribes, remained under imperial control until the Arab conquest of the seventh century. Within
five years of Justinian’s death, however, the Lombards had set up a new kingdom controlling a
large section of Italy. Never again would anyone in the ancient world attempt to reestablish a
universal Roman Empire.
Chapter 7 Review
dominate (p. 213) Edict of Milan (p. 217) Nicene Creed (p. 223)
tetrarchy (p. 213) Julian the Apostate (p. 219) asceticism (p. 225)
coloni (p. 216) Theodosius I (p. 219) Visigoths (p. 231)
curials (p. 216) Augustine (p. 221) wergild (p. 234)
Great Persecution (p. 217) Arianism (p. 222) Justinian and Theodora
(p. 236)
Review Questions
1. What were Diocletian’s policies to end the third-century crisis, and how successful were
they?
2. How did Christianity both unite and divide the Roman Empire?
3. How did their migrations and invasions change the barbarians themselves and the Roman
Empire?
4. What policies did Justinian undertake to try to restore and strengthen the Roman Empire?
Making Connections
1. How did the principate and the dominate differ with regard to political appearance versus
political reality?
2. What were the main similarities and differences between polytheism and Christianity as
official state religions in the late Roman Empire?
3. What developments in the late Roman Empire would support the idea that it is possible for
a state to be too large to be well governed and to remain united indefinitely?
Some scholars regard the political, social, and cultural changes in the late Roman Empire as
evidence of a sad “decline and fall”; others judge them to have had mixed positive and nega-
tive consequences. The rise of Christianity to the status of an official religion also changed
Roman life in complex ways that are still being investigated.
Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity.
1988.
Cameron, Averil. The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity AD 395–700. 2nd ed. 2012.
Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Iran (224–651 C.E.): Portrait of a Late Antique Empire. 2008.
*Drew, Katherine Fischer, ed. The Laws of the Salian Franks. 1991.
Elsner, Jas. Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire, A.D. 100–450.
1998.
*Grubbs, Judith Evans. Women and Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce,
and Widowhood. 2002.
Heather, Peter. Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe. 2010.
Jacobsen, Torsten Cumberland. A History of the Vandals. 2012.
Kelly, Christopher. Ruling the Later Roman Empire. 2006.
*Primary source.
246
[284–600 c.e.
Important Events
293 Diocletian creates the tetrarchy

301 Diocletian issues Edict on Maximum Prices and Wages
303 Diocletian launches Great Persecution of Christians
312 Constantine sees vision, wins battle of the Milvian Bridge in Rome, and
converts to Christianity
313 Religious freedom is proclaimed in the Edict of Milan
323 Pachomius in Upper Egypt establishes the first monasteries
324 Constantine wins civil war and re-founds Byzantium as Constantinople, the
“New Rome”
325 Council of Nicaea defends Christian orthodoxy against Arianism
361–363 Julian the Apostate tries to reinstate polytheism as official state religion
378 Barbarian massacre of Roman army in battle of Adrianople
391 Theodosius I makes Christianity the official state religion
395 Theodosius I divides empire into western and eastern halves
410 Visigoths sack Rome
426 Augustine publishes The City of God
451 Council of Chalcedon attempts to forge agreement on Christian orthodoxy
475 Visigoths publish law code
476 German commander Odoacer deposes the final western emperor, the boy
Romulus Augustulus (“the fall of Rome”)
493–526 Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy
507 Clovis establishes Frankish kingdom in Gaul
527–565 Reign of eastern Roman emperor Justinian
529–534 Justinian publishes law code and handbooks
540 Benedict devises his rule for monasteries
Consider three events: Augustine publishes The City of God (426), Council of Chalcedon
attempts to forge agreement on Christian orthodoxy (451), and Justinian publishes law
code and handbooks (529–534). What connections can be drawn between these events
in terms of the attitudes that informed them, their goals, and their effects on society?
*Lee, A. D. Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook. 2000.

MacMullen, Ramsay. Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries. 1997.
Odahl, Charles. Constantine and the Christian Empire. 2nd ed. 2010.
*Procopius. The Secret History. Trans. G. A. Williamson and Peter Sarris. 2007.
*Procopius. The Wars. Vols. I–V. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914–1928.
Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire. 2008.
Southern, Pat, and Karen R. Dixon. The Late Roman Army. 1996.
Wickham, Chris. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean. 2007.
The Heirs of Rome: Islam,
8
Byzantium, and Europe
600–750
A
t the end of the sixth century, Gregory, bishop of Tours, wrote about
Clovis, the first king of the Franks. Under Clovis, the Franks took over Gaul
and turned it into a barbarian kingdom. Yet, about a century later, Gregory
insisted that Clovis was a legitimate Roman ruler. He described a day in which Clovis
stood in the church of Saint Martin at Tours:
Reliquary [He was] clad in a purple tunic

The precious remains of a saint — or relics — and the military mantle, and he
were housed in this equally precious box — crowned himself with a diadem.
a seventh-century reliquary. Most of the He then rode out on his horse
decorative elements of the box — cloisonné and with his own hand show-
enamel (bits of enamel framed by metal),
garnets, and glass gems laid out in an
ered gold and silver coins among
abstract pattern — were drawn from bar- the people present all the way
barian artistic motifs. The pearls, however, from the doorway of Saint Mar-
form crosses that make clear the Christian tin’s church to Tours cathedral.
purpose of the box. Right in the center, the From that day on he was called
maker put a cameo (or perhaps an imitation
Consul or Augustus.
cameo) that was meant to recall Roman
silhouettes, as if there were no contradic-
tion between barbarian abstract styles and Consul or Augustus! Gregory thought
Roman forms. Like Gregory of Tours calling that the Roman Empire lived on in the
Clovis “Augustus,” the maker of this box person of the barbarian Clovis. His words
considered a Roman-type element to be a reveal that at the time people did not
perfect complement to his otherwise geo-
recognize the enormous transformations
metrical design. (Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
that were taking place in the sixth and
seventh centuries. In fact, as the western
and eastern parts of the Roman Empire went their separate ways, a third power —
Islamic — took shape as well. These three powers have continued in various forms
to the present day: the western Roman Empire became western Europe, the eastern
Roman Empire became eastern Europe and Turkey and helped create Russia, and the
Islamic world endures across North Africa and the Middle East and elsewhere as well.
249
250 Chapter 8 The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe
[ 600–750
]
Diverse as these cultures are today, they share many of the same roots. Gregory
had a good point: the successor states were heirs of Rome. All adhered to monothe-
ism. The western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire had Christianity in com-
mon, although they differed at times in interpreting it. Adherents of Islam believed
in the same one God as the Jews and Christians.
The seventh and eighth centuries illustrate the Roman Empire’s persistence and
transformation. Changes in the eastern half of the empire were so important that
historians have given it a new name — Byzantine Empire. The term Byzantine Empire
or Byzantium, which comes from the old Greek name for Constantinople, rightly
implies that the center of power and culture in the eastern Roman Empire was now
concentrated in this one city. Over the centuries, the empire expanded, shrank, and
even nearly disappeared — but it hung on in one form or another until 1453.
During the period 600–750, which historians consider the beginning of the
Middle Ages, all three heirs of the Roman Empire combined elements of their heri-
tage with new values, interests, and condi-
CHAPTER FOCUS What three cultures took
tions. Their differences should neverthe-
the place of the Roman Empire, and to what less not obscure the fact that the Byzantine,
extent did each of them both draw on and Muslim, and western European cultures
reject Roman traditions? were partly based on a common heritage.
Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire

In the early seventh century, a religion that called on all to believe in one God began
in Arabia (today Saudi Arabia). Islam (“submission to God”) took shape under
Muhammad (c. 570–632). While many of the people living in Arabia were polythe-
ists, Muhammad recognized the one God of the Jews and Christians. He saw himself
as God’s final prophet and thus became known as the Prophet. Invited by the people
of Medina, in western Arabia, to come and act as a mediator in their disputes,
Muhammad exercised the powers of both a religious and a secular leader. This dual
role became the model for his successors, known as caliphs. Through a combination
of persuasion and force, Muhammad and his co-religionists, the Muslims (“those who
submit to Islam”), converted most of the Arabian peninsula. By the time Muhammad
died in 632, Muslims had begun to conquer Byzantine and Persian territories. In the
next generation, they expanded both east- and westward. Yet within the territories
they conquered, daily life went on much as before.
Nomads and City Dwellers

In the seventh century, the vast deserts of the Arabian peninsula were populated by
both sedentary (settled) and nomadic peoples. The sedentary peoples, sometimes
farmers, sometimes merchants and artisans, lived in oases. They far outnumbered
the nomads, known as Bedouins, who herded livestock and raided one another for
plunder, slaves, and wives (men practiced polygyny — having more than one wife at
[600–750
] Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire 251
a time). Their poetry, oral rather than written, expressed their esteem for honor,
friendship, bravery, and love.
Islam began as a religion of the sedentary, but it soon found support and military
strength among the nomads. It started in Mecca, an important commercial and reli-
gious center south of Medina. Mecca was the home of the Ka‘ba, a shrine that con-
tained the images of many gods. It was a sacred place within which war and violence
were prohibited. The tribe that dominated Mecca, the Quraysh, controlled access to
the shrine, taxing the pilgrims who flocked there. Visitors, assured of their safety,
bartered on the sacred grounds, transforming the plunder from raids into trade.
The Prophet Muhammad and the Faith of Islam

Muhammad was born in Mecca. Orphaned at the age of six, he went to live with his
uncle, a leader of the Quraysh tribe. Eventually, Muhammad became a trader and
married Khadija, a rich widow. They lived (to all appearances) happily and comfort-
ably. Yet Muhammad sometimes left home to pray in a nearby cave, practicing a type
of piety similar to that of the early Christians.
Around 610, on one of these retreats, Muhammad heard a voice and had a vision
that summoned him to worship the God of the Jews and Christians, Allah (“the God”
in Arabic). Over the next years, he received messages that he understood to be divine
revelations. Later, when these messages had been written down and compiled — a
process completed in the seventh century, but after Muhammad’s death — they
became the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. Qur’an means “recitation”; each of the
book’s parts, called suras, is understood to be God’s revelation as told to Muhammad
by the archangel Gabriel — the very Gabriel of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles —
and then recited by Muhammad to others. Written entirely in verse and focused on
the divine, the Qur’an stood apart from traditional Bedouin poetry, which had
emphasized the here and now.
Qur’an
More than a holy book,
the Qur’an represents for
Muslims the very words of
God that were dictated to
Muhammad by the archangel
Gabriel. In the Umayyad period,
the Qur’an was written, as
here, on pages wider than
long. The first four lines on
the top give the last verses
of Sura 21. (The last verses of the
Sura, Qur’an, Abbasid Period, North
Africa, 9th century, ink, color and gold
on parchment / Freer Gallery of Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C., USA / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 600–750
]
Beginning with the Fatihah, which praises God as the “lord sustainer of the
worlds,” the Qur’an continues with suras of gradually decreasing length. They cover
the gamut of human experience and the life to come after death. For Muslims, the
Qur’an contains the legal and moral code by which men and women should live:
“Do not set up another god with God. . . . Do not worship anyone but Him, and be
good to your parents.” It emphasizes the family — a man, his wife (or wives), and
children — as the basic unit of Muslim society. Islam replaced the identity and protec-
tion of the tribe with a new identity: the ummah, the community of believers, who
share both a belief in one God and a set of religious practices. Stressing individual
belief in God and adherence to the Qur’an, Islam had no priests or sacraments,
though in time it came to have authoritative religious leaders who interpreted the
Qur’an and related texts.
Growth of Islam, c. 610–632

The first convert to Muhammad’s faith was his wife. Eventually, as Muhammad
preached the new faith, others became adherents. But Muhammad’s insistence that
the cults of all other gods be abandoned in favor of one brought him into conflict
with leading members of the Quraysh tribe, whose control over the Ka‘ba had given
them prestige and wealth. Perceiving Muhammad as a threat, they insulted him and
harassed his followers.
Disillusioned with the people of Mecca, Muhammad looked elsewhere for con-
verts. In particular, he expected support from Jews because he thought their mono-
theism prepared them for his own faith. He eagerly accepted an invitation to go to
Medina, in part because of its significant Jewish population. Muhammad’s journey
to Medina — called the Hijra — proved to be a crucial event for the new faith, and
the year in which it occurred, 622, became the first year of the Islamic calendar.*
Although he was disappointed not to find much support among the Jews at
Medina, Muhammad did find others there ready to listen to his religious message
and to accept him as the leader of their community. Muhammad’s political position
in the community set the pattern by which Islamic society would be governed after-
ward; rather than simply adding a church to political and cultural life, Muslims made
their political and religious institutions inseparable.
Yet Muhammad felt threatened by the Quraysh tribe at Mecca, and he led raids
against their caravans. At the battle of Badr in 624, the Muslims killed forty-nine of
the Meccan enemy, took numerous prisoners, and confiscated considerable treasure.
From the time of this conflict, the Bedouin tradition of plundering was grafted onto
the Muslim duty of jihad (“striving in the way of God”).
The battle of Badr was a great triumph for Muhammad, who now secured his
position at Medina, gaining new adherents and silencing all doubters, including Jews.
Turning against those who refused to convert, he expelled two Jewish tribes from
*Thus, 1 anno Hegirae (1 a.h.) on the Muslim calendar is equivalent to 622 c.e.
[600–750
Medina and executed the male members of another. Although Muslims had origi-
nally prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, the center of Jewish worship, Muhammad
now had them turn in the direction of Mecca.
Around the same time, Muhammad instituted new religious obligations. Among
these were the zakat, a tax on possessions to be used for alms; the fast of Ramadan,
which took place during the ninth month of the Islamic year, the month in which
the battle of Badr had been fought; the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca during the last
month of the year, which each Muslim was to make at least once in his or her life-
time; and the salat, formal worship at least three times a day (later increased to five).
The salat could include the shahadah, or profession of faith: “There is no divinity
but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Detailed regulations for these
practices, sometimes called the Five Pillars of Islam, were worked out in the eighth
and early ninth centuries.
Meanwhile, Muhammad sent troops to subdue Arabs north and south. In 630,
he entered Mecca with ten thousand men and took over the city. As the prestige of
Islam grew, clans elsewhere converted. Through a combination of force, conversion,
and negotiation, Muhammad was able to unite many, though not all, Arabic-speaking
tribes under his leadership by the time of his death in 632.
Muhammad was responsible for social as well as religious change. The ummah
included both men and women; Islam thus enhanced women’s status. At first, Mus-
lim women joined men during the prayer periods that punctuated the day, but, begin-
ning in the eighth century, women began to pray apart from men. Men were allowed
to have up to four wives at one time but were obliged to treat them equally; wives
received dowries and had certain inheritance rights. Islam prohibited all infanticide,
a practice that Arabs had long used largely against female infants. Like Judaism and
Christianity, however, Islam retained the practices of a patriarchal society in which
women’s participation in community life was limited.
The ummah functioned in many ways as a “supertribe,” obligated to fight com-
mon enemies, share plunder, and peacefully resolve any internal disputes. Bedouin
converts to Islam turned their traditional warrior culture to its cause. Unlike inter-
tribal fighting, warfare was now the jihad of people who were carrying out God’s
command against unbelievers as recorded in the Qur’an: “Strive, O Prophet, against
the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal with them firmly. Their final abode is
Hell: And what a wretched destination!”
The Caliphs, Muhammad’s Successors, 632–750

In the new political community he founded in Arabia, Muhammad reorganized tra-
ditional Arab society by cutting across clan allegiances and welcoming converts from
every tribe. He forged the Muslims into a formidable military force, and his succes-
sors, the caliphs, took the Byzantine and Persian worlds by storm. They quickly
conquered Byzantine territory in Syria and Egypt and invaded the Sasanid Empire,
conquering the whole of Persia by 651 (Map 8.1). During the last half of the seventh
[ 600–750
]
North
Sea Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632
Expansion under the first caliphs, to 661
Dn Expansion under the Umayyads, to 750
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Arabian Sea
MAP 8.1 Expansion of Islam to 750

In little more than a century, Islamic armies conquered a vast region that included numerous
different people, cultures, climates, and living conditions. Yet under the Umayyads these dis-
parate territories were administered by one ruler from the capital city at Damascus. The uniting
force was the religion of Islam, which gathered all believers into one community, the ummah.
century and the beginning of the eighth, Islamic warriors extended their sway west-
ward to Spain and eastward to India.
How were such widespread conquests possible, especially in so short a time?
First, the Islamic forces came up against weakened empires. The Byzantine and Sasa-
nid states were exhausted from fighting each other. Second, discontented Christians
and Jews welcomed Muslims into both Byzantine and Persian territories. The Mono-
physite Christians in Syria and Egypt, for example, had suffered persecution under
the Byzantines and were glad to have new, Islamic overlords. There were also internal
reasons for Islam’s success. Inspired by jihad, Arab fighters were well prepared: fully
armed and mounted on horseback, using camel convoys to carry supplies and pro-
vide protection, they conquered with amazing ease. To secure their victories, they
built garrison cities from which their soldiers requisitioned taxes and goods.
Yet the solidarity of the Muslim community was threatened by disputes over the
successors to Muhammad, the caliphs. While the first two caliphs came to power
without serious opposition, the third, Uthman (r. 644–656), a member of the Umayyad
clan and son-in-law of Muhammad, aroused discontent among other members of
the inner circle and soldiers unhappy with his distribution of high offices and rev-
enues. Accusing Uthman of favoritism, they supported his rival, Ali, a member of
[600–750
the Hashim clan (to which Muhammad had belonged) and the husband of Muham-
mad’s only surviving child, Fatimah. After a group of discontented soldiers murdered
Uthman, civil war broke out between the Umayyads and Ali’s faction. It ended when
Ali was killed by one of his own former supporters, and the caliphate remained in
Umayyad hands from 661 to 750.
Despite defeat, the Shi‘at Ali (“Ali’s faction”) did not fade away. Ali’s memory
lived on among Shi‘ite Muslims, who saw in him a symbol of justice and righteous-
ness. For them, Ali’s death was the martyrdom of the true successor to Muhammad.
They remained faithful to his dynasty, shunning the mainstream caliphs of Sunni
Muslims (whose name derived from the word sunna, the practices of Muhammad).
They awaited the arrival of the true leader — the imam — who in their view could
come only from the house of Ali.
Peace and Prosperity in Islamic Lands

Ironically, the definitive victories of the Muslim warriors in the seventh and early
eighth centuries ushered in a time of peace. While the conquerors stayed within their
fortified cities or built magnificent hunting lodges in the deserts of Syria, the con-
quered, including Christians and Jews, went back to work, to study, to play, and to
worship. Under the Umayyad caliph-
ate, which lasted from 661 to 750, the
Muslim world became a state, its capi-
tal at Damascus, in Syria.
Borrowing from institutions well
known to the civilizations they had
just conquered, the Muslims issued
coins and hired Byzantine and Persian
officials as civil servants They made
The Dome of the Rock at

Jerusalem (691)
Rivaling the great churches of Christen-
dom, the mosque in Jerusalem called
Dome of the Rock borrowed from late
Roman and Byzantine forms even while
asserting its Islamic identity. The columns
and the capitals atop them, the round
arches, the dome, and the mosaics are
all from Byzantine models. In fact, the
columns were taken from older buildings at
Jerusalem. But the strips of Arabic writing
on the dome itself — and in many other
parts of the building — assert Islamic
doctrine. (Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
[ 600–750
]
Mosaic from the Great Mosque at Damascus
Like the Dome of the Rock, the Umayyad mosque
at Damascus in Syria, built at the beginning of
the eighth century, drew on Byzantine forms. In
this mosaic, which is one of many that decorate
the interior of the mosque, the style is Byzantine.
But the harmonious intertwining of trees, build-
ings, rocks, and water picks up on an Islamic
theme: the new faith’s conquest over both civili-
zation and nature. (Umayyad Mosque, Damascus,
Syria / Bildarchiv Steffens / Bridgeman Images.)
Arabic a tool of centralization, imposing it

as the language of government.
The Umayyads took advantage of the
vigorous economy in both the cities and
the countryside to preside over a literary
and artistic flowering. At Damascus, local
artists and craftspeople worked on the
lavish decorations for a mosque that used
Roman motifs. At Jerusalem, the mosque
called the Dome of the Rock used Chris-
tian building models for its octagonal form
and its interior arches. Muslim scholars
determined the definitive form for the
Qur’an and compiled pious narratives
about Muhammad, called hadith literature.
A literate class — consisting mainly of the old Persian and Syrian elites, now con-
verted to Islam — created new forms of prose and poetry in Arabic. Supported by
the caliphs, these writers reached a wide audience that delighted in their clever use
of words, their satire, and their verses celebrating courage, piety, and sometimes
erotic love:
I spent the night as her bed-companion, each enamored of the other,
And I made her laugh and cry, and stripped her of her clothes.
Poetry like this scandalized conservative Muslims, brought up on the ascetic tenets
of the Qur’an. But it was a by-product of the new urban civilization of the Umayyad
period, during which wealth, cultural mix, and the confidence born of conquest
inspired diverse and experimental literary
forms. By the time the Umayyad caliphate
REVIEW QUESTION How and why did the
Muslims conquer so many lands in the period
ended in 750, Islamic civilization was multi-
632–750? ethnic, urban, and sophisticated — a true
heir of Roman and Persian traditions.
[600–750
] Byzantium Besieged 257
Byzantium Besieged
The eastern Romans (the Byzantines) saw themselves as the direct heirs of Rome. In
fact, as we have seen, Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565) had tried to re-create the old
Roman Empire territorially. Under Justinian, vestiges of classical Roman society per-
sisted: an educated elite, town governments, and old myths and legends, which were
depicted in literature and art. Around 600, however, Byzantium began to undergo a
transformation as striking as the one that had earlier remade the western half of the
Roman Empire.
Constant war shrank the eastern empire’s territory drastically. Cultural and polit-
ical change followed. Cities decayed, and the countryside became the focus of gov-
ernment and military administration. In the wake of these shifts, the old elite largely
disappeared and classical learning gave way to new forms of education, mainly reli-
gious in content. The traditional styles of urban life, dependent on public gathering
places and community spirit, faded away.
Nevertheless, the transformations should not be exaggerated. A powerful emperor
continued to rule at Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey). Roman laws and taxes
remained in place. The cities, while shrunken, nevertheless survived, and Constan-
tinople itself had a flourishing economic and cultural life even in Byzantium’s darkest
hours. The Byzantines continued to call themselves Romans. For them, the empire
never ended: it just moved to Constantinople.
Wars on the Frontiers, c. 570–750

From about 570 to 750, the Byzantines waged war against invaders. One key challenge
came from an old enemy, Persia. Another involved many new groups — Lombards,
Slavs, Avars, Bulgars, and Muslims. In the wake of these onslaughts, Byzantium
became smaller but tougher.
Before the Muslims came on the scene, the principal challenge to Byzantine
power came from the Sasanid Empire of Persia (Map 8.2). From their capital city at
Ctesiphon, where they built a grand palace complex, the Sasanid kings promoted an
exalted view of themselves: they took the title King of Kings and gave the men at
their court titles such as priest of priests and scribe of scribes. With dreams of mili-
tary glory, they invaded major areas of the Roman Empire, using the revenues from
new taxes to strengthen the army. King Chosroes II (r. 591–628) took Syria and
Jerusalem between 611 and 614, and he conquered Egypt in 620.
Responding to these attacks, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641)
reorganized his army and inspired his troops to avenge the sack of Jerusalem. By
627, the Byzantines had regained all their lost territory. But the wars had changed
much: Syrian, Egyptian, and Palestinian cities had grown used to being under Per-
sian rule, and Christians who did not adhere to the orthodoxy at Byzantium pre-
ferred their Persian overlords. Even more important, the constant wars and plunder-
ing sapped the wealth of the region and the energy of the people who lived under
Byzantine rule.
[ 600–750
]
Byzantine Empire BYZANTINE EMPIRE, c. 700
Bulgarian khanate BULGARIAN
EXARCHATE KHANATE
Sasanid Empire OF
RAVENNA
Constantinople
R
hi
ne
.R
. BULGARS
Loire R LOMBARDS
ATLANTIC FRANKISH (568) Venice AVARS SLAVS
D
OCEAN KINGDOM Ravenna an
ube
DA . R
L M BALKAN MTS. Black Sea
Ca
Rome AT
spi
Corsica IA
(572) Bari KANS Constantinople
an
VISIGOTHIC BAL
Sea
KINGDOM Calabria BYZANTINE
Sardinia
Ephesus EMPIRE
Sicily
Antioch
Med
INE
iterra SYRIA E Ctesiphon
.
sR
nean S ea
EST
Indu
SASANID EMPIRE
up
Damascus
hr
PAL
(PERSIA)
ate
Jerusalem R.
s
NORTH AFRICA Alexandria
N
Pe
rsi
ARABS an
EGYPT Gu W E
0 250 500 miles lf
Re
dS
0 250 500 kilometers S

ea
Mecca
MAP 8.2 Byzantine and Sasanid Empires, c. 600

The emperor Justinian (r. 527–565) hoped to re-create the old Roman Empire, but just a century
after his death Italy was largely conquered by the Lombards. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire
had to contend with the Sasanid Empire to its east. In 600, these two major powers faced each
other uneasily. Three years later, the Sasanid king attacked Byzantine territory. The resulting
wars, which lasted until 627, exhausted both empires and left them open to invasion by the
Arabs. By 700, the Byzantine Empire was quite small. Compare the inset map here with Map
8.1, on page 254. Where had the Muslims made significant conquests of Byzantine territory?
Preoccupied by war with Persia, Byzantium was ill equipped to deal with other
groups who were pushing into parts of the empire at about the same time. The
Lombards, a Germanic people, entered northern Italy in 568 and by 572 were mas-
ters of the Po valley and parts of Italy’s south. In addition to Rome, the Byzantines
retained only Italy’s “foot,” the island of Sicily, and a narrow swath of land through
the middle of the peninsula called the Exarchate of Ravenna.
The Byzantine army could not contend any better with the Slavs and Bulgars
just beyond the Danube River. Joined by the Avars, the Slavs attacked both rural and
urban areas of Byzantium. Meanwhile, the Bulgars entered what is now Bulgaria in
the 670s, defeating the Byzantine army and in 681 forcing the emperor to recognize
their new state.
Even as the Byzantine Empire was facing military attacks on all fronts, its power
was being whittled away by more peaceful means. As Slavs and Avars, who were not
subject to Byzantine rulers, settled in the Balkans, they often intermingled with the
native peoples there, absorbing local agricultural techniques and burial practices while
imposing their language and religious cults.
[600–750
Byzantium’s loss of control over the Balkans meant the shrinking of its empire
(see inset on Map 8.2, page 258). It also exacerbated the growing separation between
the eastern and western parts of the former Roman Empire. Avar and Slavic control
of the Balkans effectively cut off trade and travel between Constantinople and the
cities of the Dalmatian coast, while the new Bulgarian state served as a political bar-
rier across the Danube. The two halves of the former Roman Empire communicated
very little in the seventh century, a fact reflected in their different languages: Greek
in the East, Latin in the West.
From an Urban to a Rural Way of Life

As Byzantium shrank, the conquered regions had to adjust to new rulers. Byzan-
tine subjects in Syria and Egypt who came under Arab rule adapted to the new
conditions, paying a special tax to their conquerors and practicing their Christian
and Jewish religions in peace. Cities remained centers of government, scholarship,
and business, and peasants were permitted to keep and farm their lands. In the
Balkans, as Slavs and Bulgars came to dominate the peninsula, some cities disap-
peared when people fled to hilltop settlements. Nevertheless, the newcomers recog-
nized the Byzantine emperor’s authority and soon began to flirt with Christianity.
Some of the most radical transformations for seventh- and eighth-century Byzan-
tines occurred not in the territories lost but in the shrunken empire itself. Under the
ceaseless barrage of invaders, many towns, formerly bustling centers of trade and the
imperial bureaucracy, vanished or became unrecognizable. The public activity of open
marketplaces, theaters, and town squares largely ended. City baths, once places where
people gossiped, made deals, and talked politics and philosophy, disappeared in most
Byzantine towns — with the significant exception of Constantinople. Warfare reduced
some cities to rubble, and the limited resources available for rebuilding went to con-
struct thick city walls and solid churches instead of spacious marketplaces and baths.
Despite the general urban decay, Constantinople and a few other urban centers
retained some of their old vitality. The manufacture and trade of fine silk textiles
continued. Even though Byzantium’s economic life became increasingly rural and
barter-based in the seventh and eighth centuries, the skills, knowledge, and institu-
tions of urban workers remained.
As urban life declined, agriculture, always the basis of the Byzantine economy,
became the center of its social life as well. Unlike Europe, where peasants often
depended on aristocratic landlords, the Byzantine Empire had many free peasants;
they grew food, herded cattle, and tended vineyards on their own small plots of land.
As Byzantine cities declined, the curials (town councilors), the elite who for centuries
had mediated between the emperor and the people, disappeared. Now on those occa-
sions when farmers came into contact with the state — to pay taxes, for example —
they felt the impact of the emperor or his representatives directly.
Byzantine emperors, drawing on the still-vigorous Roman legal tradition, promoted
domestic life with new imperial legislation, strengthening the nuclear family by
[ 600–750
]
narrowing the grounds for divorce and setting new punishments for marital infidelity.
Abortion was prohibited, and new protections were set in place against incest. Moth-
ers were given equal power with fathers over their offspring; if widowed, they became
the legal guardians of their minor children and controlled the household property.
New Military and Cultural Forms

The shift from an urban- to a rural-centered society meant changes not only in daily
life and the economy but also in the empire’s military and cultural institutions. The
Byzantine navy fought successfully at sea with its powerful weapon of “Greek fire,”
a mixture of crude oil and resin that was heated and shot via a tube over the water,
engulfing enemy ships in flames. Determined to win wars on land as well, the impe-
rial government tightened its control over the military by wresting power from elite
families and encouraging the formation of a middle class of farmer-soldiers. In the
seventh century, the empire was divided into military districts called themes. All civil
and military authority in each theme was held by a general, a strategos. Landless men
were lured to join the army with the promise of land and low taxes; they fought side
by side with local farmers, who provided their own weapons and horses. The new
organization effectively countered frontier attacks.
The disappearance of the old cultural elite meant a shift in the focus of educa-
tion. Whereas the curial class had cultivated the study of the pagan classics, eighth-
century parents showed far more interest in a religious education. Even with the
decay of urban centers, cities and villages often retained an elementary school. There,
teachers used the Book of Psalms (the Psalter) as their primer. Secular, classical
learning remained decidedly out of favor throughout the seventh and eighth centu-
ries; dogmatic writings, biographies of saints, and devotional works took center stage.
Religion, Politics, and Iconoclasm

The new stress on religious learning in the seventh century complemented both the
autocratic imperial ideal and the powers of the bishops. While in theory imperial
and church powers were separate, in practice they were interdependent. The emperor
exercised considerable power over the church: he influenced the appointment of the
chief religious official, the patriarch of Constantinople; he called church councils to
determine dogma; and he regularly used bishops as local governors.
Bishops and their clergy, whose seats were in the cities, formed a rich and pow-
erful upper class. They distributed food to the needy, sat as judges, functioned as tax
collectors, and built military fortifications. They owed their appointment to metro-
politans (bishops who headed an entire province), who in turn were appointed by
the patriarchs (bishops with authority over whole regions). Monasteries were theo-
retically under the limited control of the local bishop, but in practice they were
enormously powerful institutions that often defied the authority of bishops and even
emperors.
[600–750
Icon of the Virgin and Child

Surrounded by two angels in the back
and two soldier-saints at either side,
the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child are
depicted with still, otherworldly dignity.
The sixth-century artist gave the angels
transparent halos to emphasize their
spiritual natures, while depicting the
saints as earthly men, with hair and
beards, and feet planted firmly on the
ground. Icons like this were used for
worship both in private homes and in
Byzantine monasteries. (St. Catherine
Monastery, Sinai, Egypt / Erich Lessing / Art
Resource, NY.)
Laypeople, clergy, and monks

alike looked to relics and holy images
to help them worship. Relics were the
material remains of the saints: their
bodies and body parts, even clothes
and dust from their tombs. Holy
images — of Christ, Mary (his mother),
and the saints — gave people a visual
focus for their worship.
As a series of setbacks rocked the Byzantine Empire — plagues, earthquakes, and
wars against invading Slavs and Bulgars — the images became more important than
the relics in Byzantine worship. By the late seventh century, the images were under-
stood to be more than just representations of holy people. They took on the character
of icons, manifesting in physical form the holy person depicted and concentrating
all his or her holiness in one particular image. Monks, above all, centered their wor-
ship on icons and encouraged others to do so.
Soon there was a backlash against such intense devotion to icons. Emperor Leo III
the Isaurian (r. 717–741) made that backlash official. In 726, as Islamic armies swal-
lowed up Byzantine territory and after a volcano erupted in the middle of the Aegean
Sea, Leo denounced icons. The year 726 marks the beginning of iconoclasm (“icon
breaking”) in Byzantine history. It lasted until 787, and a modified ban was imposed
between 815 and 843.
Legend has it that in 726 Leo tore down the great image of Christ that used to
be at the portal of the imperial palace. Certainly he erected a cross there, and in 730
he demanded that both the pope at Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople remove
sacred images. He and his successors had good political reasons to oppose icons. Icons
diluted loyalties because they created intermediaries between worshippers and God
that undermined the emperor’s exclusive place in the divine and temporal order. In
addition, the emphasis on icons in monastic communities made the monks potential
[ 600–750
]
threats to imperial power; the emperors hoped to use this issue to weaken the mon-
asteries. Finally, the emperors opposed icons because the army did so. Byzantine
soldiers, unnerved by Arab triumphs, attributed their misfortunes to icons, which dis-
regarded the biblical command against graven (carved) images. They compared their
defeats to Muslim successes and noted that Islam prohibited all visual images of the
divine. The Byzantine emperors, who needed to keep the loyalty of their troops, adopted
their soldiers’ position on icons. They saw it as a renewal of pagan idolatry.
Iconoclasm had an enormous impact on Byzantium. The devout had to destroy
their personal icons or worship them in secret. Iconoclasts (who were especially
numerous at Constantinople itself) whitewashed the walls of churches, erasing all
the images. They smashed portable icons. Artists largely ceased depicting the human
form, and artistic production in general dwindled during this time. The power and
prestige of the monasteries, which were
REVIEW QUESTION What stresses did the
associated with icons, diminished. As the
Byzantine Empire endure in the seventh and tide of battle turned in favor of the Byzan-
eighth centuries, and how was iconoclasm a tines, imperial supporters and soldiers
response to those stresses? credited iconoclasm for their victories.
Western Europe: A Medley of Kingdoms

In contrast to Byzantium — where an emperor still ruled as the successor to Augustus
and Constantine — western Europe saw a dispersal of political power. With the end
of Roman imperial government there, independent monarchs ruled in Spain, Italy,
England, and Gaul. The European kings relied on kinship networks, the support of
powerful men who attended them at court, the prestige that came from church
patronage, and wealth derived from land and plunder.
In some places churchmen and rich magnates were even more powerful than
royalty. So were saintly relics, which represented and were believed to wield the
divine forces of God. Icons existed but were not very important in the West.
Frankish Kingdoms with Roman Roots

The most important kingdoms in post-Roman Europe were Frankish. The Franks
dominated Gaul during the sixth century, and by the seventh century their kingdoms
roughly approximated the eastern borders of present-day France, Belgium, the Neth-
erlands, and Luxembourg (Map 8.3). Moreover, the Frankish kings who constituted
the Merovingian dynasty (c. 486–751) subjugated many of the peoples beyond the
Rhine River, foreshadowing the contours of the western half of modern Germany.
Where there were cities, there were reminders of Rome. Elsewhere, the Roman
heritage was less obvious. Imagine, then, travelers going from Rome to Trier (near
what is now Bonn, Germany) in the early eighth century, perhaps to visit its bishop
and check up on his piety. They would have relied on river travel: water routes were
preferable to roads because land travel was slow, even though some Roman roads
[600–750
] Western Europe: A Medley of Kingdoms 263
0 100 200 miles

Merovingian kingdoms
Tributary regions 0 100 200 kilometers
N
North
E
Sea W
ENGLAND S
Rhine
R
SAXONS
.
Douai
Cologne
Laon
R.
NEUSTRIA sel Mainz
o
Paris Trier
M
AUSTRASIA
Nantes
L
oir
Tours
eR
BAVARIA
.
Dijon
ALAMANNIA
Salzburg
Limoges
BURGUNDY
AQUITAINE
Bordeaux Lyon
Clermont
R.
ône
Rh
BASQ
U ES
Arles KINGDOM OF
THE LOMBARDS Adriatic
PROVENCE
KINGDOM OF Marseille Sea
THE VISIGOTHS Medite r ranean S ea
MAP 8.3 The Merovingian Kingdoms in the Seventh Century

By the seventh century, there were three powerful Merovingian kingdoms: Neustria, Austrasia,
and Burgundy. The important cities of Aquitaine were assigned to these major kingdoms, while
Aquitaine as a whole was assigned to a duke or other governor. Kings did not establish capital
cities; they did not even stay in one place. Rather, they continually traveled throughout their
kingdoms, making their power felt in person.
were still in fair repair, and because even large groups of travelers on the roads were
vulnerable to attacks by robbers. Traveling northward on the Rhône River, our voyag-
ers would have passed Roman walled cities and farmlands neatly and squarely laid
out by Roman land surveyors. The great stone palaces of villas would still have dotted
the countryside. Once at Trier, the travelers would have felt at home seeing the city’s
great gate (now called the Porta Nigra; see the illustration on page 264), its monu-
mental baths (some still standing today), and its cathedral, built on the site of a
Roman palace. Being in Trier was almost like being in Rome.
Nevertheless, these travelers would have noticed that the cities that they passed
through were not what they had been in the heyday of the Roman Empire. True, cities
still served as the centers of church administration. Bishops lived in them, and so did
clergymen, servants, and others who helped the bishops. Cathedrals (the churches
presided over by bishops) remained within city walls, and people were drawn to them
for important rituals such as baptism. Nevertheless, many urban centers had lost their
[ 600–750
]
commercial and cultural vitality. Largely depopulated, they survived as skeletons of
their former selves.
Whereas the chief feature of the Roman landscape had been cities, the Frankish
landscape was characterized by dense forests, acres of marshes and bogs, patches of
cleared farmland, and pastures for animals. These areas were not much influenced
by Rome; they more closely represented the farming and village settlement patterns
of the Franks.
On the vast plains between Paris and Trier, most peasants were only semi-free.
They were settled in family groups on small holdings called manses, which included
a house, a garden, and cultivable land. The peasants paid dues and sometimes owed
labor services to a lord (an aristocrat who owned the land). Some of the peasants were
The Porta Nigra at Trier

Although in Germania, Trier became one of Rome’s capitals in the fourth century. The Porta
Nigra was originally the northern gate of the city. During the course of the fifth century, the Porta
Nigra came to be considered at best useless and at worst pagan, so bits and pieces of it were
pillaged to be used in other building projects. However, this practice stopped in 1030 when a
hermit named Simeon moved into its eastern tower. After Simeon’s death in 1035, the Porta
Nigra was turned into a two-story church, which it remained until the early nineteenth century,
when Napoleon, who conquered Trier, ordered the church to be dismantled and the site returned
(more or less) to its original shape. (De Agostini Picture Library / Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
[600–750
descendants of the coloni (tenant farmers) of the late Roman Empire; others were
the sons and daughters of slaves, now provided with a small plot of land; and a few
were people of free Frankish origin who for various reasons had come down in the
world. At the lower end of the social scale, the status of Franks and Romans had
become identical.
Romans (or, more precisely, Gallo-Romans) and Franks had also merged at the
elite level. Although people south of the Loire River continued to be called Romans
and people to the north Franks, their cultures — their languages, their settlement pat-
terns, their newly military way of life — were strikingly similar.
The language that aristocrats spoke and (often) read depended on location, not
ethnicity. Among the many dialects in the Frankish kingdoms, some were Germanic,
especially to the east and north, but most were derived from Latin, yet no longer the
Latin of Cicero. At the end of the sixth century, the bishop Gregory of Tours (r. 573–
c. 594), wrote, “Though my speech is rude, . . . to my surprise, it has often been said
by men of our day, that few understand the learned words of the rhetorician but
many the rude language of the common people.” This beginning to Gregory’s Histo-
ries, a valuable source for the Merovingian period, testifies to Latin’s transformation;
Gregory expected that his “rude” Latin — the plain Latin of everyday speech — would
be understood and welcomed by the general public.
The Frankish elites, like Frankish peasants, tended to live in the countryside rather
than in cities. In fact, peasants and aristocrats tended to live together in villages. In
many cases, a village consisted of a large central building (probably for the aristocratic
household to use), sometimes with stone foundations. Surrounding the central build-
ing were smaller buildings, some of which were houses for peasant families, who lived
with their livestock. Such villages might boast populations a bit over a hundred.
The elites of the Merovingian period cultivated military — rather than civilian —
skills. They went on hunts and wore military-style clothing: the men wore trousers,
a heavy belt, and a long cloak; both men and women
bedecked themselves with jewelry. As hardened 0 750 1,500 feet
warriors, or wanting to appear so, aristocrats no 0 400 meters
longer lived in grand villas, choosing instead mod- L oire R .
Church of
est wooden structures without baths or heating sys- St. Martin Bishop’s
church
tems. That explains why the village great house and ¡
the smaller ones nearby looked very much alike. Bishop’s
palace
Sometimes villages formed around old villas. In Baptistery
other instances they clustered around sacred sites. Fortifications built

c. 400
Tours — where Gregory was bishop — exemplified
House Area inhabited in
this new-style settlement. In Roman times, Tours 4th century
Cemetery
was a thriving city; around 400, its population Zone of pilgrimage
Church/ and semi-permanent
diminished, and it constructed walls around its monastery habitation, c. 600
shrunken perimeter. By Gregory’s day, however, it
had gained a new center outside the city walls. Tours, c. 600
[ 600–750
]
There a church had been built to house the remains of the most important and
venerated person in the locale: St. Martin. This fourth-century soldier-turned-monk
was long dead, but his relics remained at Tours, where he had served as bishop. The
population of the surrounding countryside was pulled to his church as if to a magnet.
Seen as a miracle worker, Martin acted as the representative of God’s power: a pro-
tector, healer, and avenger. In Gregory’s view, Martin’s relics (or rather God through
Martin’s relics) not only cured the lame and sick but even prevented armies from
plundering local peasants.
The veneration of saints and their relics marked a major departure from prac-
tices of the classical age, in which the dead had been banished from the presence of
the living. In the medieval world, the holy dead held the place of highest esteem.
The church had no formal procedures for proclaiming saints in the early Middle
Ages, but holiness was “recognized” by influential local people and the local bishop.
Everyone at Tours recognized Martin as a saint, and to tap into the power of his
relics, the local bishop built a church directly over his tomb. For a man like Gregory
of Tours and his flock, the church building was above all a home for the relics of
the saints.
Economic Activity in a Peasant Society

Gregory wrote about some sophisticated forms of economic activity that existed in
early medieval Europe, such as long-distance trade, which depended on surpluses.
But he also wrote about famines. Most people in his day lived on the edge of sur-
vival. From the fifth to the mid-eighth century, the mean temperature in Europe
dropped. This climatic change spelled shortages in crops and the likelihood of fam-
ine and disease.
An underlying reason for these calamities was the weakness of the agricultural
economy. Even the meager population of the Merovingian world was too large for
the land’s productive capacities. The heavy, wet soils of northern Europe were dif-
ficult to turn and aerate. Technological limitations meant a limited food supply, and
agricultural work was not equitably or efficiently allocated and managed. A leisure
class of landowning warriors and churchmen lived off the work of peasant men, who
tilled the fields, and peasant women, who wove cloth, gardened, brewed, and baked.
Occasionally surpluses developed, either from good harvests in peacetime or
plunder in warfare, and these changed hands, although rarely in an impersonal,
commercial manner. Most economic transactions of the seventh and eighth centuries
were part of a gift economy, a system of give-and-take: the rich took plunder, demanded
tribute, hoarded harvests, and minted coins — all to be redistributed to friends, fol-
lowers, and dependents. Powerful men and women amassed gold, silver, ornaments,
and jewelry in their treasuries and grain in their storehouses to mark their power,
add to their prestige, and demonstrate their generosity. Those benefiting from the gifts
of the rich included monasteries and churches. The gift economy was the dynamic
behind most of the exchanges of goods and money in the Merovingian period.
[
600–750
However, some economic activity in this period was purely commercial and
impersonal. Long-distance traders transported slaves and raw materials such as furs
and honey from areas of northern Europe such as the British Isles and Sweden. These
they sold to traders in Byzantium and the Islamic world, returning home with luxu-
ries and manufactured goods such as silks and papyrus. Byzantine, Islamic, and
western European descendants of the Roman Empire kept in tenuous contact with
one another by making voyages for trade, diplomatic ventures, and pilgrimages.
Seventh- and eighth-century sources speak of Byzantines, Syrians, and Jews as the
chief intermediaries of such long-distance trade. Many of these merchants lived in
the still-thriving port cities of the Mediterranean. Gregory of Tours associated Jews
with commerce, complaining that they sold things “at a higher price than they were
worth.”
Although the population of the Merovingian world was overwhelmingly Chris-
tian, Jews were integrated into every aspect of secular life. They used Hebrew in
worship, but otherwise they spoke the same languages as Christians and used Latin
in their legal documents. Jews dressed as everyone else did, and they engaged in the
same occupations. Many Jews planted and tended vineyards, partly because of the
importance of wine in synagogue services and partly because they could easily sell
the surplus. Some Jews were rich landowners, with slaves and dependent peasants
working for them; others were independent peasants of modest means. Some Jews
lived in towns with a small Jewish quarter that included both homes and synagogues,
but most Jews, like their Christian neighbors, lived on the land.
The Powerful in Merovingian Society

The Merovingian elite — who included monks and bishops as well as kings and lay
aristocrats — obtained their power through hereditary wealth, status, and personal
influence. Many of them were extremely wealthy. The will drawn up by a bishop and
aristocrat named Bertram of Le Mans, for example, shows that he owned estates —
some from his family, others given him as gifts — scattered all over Gaul.
Along with administering their estates, many male aristocrats spent their time
honing their proficiency as warriors. To be a great warrior in Merovingian society
meant perfecting the virtues necessary for leading armed men. Merovingian warriors
affirmed their skills and comradeship in the hunt: they proved their worth in the
regular taking of plunder, and they rewarded their followers afterward at generous
banquets.
Merovingian aristocrats also spent time with their families. The focus of mar-
riage was procreation. Important both to the survival of aristocratic families and to
the transmission of their property and power, marriage was an expensive institution.
It had two forms: in the most formal, the man gave a generous dowry of clothes,
livestock, and land to his bride; after the marriage was consummated, he gave her a
“morning gift” of furniture. Very wealthy men also might support one or more con-
cubines, who enjoyed a less formal type of marriage, receiving a morning gift but
[ 600–750
]
no dowry. Churchmen in this period had many ideas about the value of marriages,
but in practice they had little to do with the matter. Marriage was a family decision
and a family matter: the couple exchanged rings before witnesses, and later the bride
moved to the house of the groom.
In the sixth century, some aristocrats still patterned their lives on the old Roman
model, teaching their children classical Latin poetry and writing to one another in
phrases borrowed from Virgil. But this changed in the seventh century. The spoken
language had become very different from classical Latin, and written Latin was learned
mainly to read the Psalms. Just as in Byzantium, a religious culture that emphasized
Christian piety over the classics was developing in Europe.
The arrival on the continent around 590 of the Irish monk St. Columbanus
(c. 543–615) heightened this emphasis on religion. Columbanus’s brand of
monasticism — which stressed exile, devotion, and discipline — found much favor
among the Merovingian elite. The monasteries St. Columbanus established in both
Gaul and Italy attracted local recruits from the aristocracy. Some were grown men
and women; others were young children, given to the monastery by their parents in
the ritual called oblation. This practice was not only accepted but also often consid-
ered essential for the spiritual well-being of both the children and their families.
Alongside monks, bishops ranked among the most powerful men in Merovin-
gian society. Gregory of Tours, for example, considered himself the protector of “his
citizens.” When representatives of the king came to collect taxes in Tours, Gregory
stopped them in their tracks, warning them that St. Martin would punish anyone
who tried to tax his people. “That very day,” Gregory reported, “the man who had
produced the tax rolls caught a fever and died.” Little wonder that Frankish kings
let the old Roman land tax die out.
Like other aristocrats, many bishops were married, even though church councils
demanded celibacy. As the overseers of priests and guardians of morality, bishops
were expected to refrain from sexual relations with their wives. Since bishops were
ordinarily appointed late in life, long after they had raised a family, this restriction
did not threaten the ideal of a procreative marriage.
Noble parents generally decided whom their daughters would marry, for such
unions bound together not only husbands and wives but entire extended families as
well. Aristocratic brides received a dowry from their families in addition to their
husband’s gift. This was often land, over which they had some control; if they were
widowed without children, they were allowed to sell, give away, exchange, or rent
out their dowry estates as they wished. Moreover, people could give property to their
women kinfolk outright in written testaments. Many aristocratic women were very
rich, and like rich men, they frequently gave generous gifts to the church from their
vast possessions.
Though legally under the authority of her husband, a Merovingian married
woman often found ways to exercise some power and control over her life. Tetradia,
wife of Count Eulalius, left her husband, taking all his gold and silver, because, as
Gregory of Tours tells us,
[600–750
he was in the habit of sleeping with the women-servants in his household.

As a result he neglected his wife. . . . As a result of his excesses, he ran into
serious debt, and to meet this he stole his wife’s jewelry and money.
A court of law ordered Tetradia to repay Eulalius four times the amount she had
taken from him, but she was allowed to keep and live on her own property.
Other women were able to exercise behind-the-scenes control through their
sons. A woman named Artemia, for example, used the prophecy that her son Nice-
tius would become a bishop to prevent her husband from becoming a bishop himself.
After Nicetius fulfilled the prophecy, he nevertheless remained at home with his
mother well into his thirties, working alongside the servants and teaching the younger
children to read the Psalms.
Some women exercised direct power. Rich widows with fortunes to bestow wielded
enormous influence. Some Merovingian women were abbesses, rulers in their own
right over female monasteries and sometimes over “double monasteries,” with sepa-
rate facilities for men and women. Monasteries under the control of abbesses could
be substantial centers of population: the convent at Laon, for example, had three
hundred nuns in the seventh century. Because women lived in populous convents
or were monopolized by rich men able to support several wives or mistresses at one
time, unattached aristocratic women were scarce.
Atop the aristocracy were the Merovingian kings, rulers of the Frankish kingdoms.
The Merovingian dynasty (c. 486–751) owed its longevity to good political sense: from
the start it allied itself with local lay aristocrats and ecclesiastical (church) authorities.
Bishops and abbots bolstered the power that kings also gained from their leadership
in war, their access to the lion’s share of plunder, and their takeover of the public lands
and legal framework of Roman administration. The kings’ courts functioned as schools
for the sons of the elite. When kings sent officials — counts and dukes — to rule in their
name in various regions of their kingdoms, these regional governors worked with and
married into the aristocratic families who had long controlled local affairs.
Both kings and aristocrats benefited from a powerful royal authority. The king
acted as arbitrator and intermediary for the competing interests of the aristocrats.
Gregory of Tours’s history of the sixth century is filled with stories of bitter battles
between Merovingian kings, as royal brothers fought continuously. Yet what seemed
to the bishop like royal weakness and violent chaos was in fact one way the kings
contained local aristocratic tensions, organizing them on one side or another, and
preventing them from spinning out of royal control. By the beginning of the seventh
century, three relatively stable Frankish kingdoms had emerged: Austrasia to the
northeast; Neustria to the west, with its capital city at Paris; and Burgundy, incor-
porating the southeast (see Map 8.3, page 263).
As the power of the kings in the seventh century increased, however, so did the
might of their chief court official, the mayor of the palace. As we shall see, one
mayoral family allied with the Austrasian aristocracy would in the following century
displace the Merovingian dynasty and establish a new royal line, the Carolingians.
[ 600–750
]
Christianity and Classical Culture in the British Isles
The Merovingian kingdoms exemplify some of the ways in which Roman and non-
Roman traditions combined; the British Isles show others. Ireland had never been
part of the Roman Empire, but the Irish people were early converts to Christianity,
as were people in Roman Britain and parts of Scotland. Invasions by various Celtic
and Germanic groups — particularly the Anglo-Saxons, who gave their name to
England (“land of the Angles”) — redrew the religious boundaries. Ireland, largely
free of invaders, remained Christian. Scotland, also relatively untouched by invad-
ers, had been slowly Christianized by the Irish from
0 100 200 miles
the west and in early years by the British from the
south. England, which emerged from the invasions
as a mosaic of about a dozen kingdoms ruled by SCOTLAND
separate Anglo-Saxon kings, became largely pagan

until it was actively converted in the seventh Whitby
York
century. IRELAND
Christianity was introduced to Anglo-Saxon ENGLAND
WALES
England from two directions. To the north, Irish Canterbury
Kent
monks brought their own brand of Christianity.
Converted in the fifth century by St. Patrick and
other missionaries, the Irish had evolved a church The British Isles
organization that corresponded to its rural clan
organization. Abbots and abbesses were more powerful than bishops there. The Irish
missionaries to England were monks, and they set up monasteries modeled on those
at home — out in the countryside.
In the south, Christianity came to England in 597 via missionaries sent by the
pope known as Gregory the Great (r. 590–604). These men, led by Augustine (not
the same Augustine as the bishop of Hippo as discussed on page 224), intended to
convert the king and people of Kent, the southernmost kingdom, and then work their
way northward. Augustine and his party brought with them Roman practices at odds
with those of Irish Christianity, stressing ties to the pope and the authority of bish-
ops. Using the Roman model, they divided England into territorial units, called
dioceses, headed by an archbishop and bishops. Augustine became archbishop of
Canterbury. Because he was a monk, he set up a monastery right next to his cathe-
dral, and having a community of monks attached to the bishop’s church became a
characteristic of the English church. Later a second archbishopric was added at York.
A major bone of contention between the Roman and Irish churches involved
the calculation of the date of Easter, celebrated by Christians as the day on which
Christ rose from the dead. Because everyone agreed that believers could not be saved
unless they observed Christ’s resurrection properly and on the right date, the conflict
was bitter. It was resolved by Oswy, king of Northumbria, who organized a meeting
of churchmen, the Synod of Whitby, in 664. Convinced that Rome spoke with the
voice of St. Peter, who was said in the New Testament to hold the keys of the king-
[600–750
dom of heaven, Oswy chose the Roman date. His decision paved the way for the
triumph of the Roman brand of Christianity in England.
The authority of St. Peter was only one of the attractions of Roman Christianity.
Rome had great prestige as a treasure trove of knowledge, piety, and holy objects.
Benedict Biscop (c. 630–690), the founder of two important English monasteries,
made many difficult trips to Rome, bringing back relics, liturgical vestments, and
even a cantor to teach his monks the proper melodies in a time before written musi-
cal notation. Above all, he went to Rome to get books. At his monasteries in the
north of England, he built up a grand library. In Anglo-Saxon England, as in Scot-
land and Ireland, all of which lacked a strong classical tradition from Roman times,
a book was considered a precious object, to be decorated as finely as a jewel-studded
reliquary (see the chapter-opening image on page 248).
The Anglo-Saxons and Irish Celts had a thriving oral culture but extremely
limited uses for writing. Books became valuable only when these societies converted
to Christianity. Just as Islamic reliance on the Qur’an made possible a literary culture
under the Umayyads, so Christian dependence on the Bible, liturgy, and the writings
of the church fathers helped make England and Ireland centers of literature and
learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Men like Benedict Biscop soon spon-
sored other centers of learning, using texts from the classical past. Although women
did not establish famous schools, many abbesses ruled over monasteries that stressed
Christian learning. Latin writings, even pagan texts, were studied diligently, in part
because Latin was so foreign a language on the British Isles that mastering it required
systematic and formal study. One of Benedict Biscop’s pupils was Bede (“the Ven-
erable,” 673–735), an Anglo-Saxon
monk and a historian of extraordi-
nary breadth. Bede in turn taught a
new generation of monks who became
advisers to eighth-century rulers.
Page from the Lindisfarne Gospels
The lavishly illuminated manuscript
known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, of
which this is one page, was probably
produced in the first third of the eighth
century. For the monks at Lindisfarne
(a tidal island off the northeast coast
of England) and elsewhere in the British
Isles, books were precious objects. The
page shown here depicts the Evangelist
St. Mark, writing while also holding a
book. Above his halo is his symbol, a
winged lion; it is blowing a trumpet while
its front paws rest on a book. What
books might St. Mark and the lion be
holding? (© The British Library / The Image
Works.)
[ 600–750
]
Much of the vigorous pagan Anglo-Saxon oral tradition was adapted to Chris-
tian culture. Bede encouraged and supported the use of the Anglo-Saxon language,
urging priests, for example, to use it when they instructed their flocks. In contrast
to other European regions, where Latin was the primary written language in the
seventh and eighth centuries, England made use of the vernacular — the language
normally spoken by the people. Written Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) was used in
every aspect of English life, from government to entertainment.
The decision at the Synod of Whitby to favor Roman Christianity tied the English
church to Rome by doctrine, friendship, and conviction. The Anglo-Saxon monk
and bishop Wynfrith took the Latin name Boniface to symbolize his loyalty to the
Roman church. Preaching on the continent, Boniface (680–754) set up churches in
Germany and Gaul that, like those in England, looked to Rome for leadership and
guidance. Boniface was one of those travelers from Rome who went to Trier to check
on the bishop’s piety. He found it badly wanting! Boniface’s efforts to reform the
Frankish church gave the papacy new importance in Europe.
Unity in Spain, Division in Italy

Southern Gaul, Spain, and Italy, unlike the British Isles, had long been part of the
Roman Empire and preserved many of its traditions. Nevertheless, as these areas
were settled and fought over by new peoples, their histories diverged dramatically.
When the Merovingian king Clovis (r. 485–511) defeated the Visigoths in 507, the
Visigothic kingdom, which had sprawled across southern Gaul into Spain, was dis-
membered. By midcentury, the Franks had come into possession of most of its rem-
nants in southern Gaul.
In Spain, the Visigothic king Leovigild (r. 569–586) established territorial control
by military might. But no ruler could hope to maintain his position in Visigothic
Spain without the support of the Hispano-Roman population, which included both
the great landowners and leading bishops — and their backing was unattainable while
the Visigoths remained Arian Christians, who maintained that Christ was not identi-
cal with God (see page 222). Leovigild’s son Reccared (r. 586–601) took the necessary
step in 587, converting to Roman Catholic Christianity. Two years later, at the Third
Council of Toledo, most of the Arian bishops followed their king by announcing
their conversion to Catholicism.
Thereafter, the bishops and kings of Spain cooperated to a degree unprecedented
in other regions. While the king gave the churchmen free rein to set up their own
hierarchy (with the bishop of Toledo at the top) and to meet regularly at synods to
regulate and reform the church, the bishops in turn supported their Visigothic king,
who ruled as a minister of the Christian people. Rebellion against him was tanta-
mount to rebellion against Christ. The Spanish bishops reinforced this idea by
anointing the king, daubing him with holy oil in a ritual that paralleled the ordina-
tion of priests and demonstrated divine favor. Toledo, the city where the highest
bishop presided, was also where the kings were “made” through anointment. While
[600–750
the bishops in this way made the king’s cause their Lombard
own, their lay counterparts, the great landowners, Pavia Venice Byzantine
helped supply the king with troops, allowing him Ravenna

EXARCHATE
to maintain internal order and repel his external OF RAVENNA DUCHY OF
SPOLETO
enemies. Corsica Rome
DUCHY OF
Ironically, it was precisely the centralization BENEVENTO
and unification of the Visigothic kingdom that
ria
lab
Sardinia
Ca
proved its undoing. When the Arabs arrived in 711,
they needed only to kill the king, defeat his army, 0 100 200 miles Sicily
and capture Toledo to take the kingdom. 0 100 200 kilometers
By contrast, in Italy the Lombard king faced a

hostile papacy in the center of the peninsula and Lombard Italy,
Early Eighth Century
insubordinate dukes in the south. Theoretically
the dukes of Benevento and Spoleto were royal
officers, but in fact they ruled independently. Although many Lombards were Catho-
lics, others were Arian. The “official” religion of Lombards in Italy varied with the
ruler in power. The conversion of the Lombards to Catholic Christianity occurred
gradually, ending only around the mid-seventh century. Partly as a result of this slow
development, the Lombard kings never gained the full support of the church.
Nevertheless, Lombard kings had strengths. Chief among these were the tradi-
tions of leadership associated with the royal dynasty, the kings’ military ability, their
control over large estates in northern Italy, and their hold on surviving Roman insti-
tutions. Lombard kings took advantage of the still-urban organization of Italian soci-
ety and the economy, assigning dukes to city bases and setting up a royal capital at
Pavia. Recalling emperors like Constantine and Justinian, the kings built churches,
monasteries, and other places of worship in the royal capital; they also maintained
the city walls, issued laws, and minted coins. Revenues from tolls, sales taxes, port
duties, and court fines filled their treasuries, although their inability to revive the
Roman land tax was a major weakness. The greatest challenge for the Lombard kings
came from sharing the peninsula with Rome. As soon as the kings began to make
serious headway into southern Italy against the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento,
the pope began to fear for his own position and called on the Franks for help.
Political Tensions and the Power of the Pope

Around 600, the pope’s position was ambiguous: he was both a ruler — successor of
St. Peter and head of the church — and a subordinate, subject to the Byzantine
emperor. Pope Gregory the Great in many ways laid the foundations for the papacy’s
spiritual and temporal ascendancy. During Gregory’s reign, the papacy became the
greatest landowner in Italy. Gregory organized the defenses of Rome and paid for its
army; he heard court cases, made treaties, and provided welfare services. The mis-
sionary expedition Gregory sent to England was only a small part of his involvement
in the rest of Europe.
[ 600–750
]
A prolific author of spiritual works and biblical commentaries, Gregory digested
and simplified the ideas of church fathers like St. Augustine of Hippo, making them
accessible to a wider audience. His book Pastoral Rule was used as a guide for bishops
throughout Europe.
Yet even Gregory was not independent, for he was subordinate to the emperor.
For a long time the Byzantine views on dogma, discipline, and church administration
prevailed at Rome. This authority began to unravel in the seventh century. Sheer
distance, as well as diminishing imperial power in Italy, meant that the popes became,
in effect, the leaders of the parts of Italy not controlled by the Lombards.
The gap between Byzantium and Rome widened in the early eighth century as
Emperor Leo III tried to increase the taxes on papal property to pay for his war against
the Arab invaders. The pope responded by leading a general tax revolt. Meanwhile,
Leo’s fierce policy of iconoclasm collided with the pope’s tolerance of images. In Italy,
as in other European regions, Christian piety focused more on relics than on icons.
Nevertheless, the papacy would not allow sacred images and icons to be destroyed.
The pope argued that holy images should be respected, though not worshipped.
These disputes with the emperor were matched by increasing friction between
the pope and the Lombards. The Lombard kings had gradually managed to bring
under their control the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento as well as part of the
Exarchate of Ravenna. By the mid-eighth century, the popes feared that Rome would
fall to the Lombards, and Pope Zachary (r. 741–752) looked northward for friends.
He created an ally by giving his approval to the removal of the last Merovingian king
and his replacement by the first Carolin-
REVIEW QUESTION What were the similari-
gian king, Pippin III (r. 751–768). In 753,
ties and differences among the kingdoms that Pope Stephen II (r. 752–757) called on Pip-
emerged in western Europe, and how did their pin to march to Italy with an army to fight
histories combine and diverge? the Lombards.
Conclusion
The Islamic world, Byzantium, and western Europe were heirs to the Roman Empire,
but they built on its legacies in different ways. Muslims were the newcomers to the
Roman world, but their religion, Islam, was influenced by both Jewish and Christian
monotheism, each with roots in Roman culture. Under the guidance of Muhammad
the Prophet, Islam became both a coherent theology and a way of life. Once the
Muslim Arabs embarked on military conquests, they became the heirs of Rome in
other ways: preserving Byzantine cities, hiring Syrian civil servants, and adopting
Mediterranean artistic styles. Drawing on Roman and Persian traditions, the Umayyad
dynasty created a powerful Islamic state, with a capital city in Syria and a culture
that generally tolerated a wide variety of economic, religious, and social institutions
so long as the conquered paid taxes to their Muslim overlords.
Byzantium directly inherited the central political institutions of Rome: its people
called themselves Romans; its emperor was the Roman emperor; and its capital, Con-
[600–750
] Conclusion 275
stantinople, was considered to be the new Rome. Byzantium also inherited the taxes,
cities, laws, and Christian religion of Rome. The changes of the seventh and eighth
centuries — contraction of territory, urban decline, disappearance of the old elite, and
a ban on icons — whittled away at this Roman character. By 750, Byzantium was less
Roman than it was a new, resilient political and cultural entity, a Christian state.
Western Europe also inherited — and transformed — Roman institutions. The
Frankish kings built on Roman traditions that had earlier been modified by provin-
cial and Germanic custom. In the seventh century, Anglo-Saxon England reimported
the Roman legacy through Latin learning and the Christian religion. Visigothic kings
in Spain converted from Arian to Roman Christianity and allied themselves with the
Hispano-Roman elite. In Italy and at Rome itself, the traditions of the classical past
endured. The roads remained, the cities of Italy survived (although depopulated),
and both the popes and the Lombard kings ruled according to the traditions of
Roman government.
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0 250 500 miles
MAPPING THE WEST Rome’s Heirs, c. 750

The major political fact of the period 600–750 was the emergence of Islam and the creation
of an Islamic state that reached from Spain to the Indus River. The Byzantine Empire, once a
great power, was dwarfed — and half swallowed up — by its Islamic neighbor. To the west were
fledgling European kingdoms, mere trifles on the world stage. The next centuries, however,
would prove their resourcefulness and durability.
[ 600–750
]
Muslim, Byzantine, and western European societies all suffered the ravages of war.
Social hierarchies became simpler, with the loss of “middle” groups like the curials at
Byzantium and the near suppression of tribal affiliations among Muslims. Politics were
tightly tied to religion: the Byzantine emperor was a religious force, the caliph was a
religious and political leader, and western European kings allied with churchmen.
Despite their many differences, all these leaders had a common understanding of their
place in a divine scheme: they were God’s agents on earth, ruling over God’s people.
In the next century they would consolidate their power. Little did they know that,
soon thereafter, local elites would be able to assert greater authority than ever before.
Chapter 8 Review
Muhammad (p. 250) Umayyad caliphate (p. 255) Merovingian dynasty (p. 262)
Qur’an (p. 251) Heraclius (p. 257) Gregory of Tours (p. 265)
Hijra (p. 252) Lombards (p. 258) Gregory the Great (p. 270)
jihad (p. 252) theme (p. 260) Synod of Whitby (p. 270)
Five Pillars of Islam (p. 253) icon (p. 261)
Shi‘ite (p. 255) iconoclasm (p. 261)
Review Questions
1. How and why did the Muslims conquer so many lands in the period 632–750?
2. What stresses did the Byzantine Empire endure in the seventh and eighth centuries, and
how was iconoclasm a response to those stresses?
3. What were the similarities and differences among the kingdoms that emerged in western
Europe, and how did their histories combine and diverge?
Making Connections
1. What were the similarities and the differences in political organizations of the Islamic,
Byzantine, and western European societies in the period 600–750?
2. Compare and contrast the roles of religion in the Islamic, Byzantine, and western European
worlds in the period 600–750.
3. Compare the material resources of the Islamic, Byzantine, and western European govern-
ments in the period 600–750.
[600–750
Important Events
c. 486–751 Merovingian dynasty

c. 570–632 Life of Muhammad, prophet of Islam
572 Lombards conquer northern Italy
r. 573–c. 594 Bishop Gregory of Tours
587 Conversion of Visigothic king Reccared
c. 590 Arrival of Irish monk Columbanus in Gaul
r. 590–604 Papacy of Pope Gregory the Great
603–623 War between Byzantium and Persia
622 Hijra to Medina; year 1 of the Islamic calendar
624 Muhammad and Meccans fight battle of Badr
661–750 Umayyad caliphate
664 Synod of Whitby; English king opts for Roman form of Christianity
680–754 Life of Boniface, who reformed the Frankish church
r. 717–741 Emperor Leo III the Isaurian
726–787 Period of iconoclasm at Byzantium
Consider three events: Papacy of Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590–604); Hijra to Medina,
year 1 of the Islamic calendar (622); and Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (r. 717–741).
How did these events reshape religious faith? What were the broader implications of
those changes for social and political life?
Donner’s book offers insight on Islam’s origins. Herrin gives a dazzling overview of Byzantine
history. Smith’s and Wickham’s books are essential for understanding the early medieval West.
*Bede. A History of the English Church and People. Trans. Leo Sherley-Price. 1991.
Berkey, Jonathan P. The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800. 2003.
*Byzantine Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1c.html
Cameron, Averil. The Byzantines. 2006.
Donner, Fred McGraw. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. 2010.
*Geanakoplos, Deno John, ed. and trans. Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through
Contemporary Eyes. 1984.
Geary, Patrick. Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian
World. 1988.
*Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. 1976.
Haldon, J. F. Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture. 1990.
Herrin, Judith. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. 2007.
*Islamic Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook.html
Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth
to the Eleventh Century. 2nd ed. 2004.
Smith, Julia M. H. Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500–1000. 2005.
Whittow, Mark. The Making of Byzantium, 600–1025. 1996.
Wickham, Chris. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800. 2005.
*Primary source.
From Centralization
9
to Fragmentation
750–1050
I
n 841, a fifteen-year-old boy named William went to serve at the court of
Charles the Bald, king of the Franks. William’s father, Bernard, was an extremely
powerful noble. His mother, Dhuoda, was a well-educated, pious, and able woman;
she administered the family’s estates in the south of France while her husband was
occupied with politics at court. In 841, however, politics had become a dangerous
business. King Charles was fighting with his brothers over his portion of the Frank-
ish Empire, and he doubted Bernard’s loyalty. In fact, William was sent to Charles’s
court as a kind of hostage, to ensure Bern-
ard’s fidelity. Anxious about her son, Dhuoda
King Charles Receives a Bible wrote a handbook of advice for William,
The importance of loyalty is clear in
this ninth-century depiction of King
outlining his moral obligations. She empha-
Charles the Bald receiving a book. sized duty to his father even over loyalty to
The painting appears at the very end the king:
of the book (a large and splendid
bible) accompanied by two poems. Royal and imperial . . . power seem
In the painting, the king sits on a preeminent in the world, and the
throne. Two courtiers flank him on
either side, and beside each of them
custom of men is to [put] their names
is a warrior. Two canons hold the ahead of all others. . . . But despite
bible the king is about to receive, all this, I caution you to render first
while all the others make gestures of to him whose son you are special,
praise and prayer. Above, the hand of faithful, steadfast loyalty as long as
God reaches down to bless the king,
you shall live. . . . So I urge you . . .
whose throne touches the very scarf
of heaven. The first poem begins that first of all you love God. . . .
“Kind King Charles, flourish with the Then love, fear, and cherish your
power of the Almighty. . . . [You are] father.
the patron of the church, a solace to
the clergy and people.” (From the First William heeded his mother’s words, with
Bible of Charles the Bald, c. 843–851 / Biblio-
theque Nationale, Paris, France / Bridgeman
tragic results: when Bernard ran afoul of
Images.) Charles and was executed, William died in a
failed attempt to avenge his father.
279
280 Chapter 9 From Centralization to Fragmentation
[ 750–1050
]
Dhuoda’s handbook reveals the volatile political atmosphere of the mid-ninth
century, and her advice to her son points to one of its causes: a crisis of loyalty.
Loyalty to emperors, caliphs, and kings competed with allegiances to local authori-
ties, which, in turn, vied with family loyalties. The period from 600 to 750 had seen
the startling rise of Islam, the whittling away of Byzantium, and the beginnings of
stable political and economic development in an impoverished Europe. The period
from 750 to 1050 would see all three societies contend with internal issues of diver-
sity even as they became increasingly conscious of their unity and uniqueness. At
the beginning of this period, rulers built up and dominated strong, united political
communities. By the end, these realms had fragmented into smaller, more local
units.
In Byzantium, military triumphs brought emperors enormous prestige. A renais-
sance (French for “rebirth”) — that is, an important revival — of culture and art took
place at Constantinople. Yet at the same time new elites began to dominate the
Byzantine countryside. In the Islamic world, a dynastic revolution in 750 ousted the
Umayyads from the caliphate and replaced them with a new family, the Abbasids.
The Abbasid caliphs moved their capital to the east, from Damascus to Baghdad.
Even though the Abbasids’ power began to ebb as regional Islamic rulers came to
the fore, the Islamic world, too, saw a renaissance. In western Europe, Charlemagne —
a Frankish king from a new dynasty, the Carolingians — forged a huge empire and
presided over yet another cultural renaissance. Yet this newly unified kingdom was
fragile, disintegrating within a generation of Charlemagne’s death. In western Europe,
even more than in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, power fell into the hands of
local lords.
Along the borders of these realms, new political entities began to develop, shaped
by the religion and culture of their more dominant neighbors. Rus, the ancestor of
Russia, grew up in the shadow of Byzantium, as did Bulgaria and Serbia. Western
Europe cast its influence over central Euro-
pean states. In the west, the borders of the
CHAPTER FOCUS What forces led to the
dissolution — or weakening — of centralized
Islamic world remained stable or were
governments in the period from 750 to 1050, pushed back. By the year 1050, the contours
and what institutions took their place? of what were to become modern Europe
and the Middle East were dimly visible.
The Byzantine Emperor and Local Elites

Between 750 and 850, Byzantium staved off Muslim attacks and began to rebuild.
After 850, it expanded. Military victories brought new wealth and power to the impe-
rial court, and the emperors supported a vast program of literary and artistic revival
at Constantinople. But while the emperor dominated at the capital, a new land-
owning elite began to control the countryside. On its northern frontier, Byzantium
helped create new Slavic realms.
[750–1050
] The Byzantine Emperor and Local Elites 281
Imperial Power
While the themes, with their territorial military organization (see page 260), took care
of attacks on Byzantine territory, tagmata — new mobile armies made up of the best
troops — moved aggressively outward, beginning around 850. By 1025, the Byzan-
tine Empire extended from the Danube in the north to the Euphrates in the south
(Map 9.1).
Military victories gave new prestige and wealth to the army and to the imperial
court. The Byzantine emperors drew revenues from vast and growing imperial
estates. They could demand services and money from the general population at will,
and they used their wealth to create a lavish court culture, surrounding themselves
with servants, slaves, family members, and civil servants. From their powerful posi-
tion, the emperors negotiated with other rulers, exchanging ambassadors and receiv-
ing and entertaining diplomats with elaborate ceremonies to express the serious,
sacred, concentrated power of imperial majesty.
Some of the emperors’ wealth derived from a prosperous agricultural economy
organized for trade. Byzantine commerce depended on a careful balance of state regu-
lation and individual enterprise. The emperor controlled craft and commercial guilds,
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MAP 9.1 The Byzantine Empire, 1025

Under Emperor Basil II, the Byzantine Empire once again embraced the entire area of the Balkans,
while its eastern arm extended around the Black Sea and its southern fringe reached nearly to
Tripoli. The year 1025 marked the Byzantine Empire’s greatest size after the rise of Islam.
[ 750–1050
]
while entrepreneurs organized most of the markets held throughout the empire. For-
eign merchants were welcomed, but because international trade intertwined with
foreign policy, the Byzantine government insisted on controlling it, issuing privileges
to certain “nations” (as the Venetians, Genoese, and Jews, among others, were called),
regulating the fees they were obliged to pay and the services they had to render.
The emperors also negotiated privileges for their own traders in foreign lands.
Byzantine merchants were guaranteed protection in Syria, for example, while the two
governments split the income on sales taxes. Thus, Byzantine trade flourished in the
Middle East and, thanks to Venetian intermediaries, with western Europe. Equally sig-
nificant was trade to the north; from the conquerors of the area around the outpost of
Kiev, known as the Kievan Rus, the Byzantines imported furs, slaves, wax, and honey.
The Macedonian Renaissance, c. 870–c. 1025

Flush with victory and recalling Byzantium’s past glory, the emperors of the late ninth
century revived classical intellectual pursuits. Basil I (r. 867–886) from Macedonia
founded the imperial dynasty that presided over the so-called Macedonian renais-
sance. Basil’s dynasty drew on an intellectual elite who came from families that — even
in the anxious years of the eighth century — had persisted in studying the classics.
Now, with the empire slowly regaining its military eminence and with icons perma-
nently restored in 843, this scholarly elite thrived again.
Under the patronage of the emperor and other members of the imperial court,
scholars wrote summaries of classical literature, encyclopedias of ancient knowledge,
and commentaries on classical
authors. Some copied religious
manuscripts and theological com-
mentaries such as Bibles, Psalters,
The Macedonian Renaissance

The cultural flowering known as the
Macedonian renaissance produced
extraordinary works of art and litera-
ture. Even textiles felt its influence as
the wealthy at Constantinople paid for
lavish silks, many used as tapestries
to mark major triumphs. This frag-
ment of silk woven in compound twill
(a diagonal weave composed of intri-
cately interlaced silk threads) boasts
a large dark green eagle with a yellow
eye on a rose-purple background.
Parts of two green rosettes are
visible as well. (Museo Diocesano, Bres-
sanone, Italy / De Agostini Picture Library /
Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
[750–1050
] The Byzantine Emperor and Local Elites 283
homilies, and liturgical texts. But the merging of classical and Christian traditions
is clearest in manuscript illuminations (painted illustrations or embellishments in
hand-copied manuscripts). Here Byzantine artists showed how liberated they were
from the sober taboos of the iconoclastic period. For example, to depict King David,
the supposed poet of the Psalms, an artist illuminating a Psalter turned to a model of
Orpheus, the enchanting musician of ancient Greek mythology. Other artists worked
in a less classical style, as in the depiction of the decorative eagle on page 282.
The Dynatoi : A New Landowning Elite

At Constantinople the emperor reigned supreme. But outside the capital, extremely
powerful military families began to compete with imperial power. The dynatoi (“pow-
erful men”), as this new hereditary elite was called, got rich on plunder and new lands
taken in the aggressive wars of the tenth century. They took over or bought up whole
villages, turning the peasants’ labor to their benefit. For the most part they exercised
their power locally, but they also sometimes occupied the imperial throne.
The Phocas family exemplifies the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the
dynatoi. Probably originally from Armenia, they possessed military skills and exhib-
ited loyalty to the emperor that together brought them high positions in both the
army and at court in the last decades of the ninth century. In the tenth century, with
new successes in the east, the Phocas family gained independent power. After some
particularly brilliant victories, Nicephorus Phocas was declared emperor by his armies
and ruled (as Nicephorus II Phocas) at Constantinople from 963 to 969. But oppos-
ing factions of the dynatoi brought him down. The mainstay of Phocas family power,
as of that of all the dynatoi, was outside the capital, on the family’s great estates.
As the dynatoi gained power, the social hierarchy of Byzantium began to resem-
ble that of western Europe, where land owned by aristocratic lords was farmed by
peasants bound by tax and service obligations to the fields they cultivated.
The Formation of Eastern Europe and Kievan Rus

The contours of modern eastern Europe took shape during the period from 850 to
950. By 800, Slavic settlements dotted the area from the Danube River down to Greece
and from the Black Sea to Croatia. The ruler of the Bulgarians, called a khagan, pre-
sided over the largest realm. In the ninth century, Bulgarian rule stretched west to
the Tisza River in modern Hungary. At about the same, however, the Byzantine
Empire began its own campaigns to conquer, convert, and control these Slavic regions,
today known as the Balkans.
The Byzantine offensive began under Emperor Nicephorus I (r. 802–811), who
waged war against the Slavs of Greece in the Peloponnese, set up a new Christian
diocese there, organized it as a new military theme, and forcibly resettled Christians
in the area to counteract Slavic paganism. The Byzantines followed this pattern of
conquest as they pushed northward. By 900, Byzantium ruled all of Greece.
[ 750–1050
]
Still under Nicephorus I, the Byzantines launched a massive attack against the
Bulgarians, took the chief city of Pliska, plundered it, burned it to the ground, and
then marched against the khagan’s encampment in the Balkan Mountains. But the
Bulgarians successfully parried this attack. In 816, the two sides agreed to a temporary
peace — though it was punctuated by hostilities — that lasted for most of the tenth
century. Then Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) led the Byzantines in a slow, methodi-
cal conquest. Aptly known as the Bulgar-Slayer, Basil brought the entire region under
Byzantine control and forced its ruler to accept the Byzantine form of Christianity.
Around the same time, the Serbs, encouraged by Byzantium to oppose the Bulgar-
ians, began to form the political community that would become Serbia.
Religion played an important role in the Byzantine conquest of the Balkans. In
863, the brothers Cyril and Methodius were sent as Christian missionaries from the
Byzantines to the Slavs. Well educated in both classical and religious texts, they devised
an alphabet for Slavic (until then an oral language) based on Greek forms. It was the
ancestor of the modern Cyrillic alphabet used in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia today.
The region that would eventually become Russia lay outside the sphere of direct
Byzantine rule in the ninth and tenth centuries. Like Serbia and Bulgaria, however,
it came under increasingly strong Byzantine influence. In the ninth century, the
Vikings — Scandinavian adventurers who ranged over vast stretches of ninth-century
Europe seeking trade, riches, and land — penetrated the region below the Gulf of
Finland, where they imposed their rule. By the end of the century, they had moved
southward and had conquered the region around Kiev, a key commercial emporium.
From there the Rus, as the Viking conquerors were called, sailed the Dnieper River
and crossed the Black Sea in search of markets for their slaves and furs.
The relationship between Rus and Byzantium began with trade, continued with
war, and ended with a common religion. By the beginning of the tenth century, the
Rus had special trade privileges at Constantinople. But relations deteriorated, and
the Rus unsuccessfully attacked Constantinople in 941. Soon they resumed trading
with Byzantium.
Few Rus were Christian (most were polytheists, others Muslims or Jews), but that
changed at the end of the tenth century, when good relations between the Rus and the
Byzantines were sealed by the conversion of the Rus ruler Vladimir (r. c. 978–1015).
In 988, Emperor Basil II sent his sister Anna to marry Vladimir in exchange for an
army of Rus. To seal the alliance, Vladimir was baptized and took his brother-in-law’s
name. The general population seems to have quickly adopted the new religion.
Vladimir’s conversion represented a wider pattern: the Christianization of Europe.
In the southeast, orthodox Byzantine Christianity dominated, while in the west and
northwest, Roman Catholicism tended to be most important. Slavic realms such as
Moravia, Serbia, and Bulgaria adopted the Byzantine form of Christianity, while the
rulers and peoples of Poland, Hungary, Denmark, and Norway were converted under
the auspices of the Roman church. The conversion of the Rus was especially signifi-
cant because they were geographically as close to the Islamic world as to the Christian
and could conceivably have become Muslims. By converting to Byzantine Christianity,
[750–1050
] The Rise and Fall of the Abbasid Caliphate 285
the Rus made themselves heirs to Byzantium and its church, customs, art, and politi-
cal ideology. However, choosing the Byzantine form of Christianity, rather than the
Roman Catholic, later served to isolate the region from western Europe.
For more than fifty years, Rus remained united under one ruler. But after 1054,
civil wars broke out. Invasions by outsiders, particularly from the east, further weak-
ened the Kievan rulers, who were eventually displaced by princes from the north.
At the crossroads of East and West, Rus
could meet and absorb a great variety of REVIEW QUESTION In what ways did the
traditions, but its geographical position Byzantine emperor expand his power, and in
also opened it to unremitting military what ways was that power checked?
pressures.
The Rise and Fall of the Abbasid Caliphate

A new dynasty of caliphs — the Abbasids — first brought unity and then, in their
decline, fragmentation to the Islamic world as regional rulers took over. Local tradi-
tions based on religious and political differences played an increasingly important
role in people’s lives. Yet, even in the eleventh century, the Islamic world had a clear
sense of its own unity, based on language, commerce, and artistic and intellectual
achievements that transcended regional boundaries.
The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–936

In 750, a civil war ousted the Umayyads and raised the Abbasids to the caliphate.
The Abbasids found support in an uneasy coalition of Shi‘ites (the faction of Islam
loyal to Ali’s memory; see page 255) and non-Arabs who had been excluded from the
Umayyad government. Under the Abbasids, the center of Islamic rule shifted from
Damascus, with its roots in the Roman tradition, to the newly founded city of Bagh-
dad in Iraq. Here the Abbasid caliphs adhered even more firmly than the Umayyads
to Persian courtly models, with a centralized administration, a large staff, and control
over the appointment of regional governors.
The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809) presided over a flourishing
empire. His contemporary Frankish ruler, Charlemagne, was impressed with the
elephant Harun sent him as a gift, along with monkeys, spices, and medicines. Such
items were mainstays of everyday commerce in Harun’s Iraq. A mid-ninth-century
catalog of imports listed “tigers, panthers, elephants, panther skins, rubies, white
sandal[wood], ebony, and coconuts” from India as well as “silk, chinaware, paper,
ink, peacocks, racing horses, saddles, felts [and] cinnamon” from China.
The Abbasid dynasty began to decline after Harun’s death. While his sons waged
war against each other, the caliphs lost control over many regions, including Syria
and Egypt. They needed to recruit an army that would be loyal to them alone. This
they found in “outsiders,” many of them Turks from east of the Caspian Sea (today
Kazakhstan). Many of the Turks, later called Mamluks, were bought as slaves. Once
[ 750–1050
]
Normandy
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MAP 9.2 Islamic States, c. 1000

Comparing this map with Map 8.1 (page 254) will quickly demonstrate the fragmentation of the
once united Islamic caliphate. In 750, one caliph ruled territory stretching from Spain to India.
In 1000, there was more than one caliphate as well as several other ruling dynasties. The most
important of those dynasties were the Fatimids, who began as organizers of a movement to
overthrow the Abbasids. By 1000, the Fatimids had conquered Egypt and claimed hegemony
over all of North Africa.
purchased, the Turks were freed and paid a salary. They were expert fighters, but the
Abbasids needed a good tax base to be able to pay them. This they did not have.
Serious uprisings just south of Baghdad kept huge swaths of territory outside the
control of the caliphs. Other regions of the Islamic world easily went their own way
when the caliphs lacked the money to keep them in line. In the tenth century, the
caliphs became figureheads only, while independent regional rulers collected taxes
and hired their own armies.
Thus, in the Islamic world, as in the Byzantine, new regional lords challenged
the power of the central ruler. But the process advanced more quickly in Islamic than
in Byzantine territories. Map 9.1 (page 281) correctly omits any indication of regional
dynatoi because the key center of power in the Byzantine Empire continued to be
Constantinople. Map 9.2, in contrast, shows how the Abbasid caliphate fragmented
as local dynasties established themselves.
Regional Diversity in Islamic Lands

The splintering of the Islamic world was to be expected since central power there
was based on the conquest of many diverse regions, each with its own deeply rooted
traditions and culture. The Islamic religion, with its Sunni/Shi‘ite split, also became
[750–1050
] The Rise and Fall of the Abbasid Caliphate 287
Fatimid Tableware
The elites under the Fatimid rulers cultivated a luxuri-
ous lifestyle that included dining on lusterware —
porcelain tableware that was glazed and fired
several times to produce an iridescent metallic
sheen. Trade contacts with China inspired
the Islamic world to mimic Chinese pottery.
(Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, USA / Werner Forman
Archive / Bridgeman Images.)
a source of polarization.* Western Europeans

knew almost nothing about Muslims, calling
all of them Saracens (from the Latin word for
“Arabs”) without distinction. But, as is still true
today, Muslims were of different ethnicities, practiced
different customs, and identified with different regions. With the fragmentation of
political and religious unity, each of the tenth- and early-eleventh-century Islamic
states built on local traditions under local rulers.
A good example of this trend was the Shi‘ite group known as the Fatimids.
Taking their name from Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad and wife of Ali, they estab-
lished themselves in 909 as rulers in the region of North Africa now called Tunisia.
The Fatimid ruler claimed to be not only the true imam — the descendant of Ali —
but also the mahdi, the “divinely guided” messiah, come to bring justice on earth.
In 969, the Fatimids declared themselves rulers of Egypt. Their dynasty lasted for
about two hundred years. Fatimid leaders also controlled North Africa, Arabia, and
even Syria for a time. They established a lavish court culture that rivaled the one at
Baghdad, and they supported industries such as lusterware that had once been a
monopoly of the Abbasids.
While the Shi‘ites dominated Egypt, Sunni Muslims ruled al-Andalus, the Islamic
central and southern heart of Spain. The emirate of Córdoba (so called because its
ruler took the secular title emir, “commander,” and fixed his capital at Córdoba) was
created early, near the start of the Abbasid caliphate. During the Abbasid revolution
of 750, a member of the Umayyad family gathered an army, invaded Spain, and after
only one battle was declared emir in 756, becoming Abd al-Rahman I. He and his
successors ruled a broad range of peoples, including many Jews and Christians. After
the initial Islamic conquest of Spain, the Christians had adopted so much of the new
Arabic language and so many of the customs that they were called Mozarabs (“like
Arabs”). The Muslims allowed them freedom of worship and let them live according
to their own laws. Some Mozarabs were content with their status, others converted
to Islam, and still others intermarried.
*The Shi‘ites, originally followers of Ali, had by this time come to practice Islam differently from the
Sunni. Each faction adhered to its own interpretation of the prophet Muhammad’s life and message.
[ 750–1050
]
A Princely Pyxis
A pyxis is a small container, and this one, about six
inches high and carved out of ivory, was made for
the younger son of Abd al-Rahman III, the caliph of
Córdoba. The prince is depicted in a decorative loz-
enge, sitting on a rug and holding a bottle and a
flower. One servant sits beside him to cool him with
a fan; another stands and plays the lute. Under-
neath the rug are lions, symbols of power. Outside
the princely enclosure, falconers stand by, ready to
accompany the prince to the hunt. The whole scene
suggests order, skill, and elegance, all important fea-
tures of the Islamic renaissance. (Louvre, Paris, France /
Peter Willi / Bridgeman Images.)
Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912–961) was pow-

erful enough to take the title of caliph, and the
caliphate of Córdoba, which he created, lasted
from 929 to 1031. Under him, members of all
religious groups in al-Andalus enjoyed not only
freedom of worship but also equal opportunity
to rise in the civil service. Abd al-Rahman enjoyed diplomatic relations with European
and Byzantine rulers. Yet under later caliphs, al-Andalus experienced the same politi-
cal fragmentation that was occurring everywhere else. The caliphate of Córdoba broke
up in 1031, and rulers of small, independent regions, called taifas, took power.
Unity of Commerce and Language

Although the regions of the Islamic world were culturally and politically diverse, they
maintained a measure of unity through trade networks and language. Their principal
bond was Arabic, the language of the Qur’an. At once poetic and sacred, Arabic was
also the language of commerce and government from Baghdad to Córdoba. More-
over, despite political differences, borders were open. The primary reason for these
open borders was Islam itself, but the openness extended to non-Muslims as well.
The commercial activities of the Tustari brothers, Jewish merchants from south-
ern Iran, are a good example. By 1026, they had established a flourishing business
in Egypt. Informal contacts with friends and family allowed them to import fine
textiles from Iran to sell in Egypt and to export Egyptian fabrics to sell in Iran. The
Tustari brothers held the highest rank in Jewish society and had contacts with Mus-
lim rulers. At the same time, commercial networks even more vast than those of the
Tustari family were common. Muslim merchants brought tin from England; salt and
gold from Timbuktu in west-central Africa; amber, gold, and copper from Rus; and
slaves from every region.
[750–1050
] The Carolingian Empire 289
The Islamic Renaissance, c. 790–c. 1050

Unlike the Macedonian renaissance, which was concentrated in Constantinople, the
Islamic renaissance occurred throughout the Islamic world. In fact, the dissolution
of the caliphate into separate political entities multiplied the centers of learning and
intellectual productivity. The Islamic renaissance was particularly dazzling in capital
cities such as Córdoba (a city in southern Spain today), where tenth-century rulers
presided over a brilliant court culture, patronizing scholars, poets, and artists.
Islamic scholarship was diverse. Some scholars read, translated, and commented
on the works of ancient philosophers. Others studied astronomy or wrote on math-
ematical matters. Ibn Sina (980–1037), known in Christian Europe as Avicenna,
wrote books on logic, the natural sciences, and physics. His Canon of Medicine
systematized earlier treatises and reconciled them with his own experience as a
physician.
Long before there were universities in Europe, there were institutions of higher
learning in the Islamic world. A rich Muslim might demonstrate his piety and charity
by establishing a madrasa, a school located within or attached to a mosque. Profes-
sors at madrasas held classes throughout the day on the interpretation of the Qur’an
and literary or legal texts. Students, all male, attended the classes that suited their
achievement level and interest. Most students paid a fee for learning, but there were
also scholarship students. One tenth-century court official was so solicitous of the
welfare of the scholars he supported that each day he set out iced refreshments,
candles, and paper for them in his own kitchen.
The use of paper, made from flax and hemp or rags and vegetable fiber, points
to a major difference among the Islamic, Byzantine, and (as we shall see) Carolingian
renaissances. Byzantine scholars worked to enhance the prestige of the ruling classes.
Their work, written on expensive parchment (made from animal skins), kept manu-
scripts out of the hands of all but the very
rich. This was true of scholarship in Europe REVIEW QUESTION What forces contributed
as well. By contrast, Islamic scholars wrote to the fragmentation of the Islamic world in the
on paper, which was cheap, and they spoke tenth and eleventh centuries, and what forces
to a broad audience. held it together?
The Carolingian Empire

Just as in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, in Europe the period from 750 to 1050
saw first the formation of a strong empire, ruled by one man, and then its frag-
mentation as local rulers took power into their own hands. A new dynasty, the Caro-
lingian, came to rule in the Frankish kingdom at almost the very moment (c. 750)
that the Abbasids gained the caliphate. Charlemagne, the most powerful Carolingian
monarch, conquered new territory, took the title of emperor, and presided over a
revival of Christian classical culture known as the Carolingian renaissance. He ruled
at the local level through counts and other military men. Nevertheless, the unity of
[ 750–1050
]
the Carolingian Empire — based largely on conquest, a measure of prosperity, and
personal allegiance to Charlemagne — was shaky. Its weaknesses were exacerbated by
attacks from Viking, Muslim, and Magyar invaders. Charlemagne’s successors divided
his empire among themselves and saw it divided further as local leaders took
defense — and rule — into their own hands.
The Rise of the Carolingians

The Carolingians were among many aristocratic families on the rise during the Mero-
vingian period (see pages 262–269), but they gained exceptional power by monopo-
lizing the position of “palace mayor” — a sort of prime minister — under the Merovin-
gian kings. Charles Martel (“Charles the Hammer”), mayor 714–741, gave the name
Carolingian (from Carolus, Latin for “Charles”) to the dynasty. Renowned for defeat-
ing an invading army of Muslims from al-Andalus near Poitiers in 732, he also
contended vigorously against other aristocrats who were carving out independent
lordships for themselves. Charles Martel and his family turned aristocratic factions
against one another, rewarded supporters, crushed enemies, and dominated whole
regions by supporting monasteries that served as focal points for both religious piety
and land donations.
The Carolingians also allied themselves with the Roman papacy. They supported
Anglo-Saxon missionaries like Boniface (see page 272) who went to areas on the
fringes of the Carolingian realm as the pope’s ambassador. Reforming the Christian-
ity that these regions had adopted, Boniface set up a hierarchical church organization
and founded new monasteries. His newly appointed bishops were loyal to Rome and
the Carolingians.
Pippin III (d. 768), Charles Martel’s son, turned to the pope directly. When he
deposed the Merovingian king in 751, taking over the kingship himself, Pippin peti-
tioned Pope Zachary to legitimize the act; the pope agreed. The Carolingians returned
the favor a few years later when the pope asked for their help against hostile Lom-
bards. That papal request signaled a major shift. Before 754, the papacy had been
part of the Byzantine Empire; after that, it turned to Europe for protection.
Pippin launched a successful campaign against the Lombard king that ended in
756 with the so-called Donation of Pippin, a peace accord between the Lombards
and the pope. The treaty gave back to the pope cities that had been taken by the
Lombard king. The new arrangement recognized what the papacy had long before
created: a territorial “republic of St. Peter” ruled by the pope, not by the Byzantine
emperor. Henceforth, the fate of Italy would be tied largely to the policies of the
pope and the Frankish kings to the north, not to the eastern emperors.
Partnership with the Roman church gave the Carolingian dynasty a Christian
aura, expressed in symbolic form by anointment. Bishops rubbed holy oil on the
foreheads and shoulders of Carolingian kings during the coronation ceremony, imi-
tating the Old Testament kings who had been anointed by God.
[750–1050
Charlemagne and His Kingdom, 768–814

The most famous Carolingian king was Charles, whom his contemporaries called
the Great (le Magne in Old French) — thus, Charlemagne (r. 768–814). Charlemagne
was complex, contradictory, and sometimes brutal. He loved listening to St. Augus-
tine’s City of God as it was read aloud, and he supported major scholarly enterprises,
yet he never learned to write. He was devout, yet he flouted the advice of church-
men when they told him to convert pagans rather than force baptism on them. He
admired the pope, yet he was furious when a pope placed the imperial crown on his
head. He waged many successful wars, yet he thereby destroyed the buffer states
surrounding the Frankish kingdoms, unleashing a new round of invasions.
Behind these contradictions, however, lay a unifying vision. Charlemagne
dreamed of an empire that would unite the martial and learned traditions of the
Roman and Germanic worlds with the legacy of Christianity. This vision lay at the
core of his political activity, his building programs, and his support of scholarship
and education.
During the early years of his reign, Charlemagne conquered lands in all directions
(Map 9.3). He invaded Italy, seizing the crown of the Lombard kings and annexing
northern Italy in 774. He then moved northward and began a long and difficult war
against the Saxons, during which he annexed their territory and forcibly converted
them to Christianity. To the southeast, Charlemagne fought the Avars, bringing
home cartloads of plunder. To the southwest, he led an expedition to al-Andalus and
there set up a march (a military buffer region).
By the 790s, Charlemagne’s kingdom stretched east beyond the Elbe River (today
in Germany), southeast to what is today Austria, and south to Spain and Italy. Such
power in the West had been unheard of since the time of the Roman Empire, and
Charlemagne began to imitate aspects of the imperial model. He sponsored building
programs to symbolize his authority, standardized weights and measures, and acted
as a patron of intellectual and artistic efforts. He built a capital city at Aachen, com-
plete with a chapel that was patterned on Justinian’s church of San Vitale at Ravenna
(see the illustrations on pages 238–39 and 293).
To discourage corruption, Charlemagne appointed special officials, called missi
dominici (“those sent out by the lord king”), to oversee his regional governors — the
counts. The missi (lay aristocrats or bishops) traveled in pairs throughout the king-
dom to ensure that all, rich and poor alike, had access to royal justice.
Meanwhile, the papacy was beginning to claim imperial power for itself. At some
point, perhaps in the 760s, members of the papal chancery (writing office) created a
document called the Donation of Constantine. It declared the pope the recipient of
the fourth-century emperor Constantine’s crown, cloak, and military rank along with
“all provinces, palaces, and districts of the city of Rome and Italy and of the regions
of the West.” (Only much later was the document proved a forgery.) The tension
between the imperial claims of the Carolingians and those of the pope was heightened
by the existence of an emperor at Constantinople who also had rights in the west.
[ 750–1050
]
0 150 300 miles
Carolingian Empire, 768
Conquered by Charlemagne, to 814
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MAP 9.3 Expansion of the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne

The conquests of Charlemagne temporarily united almost all of western Europe under one ruler.
Although the great Carolingian Empire broke apart (see the inset showing how the empire was
divided by the Treaty of Verdun), the legacy of that unity remained, even serving as one of the
inspirations behind today’s European Union.
Pope Leo III (r. 795–816) upset the delicate balance among these three powers.
In 799, accused of adultery and perjury by a faction of the Roman aristocracy, Leo
narrowly escaped being blinded and having his tongue cut out. He fled northward
to seek Charlemagne’s protection. Charlemagne had the pope escorted back to Rome,
and he soon arrived there himself to an imperial welcome orchestrated by Leo. On
Christmas Day, 800, Leo put an imperial crown on Charlemagne’s head, and the
clergy and nobles who were present acclaimed the king Augustus, the title of the
first Roman emperor. The pope hoped in this way to exalt the king of the Franks, to
downgrade the Byzantine ruler, and to claim for himself the role of “emperor maker.”
At first, Charlemagne avoided using the imperial title. He may have hesitated
to adopt it because he feared the reaction of the Byzantines. Or perhaps he objected
[750–1050
Charlemagne’s Chapel
Charlemagne was the first Frankish
king to build a permanent capital
city. He decided to do so in 789
and chose Aachen because of its
natural warm springs. There he built
a palace complex that, besides a
grand living area for himself and
his retinue, included a chapel (a
small semiprivate church). Today
the entire chapel is enclosed within
Aachen’s cathedral. (Aachen Cathedral,
Aachen, Germany / Bildarchiv Steffens /
Bridgeman Images.)
to the papal role in his crowning

since it seemed to give the pope
power over the imperial office.
When Charlemagne finally did
call himself emperor, he used a
long and revealing title: “Charles,
the most serene Augustus,
crowned by God, great and
peaceful Emperor who governs
the Roman Empire and who is, by the mercy of God, king of the Franks and the
Lombards.” According to this title, Charlemagne was not the Roman emperor crowned
by the pope, but rather God’s emperor who governed the Roman Empire along with
his many other duties.
The Carolingian Renaissance, c. 790–c. 900

Charlemagne inaugurated a revival of learning designed to enhance the glory of the
kings, educate their officials, and purify the faith. Like the renaissances of the Byz-
antine and Islamic worlds, the Carolingian renaissance resuscitated the learning of
the past. Scholars studied Roman imperial writers such as Suetonius and Virgil, read
and commented on the works of the church fathers, and worked to establish com-
plete and accurate texts of everything they read and prized.
The English scholar Alcuin (c. 732–804), a member of the circle of scholars
whom Charlemagne recruited to form a center of study, brought with him the tradi-
tions of Anglo-Saxon scholarship that had been developed by men such as Benedict
Biscop and Bede. Invited to Aachen, Alcuin became Charlemagne’s chief adviser,
writing letters on the king’s behalf, counseling him on royal policy, and tutoring the
king’s household. He also prepared an improved edition of the Vulgate, the Latin
Bible used by the clergy in all church services.
[ 750–1050
]
David in the Carolingian Renaissance
In this sumptuous illustration from a
Bible made for Charlemagne’s grandson
Charles the Bald, the central figure is
David, the composer of the Psalms, who
is playing the harp and dancing on a
cloud. Above and below him are his
musicians with their instruments. The
influence of earlier models is clear in
the two figures flanking David, who
are dressed like soldiers in the late
Roman Empire. (Scala / White Images /
Art Resource, NY.)
Art, like scholarship, served

Carolingian political and religious
goals. Carolingian artists turned to
models from Italy and Byzantium
(perhaps some refugees from Byz-
antine iconoclasm joined them) to
illustrate Bibles (see the illustration
at left), Psalters, scientific treatises,
and literary manuscripts.
Many of the achievements of the Carolingian renaissance endured even after the
dynasty itself had faded to a memory. The work of locating, understanding, and trans-
mitting models of the past continued in a number of monastic schools. In the twelfth
century, scholars would build on the foundations laid by the Carolingian renaissance.
The very print of this textbook depends on one achievement of the period: modern
typefaces are based on the clear and beautiful letter forms, called Caroline minuscule,
invented in the ninth century to standardize manuscript handwriting.
Charlemagne’s Successors, 814–911

Charlemagne’s successor, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), took his role as leader of the
Christian empire even more seriously than his father did. In 817, he imposed on all
the monasteries of the empire a uniform way of life, based on the Benedictine rule.
Although some monasteries opposed this legislation, and in the years to come the
king was unable to impose his will directly, this moment marked the effective adop-
tion of the Benedictine rule as the monastic standard in Europe.
In a new development of the coronation ritual, Louis’s first wife, Ermengard, was
crowned empress by the pope in 816. In 817, their firstborn son, Lothar, was named
emperor and made co-ruler with Louis. Their other sons, Pippin and Louis (later
called Louis the German), were made subkings under imperial rule. Louis the Pious
[750–1050
hoped in this way to ensure the unity of the empire while satisfying the claims of
all his sons. Should any son die, only his firstborn could succeed him, a measure
intended to prevent further splintering. But Louis’s hopes were thwarted by events.
Ermengard died, and Louis married Judith, reputed to be the most beautiful woman
in the kingdom. In 823, she and Louis had a son, Charles (later known as Charles
the Bald, to whose court Dhuoda’s son William was sent). The sons of Ermengard,
bitter over the birth of another royal heir, rebelled against their father and fought
one another for more than a decade.
Finally, after Louis the Pious died in 840, the Treaty of Verdun (843) divided
the empire among his three remaining sons (Pippin had died in 838). The arrange-
ment roughly defined the future political contours of western Europe (see the inset in
Map 9.3, page 292). The western third, bequeathed to Charles the Bald (r. 843–877),
would eventually become France, and the eastern third, handed to Louis the German
(r. 843–876), became Germany. The “Middle Kingdom,” which was given to Lothar
(r. 840–855) along with the imperial title, had a different fate: parts of it were absorbed
by France and Germany, and the rest eventually formed what became the modern
states of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy.
Thus, by 843, the European-wide empire of Charlemagne had dissolved. Forged
by conquest, it had been supported by a small group of privileged aristocrats with
lands and offices stretching across its entire expanse. Their loyalty — based on shared
values, friendship, expectations of gain, and sometimes formal ties of vassalage and
oaths of fealty (faithfulness) — was crucial to the success of the Carolingians. The
empire had also been supported by an ideal, shared by educated laymen and church-
men alike, of conquest and Christian belief working together to bring good order to
the earthly state.
But powerful forces operated against the Carolingian Empire. Once the empire’s
borders were fixed and conquests ceased, the aristocrats could not hope for new lands
and offices. They put down roots in particular regions and began to gather their own
followings. Powerful local traditions such as different languages also undermined
imperial unity.
Finally, as Dhuoda revealed in the handbook she wrote for her son, some people
disagreed with the imperial ideal. By asking her son to put his father before the
emperor, Dhuoda demonstrated her belief in the primacy of the family and the per-
sonal ties that bound it together. Her ideal represented a new sensibility that saw real
value in the breaking apart of Charlemagne’s empire into smaller, more intimate local
units.
Land and Power

The Carolingian economy, based on war profits, trade, and agriculture, contributed
first to the rise and then to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. After the spoils
of war ceased to pour in, the Carolingians still had access to money and goods. To
the north, the Carolingian economy intermingled with that of the Abbasid caliphate.
[ 750–1050
]
Silver from the Islamic world probably came north up the Volga River through
Kievan Rus to the Baltic Sea. There the coins were melted down and the silver was
traded to the Carolingians in return for wine, jugs, glasses, and other manufactured
goods. The Carolingians turned the silver into coins of their own, to be used through-
out the empire for small-scale local trade. The weakening of the Abbasid caliphate
in the mid-ninth century, however, disrupted this far-flung trade network and con-
tributed to the weakening of the Carolingians at about the same time.
Land provided the most important source of Carolingian wealth and power.
Carolingian aristocrats held many estates, called manors, scattered throughout the
Frankish kingdoms and organized for production. The names of the peasants who
tilled the soil and the dues and services they owed were even sometimes carefully
noted down in registers.
A typical manor was Villeneuve Saint-Georges, which belonged to the monastery
of Saint-Germain-des-Près (today in Paris) in the ninth century. Villeneuve consisted
of arable fields, vineyards, meadows where animals could roam, and woodlands, all
scattered about the countryside rather than connected in a compact unit. Peasant
families did the farming. Each family had its own manse, which consisted of a house,
a garden, and small sections of the arable land. Besides farming the land that belonged
to them, the families also worked the demesne, the very large manse of the lord, in
this case the abbey of Saint-Germain. Grown children would found their own fami-
lies, and their parents’ land would be subdivided to give them a share. In many ways,
the peasant household of the Carolingian period was the precursor of the modern
nuclear family.
Peasants at Villeneuve practiced the most progressive sort of plowing, known as
the three-field system, in which they farmed two-thirds of the arable land at one
time (see Figure 9.1). They planted one-third of the arable land in the fall with winter
wheat, one-third in the spring with summer crops, and left the remaining third fal-
low to restore its fertility. The crops sown and the fallow field then rotated so that
land use was repeated only every three years. This method of organizing the land
produced larger yields (because two-thirds of the land was cultivated each year) than
the still-prevalent two-field system, in which only half of the arable land was culti-
vated one year while the other half lay fallow.
All the peasants at Villeneuve were dependents of the monastery and owed dues
and services to Saint-Germain. Their status and obligations varied enormously. One
family, for example, owed four silver coins, wine, wood, three hens, and fifteen eggs
every year, and the men had to plow the fields of the demesne. Another family owed
the intensive labor of working the vineyards. Peasant women spent much time at the
lord’s house in the gynaeceum — the workshop where women made and dyed cloth
and sewed garments — or in the kitchens, as cooks. Peasant men spent most of their
time in the fields.
Manors organized on the model of Villeneuve were profitable. Like other lords,
the Carolingians benefited from their extensive landholdings. Nevertheless, farming
was still too primitive to return great surpluses, and as the lands belonging to the
[750–1050
Meadow
Gardens
Vineyards
rotation
Houses roads
spring
autumn sowing
sowing
rotation
fallow
field
rota
tion
stream
common
pasture
FIGURE 9.1 Diagram of a Manor and Its Three-Field System

This schematic diagram of a manor shows that peasants lived clustered together in a village
that consisted of houses and gardens. One of the buildings was a church. Nearby were vine-
yards. A bit beyond were the fields, pastureland, and meadows, well connected by dirt roads.
The field sown with spring crops (such as oats) this year would have been sown with winter
wheat the next year, while the fallow field would get a spring crop.
king were divided up in the wake of the partitioning of the empire and new inva-
sions, the Carolingians’ dependence on manors scattered throughout their kingdom
proved to be a source of weakness.
Viking, Muslim, and Magyar Invasions, c. 790–955

Beginning around the time of Charlemagne’s imperial coronation and extending to
the mid-tenth century, new groups — Vikings, Muslims, and Magyars — confronted
the Carolingian Empire and many of the other kingdoms of Europe. The Vikings
were the first invaders. About the same time as some Vikings made their eastward
forays into the region below the Gulf of Finland, others moved westward as well.
Traveling in small bands led by a chief, the Vikings were merchants, sailors, and
pirates. Some crossed the Atlantic in their longships to settle Iceland and Greenland.
Around 1000, a few landed on the coast of North America. Others navigated the rivers
of continental Europe.
[ 750–1050
]
As pagans, Vikings considered monasteries and churches — with their reliquar-
ies, chalices, and crosses — no more than convenient storehouses of plunder. They
hit the British Isles particularly hard. By the middle of the ninth century, the Vikings
were spending winters there, and in 876 they settled in the northeast quadrant as
farmers. This region was later called the Danelaw.
In Wessex, the southernmost kingdom of England, King Alfred the Great bought
time and peace from the Vikings by giving them hostages and tribute. The tribute,
later called Danegeld, eventually became the basis of a relatively lucrative taxation
system in England. After Alfred led his army against the Vikings, set up strongholds,
and deployed new warships, the threat of invasions eased.
On the continent, too, the Vikings set up trading stations and settled where
originally they had raided. Beginning about 850, their attacks became well-organized
expeditions for regional control. At the end of the ninth century, one contingent
settled in the region of France that soon took the name Normandy (“land of the
Northmen”). In 911, the Frankish king Charles the Simple ceded the region to Rollo,
the Viking leader there. In turn, Rollo converted to Christianity.
Normandy was not the only new Christian polity created in the north during
the tenth and eleventh centuries. Scandinavia itself was transformed with the creation
of the powerful kingdom of Denmark. There had been kings in Scandinavia before
the tenth century, but they had been weak, their power challenged by nearby chief-
tains. Some of these chieftains led the Viking raids, competing with one another for
foreign plunder in order to win prestige, land, and power back home. During the
course of their raids, they and their followers came into contact with new cultures
and learned from them.
Meanwhile the Carolingians and the English supported missionaries in Scan-
dinavia. By the middle of the tenth century, the Danes had become Christian. Fol-
lowing the model of the Christian kings to their south, the Danish kings built up an
effective monarchy, with a royal mint and local agents who depended on them. By
about 1000, the Danish monarchy had extended its control to parts of Sweden, Nor-
way, and even England under King Cnut (also spelled Canute) (r. 1017–1035).
Southern Europe largely escaped the Vikings, but parts of it were attacked by
Muslim adventurers from North Africa, Sicily, and northeastern al-Andalus who set
up bases in the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the Magyars (or Hungarians) settled in
Europe’s very center. A nomadic people from the Ural Mountains (today northeast-
ern Russia), they arrived around 899 in the Danube basin, driving a wedge between
the Slavs near the Frankish kingdom and those bordering on Byzantium. The Bulgar-
ians, Serbs, and Rus were forced into the Byzantine orbit, while the Slavs nearer the
Frankish kingdom came under the influence of Germany.
From their bases in present-day Hungary, the Magyars raided far to the west,
attacking Germany, Italy, and even southern Gaul frequently between 899 and 955.
Then in 955 the German king Otto I (r. 936–973) defeated a marauding party of
Magyars at the battle of Lechfeld. Otto’s victory, his subsequent military reorganiza-
tion of his eastern frontiers, and the cessation of Magyar raids around this time made
[750–1050
] After the Carolingians: The Emergence of Local Rule 299
Otto a great hero to his contemporaries. However, historians today think the contain-
ment of the Magyars had more to do with their internal transformation from nomads
to farmers than with their military defeat. Soon they converted to the Roman form
of Christianity. Hungary’s position between East and West made it a frontier region,
vulnerable to invasion and immigration but also open to new experiments in assimi-
lation and integration.
The Viking, Muslim, and Magyar invasions were the final onslaught western
Europe experienced from outsiders. In some ways they were a continuation of the
invasions that had rocked the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Loosely
organized in war bands, the new groups
entered western Europe looking for wealth REVIEW QUESTION What were the strengths
but stayed on to become absorbed in the and weaknesses of Carolingian institutions of
region’s post-invasion society. government, warfare, and defense?
After the Carolingians: The Emergence of Local Rule

As royal power diminished, counts and other powerful men stopped looking to the
king for new lands and offices; instead, they began to develop and exploit what they
already had. Commanding allegiance from vassals, controlling the local peasantry,
building castles to dominate the countryside, setting up markets, collecting revenues,
and keeping the peace, they regarded themselves as independent regional rulers. In
this way, a new warrior class of lords and vassals came to dominate post-Carolingian
society.
There were, to be sure, variations on this theme. In northern and central Italy,
where urban life had never lost its importance, elites ruled from the cities rather
than from rural castles. Everywhere kings retained a certain amount of power; in
some places, such as Germany and England, they were extremely effective. Central
European monarchies formed under the influence of Germany.* Still, throughout
this period, local allegiances — between lord and vassal, castellan and peasant, bishop
and layman — mattered most to the societies of Europe.
Public Power and Private Relationships

Both kings and less powerful men commanded others through institutions designed
to ensure personal loyalty. This was true already under Charlemagne, and in the
wake of the Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invasions, more and more warriors were
drawn into networks of dependency, but not with the king: they became the faithful
men — the vassals — of local lords, who often gave them fiefs (grants of land) in
return for their military service. As sons often took the place of their fathers, this
*Names such as Germany, France, and Italy are used here for the sake of convenience. They refer to
regions, not to the nation-states that would eventually become associated with those names.
[ 750–1050
]
arrangement tended to be permanent. From the Latin feodum (“fief ”) comes the
word feudal, and some historians use the term feudalism to describe the social and
economic system created by the relationship among vassals, lords, and fiefs.
Medieval people divided their society into three groups: those who prayed, those
who fought, and those who worked. All these groups were involved in hierarchies
of dependency and linked by personal bonds, but the upper classes — those who
prayed (monks) and those who fought (knights) — were free. Their brand of depen-
dency was prestigious, whether they were vassals, lords, or both. In fact, a typical
warrior was lord of several vassals even while serving as the vassal of another lord.
Monasteries normally had vassals to fight for them, and their abbots in turn were
often vassals of a king or other powerful lord.
Vassalage served both as an alternative to public power and as a way to strengthen
what little public power remained. Given the impoverished economic conditions of
western Europe, its primitive methods of communication, and its lack of unifying
traditions, lords of every sort needed faithful men to protect them and carry out
their orders. And vassals needed lords. At the low end of the social scale, poor vas-
sals depended on their lords to feed, clothe, house, and arm them. At the upper end
of the social scale, landowning vassals looked to lords to give them still more land.
Many upper-class laywomen participated in the society of “those who fought” as
wives and mothers of vassals and lords. A few women were themselves vassals, and
some were lords (or, rather, ladies). Other women entered convents and joined the
group of those who prayed. Through its abbess or a man standing in for her, a convent
often had vassals as well. Many elite women engaged in property transactions, whether
alone, with other family members, or as part of a group such as a convent.
Becoming a vassal involved both ritual gestures and verbal promises. In a cer-
emony witnessed by others, the vassal-to-be knelt and, placing his hands between
the hands of his lord, said, “I promise to be your man.” This act, known as homage,
was followed by the promise of fealty — fidelity, trust, and service — which the vassal
swore with his hand on relics or a Bible. Then the vassal and the lord kissed. In an
age when many people could not read, a public ceremony such as this represented
a visual and verbal contract. Vassalage bound the lord and vassal to one another with
reciprocal obligations, usually military. Knights, as the premier fighters of the day,
were the most desirable vassals.
At the bottom of the social scale were those who worked — the peasants. In the
Carolingian period, many peasants were free; they did not live on a manor or, if they
did, they owed very little to its lord. (Manors like Villeneuve were the exceptions.)
But as power fell into the hands of local rulers, fewer and fewer peasants remained
free. Rather, they were made dependent on lords, not as vassals but as serfs. A serf ’s
dependency was completely unlike that of a vassal. Serfdom was not voluntary. No
serf did homage or fealty to his lord; no serf kissed his lord as an equal. Whereas
vassals served their lords as warriors, serfs worked as laborers on their lord’s land and
paid taxes and dues to their lord. Peasants constituted the majority of the population,
but unlike knights, who were celebrated in song, they were barely noticed by the
[750–1050
upper classes — except as a source of revenue. While there were still free peasants who
could lease land or till their own soil without paying dues to a lord, serfs — who could
not be kicked off their land but who were also not free to leave it — became the norm.
New methods of cultivation and a slightly warmer climate helped transform the
rural landscape, making it more productive and thus able to support a larger popula-
tion. But population increase meant more mouths to feed and the threat of food
shortages. Landlords began reorganizing their estates to run more efficiently. In the
tenth century, the three-field system became more prevalent; heavy plows that could
turn wet, clayey northern soils came into wider use, and horses (more effective than
oxen) were harnessed to pull the plows. The results were surplus food and a better
standard of living for nearly everyone.
In search of greater profits, some lords lightened the dues and services of peas-
ants, or turned them into fixed money payments that the lords could then use to
open up new lands by draining marshes and cutting down forests. Money payments
allowed lords to buy what they wanted, while peasants benefited because their dues
were fixed despite inflation.
By the tenth century, many peasants had begun living in populous rural settle-
ments, true villages. Surrounded by arable lands, meadows, woods, and wastelands,
villages developed a sense of community. Boundaries — sometimes real fortifications,
sometimes simple markers — told nonresidents to stay away or to find shelter in huts
located outside the village limits.
The church often formed the focal point of village activity. There people met,
received the sacraments, drew up contracts, and buried their dead. Religious feasts
and festivals joined the rituals of farming to mark the seasons. The church domi-
nated the village in another way: men and women owed it a tax called a tithe (one-
tenth of their crops or income, paid in money or in kind), which was first instituted
on a regular basis by the Carolingians.
Village peasants developed a sense of common purpose based on their interde-
pendence, as they shared oxen or horses for the teams that pulled the plow or turned
to village craftsmen to fix their wheels or shoe their horses. Village solidarity could
be compromised, however, by conflicting loyalties and obligations. A peasant in one
village might very well have one piece of land connected with a certain manor and
another piece on a different estate; and he or she might owe several lords different
kinds of dues. Even peasants of one village working for one lord might owe him
varied services and taxes.
Obligations differed even more strikingly across the regions of Europe than
within particular villages. The principal distinction was between free peasants —
such as small landowners in Saxony and other parts of Germany, who had no lords —
and serfs, who were especially common in France and England. In Italy, peasants
ranged from small independent landowners to leaseholders.
As landlords consolidated their power over their manors, they collected not only
dues and services but also fees for the use of their flour mills, bake houses, and brew-
eries. Some built castles, fortified strongholds, collected taxes, heard court cases, levied
[ 750–1050
]
fines, and mustered men for defense. In France, for example, as the king’s power
waned, political control fell into the hands of counts and other princes. By 1000,
castles had become the key to their power. In the south of France, power was so
fragmented that each man who controlled a castle — a castellan — was a virtual ruler,
although often with a very limited reach. In northwestern France, territorial princes,
basing their rule on the control of many castles, dominated much broader regions.
The development of virtually independent local political units, dominated by a
castle and controlled by a military elite, marks an important turning point in western
Europe. Although this development did not occur everywhere simultaneously (and
in some places it hardly occurred at all), the social, political, and cultural life of Europe
was now dominated by landowners who were both military men and regional rulers.
Warriors and Warfare

Not all medieval warriors were alike. At the top of this elite group were the kings,
counts, and dukes. Below them, but on the rise, were the castellans; and still further
down the social scale were ordinary knights. Yet all shared in a common lifestyle.
Knights and their lords fought on horseback. High astride his steed, wearing a
shirt of chain mail and a helmet of flat metal plates riveted together, the knight
marked a military revolution. The war season started in May, when the grasses were
high enough for horses to forage. Horseshoes allowed armies to move faster than
ever before and to negotiate rough terrain previously unsuitable for battle. Stirrups,
probably invented by nomadic Asiatic tribes, allowed the mounted warrior to hold
his seat while thrusting at the enemy with a heavy lance. The light javelin of ancient
Roman warfare was abandoned.
Lords and their vassals often lived together. In the lord’s great hall they ate,
listened to entertainment, and bedded down for the night. They went out hunting
together, competed with one another in military games, and went off to the battlefield
as a group. Some powerful vassals — counts, for example — lived on their own fiefs.
These vassals hardly ever saw their lord (probably the king), except when doing
homage and fealty — once in their lifetime — or serving him in battles, for perhaps
forty days a year (as was the custom in eleventh-century France). These powerful
vassals were themselves lords of other men — typically unmarried knightly vassals
who lived, ate, and hunted together with their lord.
No matter how old they might be, unmarried knights who lived with their lords
were called youths by their contemporaries. Such perpetual bachelors were some-
thing new, the result of a profound transformation in the organization of families
and inheritance. Before about 1000, noble families had recognized all their children
as heirs and had divided their estates accordingly. Thereafter, adapting to diminished
opportunities for land and office and wary of fragmenting the estates they had,
French nobles (in particular) changed both their conception of their family and the
way property passed to the next generation. Recognizing the overriding claims of
one son, often the eldest, they handed down their entire inheritance to him. (The
[750–1050
system of inheritance in which the heir is the eldest son is called primogeniture.)
The heir, in turn, traced his lineage only through the male line, backward through
his father and forward through his own eldest son. Such patrilineal families left
many younger sons without an inheritance and therefore without the prospect of
marrying and founding a family; instead, the younger sons lived at the courts of the
great as youths, or they joined the church as clerics or monks. The development of
territorial rule and patrilineal families went hand in hand, as fathers passed down to
one son not only manors but also titles, castles, and authority over the peasantry.
Patrilineal inheritance tended to bypass daughters and so worked against aris-
tocratic women, who lost the power that came with inherited wealth. In families
without sons, however, widows and daughters did inherit property. And wives often
acted as lords of estates when their husbands were at war. Moreover, all aristocratic
women played an important role in this warrior society, whether in the monastery
(where they prayed for the souls of their families) or through their marriages (where
they produced children and helped forge alliances between their own natal families
and the families of their husbands).
Efforts to Contain Violence

The rise of the castellans meant an increase in violence. Supported by their knights,
castellans were keen to maintain their new authority over the peasants in their vicin-
ity in the face of older regional powers, like counts and dukes. Threatened from
below, those higher-ranking authorities looked to the bishops for help. The bishops,
themselves resentful of local castellan claims and, moreover, generally members of the
same elite families as counts and dukes, were glad to oblige. To do so, they enlisted
the lower classes — peasants who were tired of wars that destroyed their crops or
forced them to join regional infantries. The result was the Peace of God, which united
bishops, counts, and peasants in an attempt to contain local violence. The movement
began in the south of France around 990 and had spread over a wide region by 1050.
At impassioned meetings of bishops, lords, and crowds of enthusiastic men and
women, the clergy set forth the provisions of this peace. “No man in the counties or
bishoprics shall seize a horse, colt, ox, cow, ass, or the burdens which it carries. . . .
No one shall seize a peasant, man or woman,” ran the decree of one early council.
Anyone who violated this peace was to be excommunicated: cut off from the com-
munity of the faithful, denied the services of the church and the hope of salvation.
The Peace of God proclaimed at local councils like this limited some violence
but did not address the problem of conflict between armed men. A second set of
agreements, the Truce of God, soon supplemented the peace. The truce prohibited
fighting between warriors at certain times. Enforcement fell to the local knights and
nobles, who swore over saints’ relics to uphold it and to fight anyone who broke it.
The Peace of God and the Truce of God were only two of the mechanisms that
attempted to contain or defuse violent confrontations in the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies. At times, lords and their vassals mediated wars and feuds at grand judicial
[ 750–1050
]
assemblies. In other instances, monks or laymen tried to find solutions to disputes
that would leave the honor of both parties intact. Rather than establishing guilt or
innocence, winners or losers, these methods of adjudication often resulted in com-
promises on both sides.
Political Communities in Italy, England, and France

The political systems that emerged following the breakup of the Carolingian Empire
were as varied as the regions of Europe. In northern and central Italy, cities were the
centers of power, still reflecting, if feebly, the political organization of ancient Rome.
Italian lords tended to construct their family castles within the walls of cities. From
there they the controlled the land and people in the surrounding countryside.
Italian cities also served as marketplaces where peasants sold their surplus goods,
artisans and merchants lived, and foreign traders offered their wares. These members
of the lower classes were supported by the wealthy elite, who depended, here more
than elsewhere, on cash to satisfy their desires. In the course of the ninth and tenth
centuries, the peasants in the countryside became renters who paid in currency,
helping meet their landlords’ need for cash.
Families in Italy organized themselves quite differently from the patrilineal fami-
lies of France. To prevent dividing its properties among heirs, the Italian family
became a kind of economic corporation in which all male members shared the prof-
its of the family’s inheritance and all women were excluded. In the coming centuries,
this successful model would also serve as the foun-
dation of most early Italian businesses and banks. Kingdom of Alfred
In contrast to Italy, most of England was rural. Dependent on Wessex
Having successfully repelled the Viking invaders, To Alfred in 878
Alfred the Great, king of Wessex (r. 871–899),

developed new mechanisms of royal government, North
instituting reforms that his successors continued. Sea
He fortified settlements throughout Wessex and Northumbria

divided the army into two parts, one with the duty
of defending these fortifications, the other oper- DANELAW
ating as a mobile unit. Alfred also started a navy. Mercia East
The money to pay for these military innovations Wales
Anglia
came from assessments on peasants’ holdings.

Along with its regional fortifications, Alfred Wessex
sought to strengthen his kingdom’s religious integ- 0 50 100 miles
rity. He began his program of religious reform by 0 50 100 kilometers
bringing scholars to his court to translate works
by church fathers such as Gregory the Great and England in the Age of
St. Augustine into Anglo-Saxon (Old English) so King Alfred, 871–899
that everyone would understand them. Alfred himself did some of these translations.
He had even the Psalms, until now sung only in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, put into
[750–1050
the vernacular — the common spoken language. In most of ninth- and tenth-century
Europe, only the Latin language was used in writing. In England, however, the spoken
language became a written language as well.
Alfred’s reforms strengthened not only defense, education, and religion but also
royal power. He consolidated his control over Wessex and fought the Danish kings,
who by the mid-870s had taken Northumbria, northeastern Mercia, and East Anglia.
Eventually, as he successfully fought the Danes who were pushing south and west-
ward, he was recognized as king of all the English not under Danish rule. He issued
a law code for all of the English kingdoms, becoming, in effect, the first king of all
the English.
Alfred’s successors rolled back the Danish rule in England even though many
Vikings remained. Converted to Christianity, their great men joined Anglo-Saxons
in attending the English king at court. As peace returned, new administrative sub-
divisions for judicial and tax purposes were established throughout England: shires
(the English equivalent of counties) and hundreds (smaller units). The powerful men
of the kingdom swore fealty to the king, promising to be enemies of his enemies,
friends of his friends. England was united and organized to support a strong ruler.
Alfred’s grandson Edgar (r. 957–975) commanded all the possibilities early medi-
eval kingship offered. He was the sworn lord of all the great men of the kingdom.
He controlled appointments to the English church and sponsored monastic reform.
In 973, he was anointed king. The fortifications of the kingdom were in his hands,
as was the army, and he took responsibility for keeping the peace by proclaiming
certain crimes — arson and theft — to be under his special jurisdiction and by mobi-
lizing the machinery of the shire and the hundred to find and punish thieves.
Despite its apparent centralization, England was not a unified state in the mod-
ern sense, and the king’s control was often tenuous. Many royal officials were great
landowners who (as on the European continent) worked for the king because it was
in their best interest. When it was not, they allied with different claimants to the
throne. This political fragility may have helped the Danish king Cnut conquer England.
As king there from 1017 to 1035, Cnut reinforced the already strong connections
between England and Scandinavia while keeping intact much of the administrative,
ecclesiastical, and military apparatus already established in England by the Anglo-
Saxons. By Cnut’s time, Scandinavian traditions had largely merged with those of the
rest of Europe and the Vikings were no longer an alien culture.
Across the Channel, French kings had a harder time than the English coping with
invasions because their realm was much larger. They had no chance to build their
defenses slowly from one powerful base. During most of the tenth century, Caro-
lingian kings alternated on the throne with kings from a family that would later be
called the Capetian. As the Carolingian dynasty waned, the most powerful men of the
kingdom — dukes, counts, and important bishops — came together to elect as king
Hugh Capet (r. 987–996), a lord of great prestige yet relatively little power. His choice
marked the end of Carolingian rule and the beginning of the Capetian dynasty, which
would hand down the royal title from father to son until the fourteenth century.
[ 750–1050
]
In the eleventh century, territorial lordships 0 150 300 miles
limited the reach of the Capetian kings. The king’s 0 150 300 kilometers
scattered but substantial estates lay in the north of
France, in the region around Paris — the Île-de-
France (“island of France”). His castles and his vas- Montmorency
Paris
sals were there. Independent castellans, however, Orléans
L oi
controlled areas nearby. In the sense that he was a Tours
re
. Cluny
R
neighbor of castellans and not much more power-
ful militarily than they, the king of the Franks — Bordeaux
who would only later take the territorial title of

king of France — was just another local leader. Yet
the Capetian kings had considerable prestige. They
were anointed with holy oil, and they represented
Île-de-France
the idea of unity inherited from Charlemagne. Most
of the counts, at least in the north of France, became
their vassals. But because they were powerful, these The Kingdom of the Franks
under Hugh Capet, 987–996
vassals’ obligations to the king were minimal.
Emperors and Kings in Central and Eastern Europe

In contrast to the development of territorial lordships in France, Germany’s fragmen-
tation had hardly begun before it was reversed. In the late Carolingian period, five
large duchies (regions dominated by dukes) emerged in Germany. When the last Caro-
lingian king in Germany died, in 911, the dukes elected one of themselves as king.
Then, as the Magyar invasions increased, the dukes gave the royal title to the duke
of Saxony, Henry I (r. 919–936), who proceeded to set up fortifications and reorga-
nize his army, crowning his efforts with a major defeat of a Magyar army in 933.
Otto I (r. 936–973), the son of Henry I, was an even greater military hero. In 951,
he marched into Italy and took the Lombard crown. His defeat of the Magyar forces
in 955 at Lechfeld gave him prestige and helped solidify his dynasty. Against the Slavs,
with whom the Germans shared a border, Otto created marches (border regions
specifically set up for defense) from which he could make expeditions and stave off
counterattacks. After the pope crowned him emperor in 962, Otto claimed the Middle
Kingdom carved out by the Treaty of Verdun and cast himself as the agent of Roman
imperial renewal. His kingdom was called the Empire, as if it were the old Roman
Empire revived. Some historians call it the Holy Roman Empire to distinguish it
from the Roman Empire, but Otto and his successors made no such distinction; they
considered it a continuation. In this book, it will be called the Empire.
Otto’s victories brought tribute and plunder, ensuring him a following but also
raising the German nobles’ expectations for enrichment. The Ottonian kings —
including Otto I and his successors Otto II (r. 973–983) and Otto III (r. 983–1002) —
were not always able or willing to provide the gifts and inheritances their family
members and followers expected. They did not divide their kingdom among their
[750–1050
sons; instead, like castellans in France, they created a patrilineal pattern of inheri-
tance. As a consequence, younger sons and other potential heirs felt cheated, and
disgruntled royal kin led revolt after revolt against the Ottonian kings.
Relations between the Ottonians and the German clergy were more harmonious.
Otto I appointed bishops, gave them extensive lands, and subjected the local peas-
antry to their overlordship. Like Charlemagne, Otto believed that the well-being of
the church in his kingdom depended on him. The Ottonians gave bishops the right
to collect revenues and call men to arms. Answering to the king and furnishing him
with troops, the bishops became royal officials, while also carrying out their religious
duties. German kings claimed the right to select bishops, even the pope at Rome,
and to “invest” them (install them in their office) by participating in the ceremony
that made them bishops.
Like all strong rulers of the day, the Ottonians presided over a renaissance of
learning. They brought learned churchmen to court to write and teach. To an extent
unprecedented elsewhere, noblewomen in Germany also acquired an education and
participated in the intellectual revival. Living at home with their kinfolk and servants
Otto III Receiving Gifts

These triumphal images are in a book of Gospels made for Otto III (r. 983–1002). The crowned
women on the left are personifications of the four parts of Otto’s empire: Sclavinia (the Slavic
lands), Germania (Germany), Gallia (Gaul), and Roma (Rome). Each offers a gift in tribute and
homage to the emperor, who sits on a throne holding the symbols of his power (orb and scep-
ter) and flanked by representatives of the church (on his right) and of the army (on his left).
Why do you suppose the artist separated the image of the emperor from that of the women?
What does the body language of the women indicate about the relations Otto wanted to portray
between himself and the parts of his empire? Can you relate this manuscript, which was made
in 997–1000, to Otto’s conquest over the Slavs in 997? (bpk, Berlin / Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Munich, Germany / photo: Lutz Braun / Art Resource, NY.)
[ 750–1050
]
or in convents that provided them with comfortable private apartments, noblewomen
wrote books and supported other artists and scholars.
Despite their military and political strength, the kings of Germany faced resis-
tance from dukes and other powerful princes, who hoped to become regional rulers
themselves. The Salians, the dynasty that succeeded the Ottonians, tried to balance
the power among the German dukes but could not meld them into a corps of vassals
the way the Capetian kings tamed their counts. In Germany, vassalage was consid-
ered beneath the dignity of free men. Instead of relying on vassals, the Salian kings
and their bishops used ministerials (specially designated men who were legally serfs)
to collect taxes, administer justice, and fight on horseback. Ministerials retained their
servile status even though they often rose to wealth and high position. Under the Salian
kings, ministerials became the mainstay of the royal army and administration.
Hand in hand with the popes, German kings created new, Catholic polities along
their eastern frontier. The Czechs, who lived in the region of Bohemia, converted
under the rule of Václav (r. 920–929), who thereby gained recognition in Germany
as the duke of Bohemia. He and his successors did not become kings, remaining
politically within the German sphere. Václav’s murder by his younger brother made
him a martyr and the patron saint of Bohemia, a symbol around which later move-
ments for independence rallied.
The Poles gained a greater measure of independence than the Czechs. In 966,
Mieszko I (r. 963–992), the leader of the Slavic tribe known as the Polanians, accepted
baptism to forestall the attack that the Germans were already mounting against
pagan Slavic peoples along the Baltic coast and east of the Elbe River. Busily engaged
in bringing the other Slavic tribes of Poland under his control, Mieszko adroitly
shifted his alliances with various German princes to suit his needs. In 991, he placed
his realm under the protection of the pope, establishing a tradition of Polish loyalty
to the Roman church. Mieszko’s son Boleslaw the Brave (r. 992–1025) greatly extended
Poland’s boundaries, at one time or another holding sway from the Bohemian border
to Kiev. In 1000, he gained a royal crown with papal blessing.
Hungary’s case was similar to that of Poland. As we have seen, the Magyars settled
in the region known today as Hungary. Under Stephen I (r. 997–1038), they accepted
Roman Christianity. According to legend, the crown placed on Stephen’s head at his
coronation (in late 1000 or early 1001) was sent to him by the pope. Stephen was
canonized in 1083, and to this day the crown of St. Stephen remains the most hal-
lowed symbol of Hungarian nationhood.
Symbols of rulership such as crowns, consecrated by Christian priests and accorded
a prestige almost akin to saints’ relics, were
among the most vital sources of royal power
REVIEW QUESTION After the dissolution of in central Europe. The economic basis for
the Carolingian Empire, what political systems
the power of central European rulers was
developed in western, northern, eastern, and
central Europe, and how did these systems largely agricultural. As happened elsewhere,
differ from one another? here, too, centralized rule gradually gave
way to regional rulers.
[750–1050
] Conclusion 309
Conclusion
In 800, the three heirs of the Roman Empire all appeared to be organized like their
parent: centralized, monarchical, imperial. Byzantine emperors commissioning learned
books, Abbasid caliphs holding court in their new resplendent palace at Baghdad,
and Carolingian emperors issuing their directives for reform all mimicked the Roman
emperors. Yet leaders in the three realms confronted tensions and regional pressures
that tended to put political power into the hands of local lords. Byzantium felt this
fragmentation least, yet even there the emergence of a new elite, the dynatoi, weak-
ened the emperor’s control over the countryside. In the Islamic world, quarrels
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EGYPT
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the Mediterranean, c. 1050

The clear borders and distinct colors of the “states” on this map distort an essential truth:
none of the areas shown had centralized governments that controlled whole territories, as
in modern states. Instead, there were numerous regional rulers within each, and there were
often competing claims of jurisdiction and conflicting allegiances. Consider Sicily: it was con-
quered by Muslims in the tenth century, but by 1060 it had been taken over by the Normans —
adventurers from Normandy (in France). Its predominantly Greek-speaking population, however,
was Greek Orthodox in religion, a legacy of its Byzantine past.
[ 750–1050
]
between Abbasid heirs, army disloyalty, economic weakness, and the ambitions of pow-
erful local rulers decisively weakened the caliphate and opened the way to separate
successor states. In Europe, powerful independent landowners strove with greater or
lesser success (depending on the region) to establish themselves as effective rulers.
Local conditions determined political and economic organizations. Between 900
and 1000, for example, French society was transformed by the rise of castellans, the
formation of patrilineal families, and the spread of ties of vassalage. These factors
figured less prominently in Germany, where a central monarchy remained, but-
tressed by churchmen, ministerials, and conquests to the east.
After 1050, however, the German king would lose his supreme position as a storm
of church reform whirled around him. The economy changed, becoming more com-
mercial and urban, and the papacy asserted itself with new force in the life of Europe.
Chapter 9 Review
dynatoi (p. 283) Treaty of Verdun (p. 295) Peace of God (p. 303)
Basil II (p. 284) fiefs (p. 299) Alfred the Great (p. 304)
Abbasids (p. 285) feudalism (p. 300) Capetian dynasty (p. 305)
Fatimids (p. 287) castellan (p. 302) Ottonian kings (p. 306)
Carolingian (p. 290) primogeniture (p. 303)
Charlemagne (p. 291) patrilineal (p. 303)
Review Questions
1. In what ways did the Byzantine emperor expand his power, and in what ways was that power
checked?
2. What forces contributed to the fragmentation of the Islamic world in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, and what forces held it together?
3. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Carolingian institutions of government, warfare,
and defense?
4. After the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, what political systems developed in western,
northern, eastern, and central Europe, and how did these systems differ from one another?
Making Connections
1. How were the Byzantine, Islamic, and European economies similar? How did they differ?
How did these economies interact?
2. How did the powers and ambitions of castellans compare with those of the dynatoi of
Byzantium and of Muslim provincial rulers?
3. Compare the effects of the barbarian invasions into the Roman Empire with the effects of
the Viking, Muslim, and Magyar invasions into Carolingian Europe.
[750–1050
Important Events
750–c. 950 The Abbasid caliphate

751 Pippin III becomes king of the Franks, establishing Carolingian rule
768–814 Charlemagne rules as king of the Franks
786–809 Caliphate of Harun al-Rashid
800 Charlemagne crowned emperor at Rome
843 Treaty of Verdun
871–899 Reign of King Alfred of England
929–1031 Caliphate of Córdoba
955 Battle of Lechfeld
962 King Otto I (r. 936–973) of Germany crowned emperor
987–996 Reign of King Hugh Capet of France
c. 990 Peace of God movement begins
1000 or 1001 Stephen I (r. 997–1038) crowned king of Hungary
1001–1018 Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria
Consider two events: Peace of God movement begins (c. 990) and Stephen I (r. 997–
1038) crowned King of Hungary (1000 or 1001). How do these events illustrate Chris-
tianity’s ability to unify and mobilize people in this era?
A few books, like Brubaker and Smith’s, try to bridge the divides between the Byzantine, Islamic,
and western European worlds. Nevertheless, for the most part these regions are treated sepa-
rately. For Byzantium, Whittow is essential. For insight into the Islamic world, see especially
Cooperson. For the Carolingian world, De Jong provides a new approach.
Becher, Matthias. Charlemagne. 2003.
Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary,
c. 1000–c. 1300. 2001.
Brubaker, Leslie, and Julia M. H. Smith. Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West,
300–900. 2004.
*Chronicle of Zuqnin, Parts III and IV, A.D. 488–775. Trans. Amir Harrak. 1999.
Cooperson, Michael. Al Ma’mun. 2005.
De Jong, Mayke. The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious,
814–840. 2009.
*Dutton, Paul Edward, ed. Carolingian Civilization: A Reader. 2004.
* ———, ed. and trans. Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard. 1998.
Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200. 1996.
Garver, Valerie L. Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. 2009.
Jones, Anna Trumbore. Noble Lord, Good Shepherd: Episcopal Power and Piety in Aquitaine,
877–1050. 2009.
Kennedy, Hugh. The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State. 2001.
*Psellus, Michael. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. 1966.
Whittow, Mark. The Making of Byzantium, 600–1025. 1996.
*Primary source.
Commercial Quickening
10
and Religious Reform
1050–1150
A
bit after the year 1100, sculptors were hired to decorate the inner walls
of the cloister porch at Moissac, a monastery in southern France. For one
wall they depicted the New Testament story of the poor man Lazarus and
the rich man Dives. Their fates could not have been more different. While the soul
of Lazarus was carried to heaven by an angel, the rich man was shown plunging
down to hell.
The sculptor’s work reflected a widespread
Dives and Lazarus change in attitude toward money. In the Car-
At the time this sculpted depiction olingian and post-Carolingian period (up to,
of Dives and Lazarus was made, the say, 1050), people generally considered wealth
nearby city of Toulouse was expanding a very good thing. Rich kings were praised for
commercially. The parable of the rich
their generosity; expensively produced man-
man and the poor man (Luke 16:19-
31) spoke to the concerns of a money uscripts, illuminated with gold leaf and pre-
economy. At the top right, Dives, the cious colors, were highly prized; and splendid
rich man, feasts. To his left, the poor churches like Charlemagne’s chapel at Aachen
man, Lazarus, lies dying. Above Laza- were widely admired. Such views changed
rus is an angel who carries his soul over the course of the eleventh century.
to heaven. Further to the left, Laza-
rus’s soul lies in the lap of Abraham.
The most striking feature of the period
This is an image of heavenly bliss. from 1050 to 1150 was the rise of a money
By contrast, under the left-hand arch economy in western Europe. Agricultural pro-
below Abraham, devils are welcoming duction swelled, fueling the growth of trade
the soul of Dives into Hell. The monks and the expansion of cities. A new class of
of Moissac, like the townspeople of
well-heeled merchants, bankers, and entrepre-
Toulouse, by 1100 were attuned to
moneymaking and well aware of both neurs emerged. These developments were met
its pleasures and dangers. (South Por- with a wide variety of responses. Some people
tal, Church of St. Pierre, Moissac, France / fled the cities and their new wealth altogether,
Bridgeman Images.)
seeking isolation and poverty. Others, even the
participants in the new economy, condemned
it and emphasized its corrupting influence. Many people, however, embraced the new
money economy.
313
314 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
[ 1050–1150
]
The development of a profit-based economy quickly transformed the landscape
and lifestyles of western Europe. Many villages and fortifications became cities where
traders, merchants, and artisans conducted business. In some places, town dwellers
began to determine their own laws and administer their own justice. Although most
people still lived in sparsely populated rural areas, the new cash economy touched
their lives in many ways. Economic concerns helped drive changes within the church,
where a movement for reform gathered steam and exploded in three directions: the
Investiture Conflict, new monastic orders
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the commercial
emphasizing poverty, and the crusades.
revolution affect religion and politics? Money allowed popes, kings, and princes
to redefine the nature of their power.
The Commercial Revolution

A growing population, cities, long-distance trade networks, local markets, and new
business arrangements meshed to create a profit-based economy. With improvements
in agriculture and more land in cultivation, the great estates of the eleventh century
produced surpluses that helped feed — and therefore make possible — a new urban
population.
Commerce was not new to the history of western Europe, but the commercial
revolution of the Middle Ages spawned the institutions that would be the direct
ancestors of modern businesses: widespread use of money, corporations, banks,
accounting systems, and above all urban centers that thrived on economic vitality.
Whereas ancient cities had primarily religious, social, and political functions, medi-
eval cities were centers of production and economic activity. Wealth meant power:
it allowed city dwellers to become self-governing.
Fairs, Towns, and Cities

The commercial revolution took place in three venues: markets, fairs, and permanent
centers. In some places, markets met weekly to sell local surplus goods. In others,
fairs — which lasted anywhere from several days to a few months — took place once
a year and drew traders from longer distances. Some fairs specialized in particular
goods: at Saint-Denis, a monastery near Paris that had had a fair since at least the
seventh century, the star attraction was wine. Most fairs offered a wide variety of
products: at the Champagne fairs in France, there were woolen fabrics from Flanders;
silks from Lucca, Italy; leather goods from Spain; and furs from Germany. Bankers
attended as well, exchanging coins from one currency into another — and charging
for their services. Local inhabitants did not have to pay taxes or tolls, but traders from
the outside — protected by guarantees of safe conduct — were charged stall fees as
well as entry and exit fees. Local landlords reaped great profits, and as the fairs came
under royal control, kings did so as well.
Permanent commercial centers (cities and towns) developed around castles
and monasteries and within the walls of ancient Roman towns. Great lords in the
[1050–1150
] The Commercial Revolution 315
countryside — and this included monasteries — were eager to take advantage of the
profits that their estates generated. In the late tenth century, they reorganized their
lands for greater productivity, encouraged their peasants to cultivate new land, and
converted services and dues to money payments. With ready cash, they not only
fostered the development of local markets and yearly fairs, where they could sell their
surpluses and buy luxury goods, but also encouraged traders and craftspeople to
settle down near them.
Some markets formed just outside the walls of older cities; these gradually
merged into new and enlarged urban communities as towns built new walls around
them to protect their inhabitants. Along the Rhine River and in other river valleys,
cities sprang up to service the merchants who traversed the route between Italy and
the north. Many long-distance traders were Italians and Jews. They supplied the fine
wines, spices, and fabrics beloved by lords and ladies, their families, and their vassals.
Italians took up long-distance trade because of Italy’s proximity to Byzantine and
Islamic ports, their opportunities for plunder and trade on the high seas, and their
never entirely extinguished urban traditions.
The Jews of Mediterranean regions — especially Italy and Spain — had been
involved in commerce since Roman times. That trade had centered on the Mediter-
ranean; now it extended to the north as well. For Jews living in the port cities of the
old Roman Empire, little had changed. But for many Jews in northern Europe, the
story was different. They had settled on the land alongside other peasants, and dur-
ing the Carolingian period their properties bordered those of their Christian neigh-
bors. As political power fragmented over the course of the tenth century and the
countryside was reorganized under local lords, many Jews were driven off the land.
They found refuge in the new towns and cities. Some became scholars, doctors, and
judges within their communities; many became small-time pawnbrokers; and still
others became moneylenders and financiers.
Synagogue Inscription from the City of Worms

This inscription is the oldest artifact we have from a synagogue in Europe. It says that Jacob
ben David and his wife, Rahel, used their fortune to construct and furnish the synagogue, which
was completed in 1034. They express the belief that this act of piety is as pleasing to God as
having children. (Jüdisches Museum im Raschihaus, Worms, Germany.)
[ 1050–1150
]
By the eleventh century, most Jews lived in cities but were not citizens. They
were generally serfs of the king or, in the Rhineland, under the safeguard of the local
bishop. This status was ambiguous: the Jews were “protected” but also exploited since
their protectors constantly demanded steep taxes. Regular town trade groups, craft
organizations, and town governments often rested on a conception of the common
good sealed by an oath among Christians — and thus, by definition, excluded Jews.
Nevertheless, Jews had their own institutions, centered on the synagogue, their
place of worship. Although they often lived in a “Jewish quarter,” they were not forc-
ibly segregated from other townspeople. In many cities they lived near Christians,
purchased products from Christian craftspeople, and hired Christians as servants. In
turn, Christians purchased luxury goods from Jewish long-distance traders and often
borrowed money from Jewish lenders. The fact that Jews and Christians could live
side by side had less to do with tolerance than with lack of planning. Most towns in
medieval Europe grew haphazardly. Typically, towns had a center, where the church
and town government had their headquarters, and around this were the shops of
tradespeople and craftspeople, generally grouped by specialty: butchers, for example,
lived and worked on the Street of the Butchers.
The look and feel of such developing cities varied enormously, but nearly all
included a marketplace, a castle, and several churches. The streets — made of packed
clay or gravel — were often narrow, dirty, dark, and winding. Most people had to adapt
to increasingly crowded conditions. Even so, most city dwellers tended a garden and
perhaps livestock as well, living largely off the food they raised themselves.
Cities were part of a building
boom. Towns put up specialized
buildings for trade and for city gov-
ernment, charitable houses for the
The Building Boom

One example of the new building boom
fueled by the wealth of the commercial
revolution is the grand cathedral com-
plex at Parma. Begun in the second half
of the twelfth century, it consisted not
only of the cathedral (the Duomo) but
also a bishop’s palace, baptistery, and
freestanding bell tower. Most of the inte-
rior of the cathedral is today decorated
with paintings from a later period, but
we still have the original capitals (tops)
of the pillars, which were carved by
Lombard craftsmen. Here, on one of
the capitals, a winged angel drives
Adam and Eve out of the Garden of
Eden. (Galleria Nazionale, Parma, Italy / Scala /
Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita culturali / Art
Resource, NY.)
[1050–1150
sick and indigent, city halls, and warehouses. They To Milan
also expanded their walls. Workers at Piacenza, for

example, first pulled down the late antique wall and
Fod
replaced it with a more extensive one in 872. Then,
esta
Cana
in 1169, Piacenzans took down the ninth-century
l
wall and replaced it with one that was still more
expansive.
Before the eleventh century, Europeans had
depended on boats and waterways for bulky long-
distance transport. In the twelfth century, carts could
haul items overland because new roads through the
countryside linked the urban markets and strength- To Genoa
ened governments could protect overland travelers. Textile Late antique
Still, although commercial centers developed through- makers wall
(hypothetical)
Smiths
out western Europe, they grew fastest and most Leather
Wall of 872
densely in regions along key waterways: the Mediter- workers Wall of 1169
Fishermen, Wall of 1265
ranean coasts of Italy, France, and Spain; northern kiln workers,
shipwrights Church
Italy along the Po River; the Rhône-Saône-Meuse and/or
monastery
river system; the Rhineland; the English Channel;
the shores of the Baltic Sea. During the eleventh cen-
The Walls of Piacenza
tury, these waterways became part of a single inter-
dependent economy.
What did townspeople look like? We can get an idea from a twelfth-century
baptismal font cast in Liège (see below). It shows Jesus speaking to the soldiers and
publicans (tax collectors): the soldier is dressed as a medieval knight, while the
publicans wear the caps and clothes of well-to-do city dwellers.
Baptismal Font at Liège,

1107–1118
This detail from a large bronze bap-
tismal font cast at Liège (a city today
in Belgium) illustrated the words of
Luke 3:12–14: “Tax collectors also
came to be baptized, and said to
[Jesus], ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’
And he said to them, ‘Collect no
more than is appointed you.’ Sol-
diers also asked him, ‘And we, what
shall we do?’ And he said to them,
‘Rob no one . . . and be content with
your wages.’ ” In this representation,
the tax collectors are dressed like
twelfth-century city dwellers, while a
soldier is dressed like a knight of the
period. (Bildarchiv Monheim / akg-images.)
[ 1050–1150
]
Organizing Crafts and Commerce
In the Middle Ages, most manufactured goods were produced by hand or with primi-
tive machines and tools. Though not mechanized, most medieval industries, crafts,
and trades were highly organized. The fundamental unit of organization was the
guild. Originally guilds were religious and charitable associations of people in the
same line of business. In Ferrara, Italy, for example, the shoemakers’ guild started as
a prayer confraternity, an association whose members gathered and prayed for one
another. But soon guilds became professional corporations defined by statutes and
rules. They charged dues, negotiated with lords and town governments, set the stan-
dards of their trade, and controlled their membership.
The manufacture of finished products often required the cooperation of sev-
eral guilds. The production of wool cloth, for example, involved numerous guilds —
shearers, weavers, fullers (who thickened the cloth), dyers — generally working under
the supervision of the merchant guild that imported the raw wool. Within each guild
was a hierarchy, starting at the bottom with the apprentices, who were learning the
trade, moving up to the journeymen and journeywomen (that is, male or female
day laborers — the word comes from the Middle English for “a day’s work”), ending
with the masters at the top.
It was hard to become a master. Young people might spend many years as an
apprentice and then as a day laborer hired by masters who needed extra help. But
most journeymen and journeywomen aspired to be masters because then they would
be able to draw up regulations for the guild and serve as its chief overseers, inspec-
tors, and treasurers. Most masters eventually had a chance to serve as guild officers.
Occasionally they were elected, but more often they were appointed by town govern-
ments or local rulers.
In addition to guilds, medieval entrepreneurs created new kinds of business
arrangements through partnerships, contracts, and large-scale productive enterprises —
the ancestors of modern capitalism. Although they took many forms, all of these
business agreements had the common purpose of bringing people together to pool
their resources and finance larger initiatives. Short-lived partnerships were set up for
the term of one sea voyage; longer-term partnerships were created for land trade. In
northern and central Italy, for example, long-term ventures took the form of a family
corporation formed by extended families. Everyone who contributed to this corpora-
tion bore joint and unlimited liability for all losses and debts. This provision enhanced
family solidarity because each member was responsible for the debts of all the others,
but it also risked bankrupting everyone in the family.
Pooling resources meant that money had to be available. Small silver coins were
excellent for small-scale transactions; larger ones were also minted. The widespread
use of coins meant that entrepreneurs got rich from mines and minters from stamp-
ing the coins. Where rulers were strong, they insisted on controlling or at least
authorizing both mines and mints. Only in the thirteenth century did gold coinage
become important in the West.
[1050–1150
But commerce needed credit as well as coins. In the Middle Ages, as now, entre-
preneurs had to take out loans to finance their projects. Creditors were induced to
give out loans in return for interest. But the church banned usury — lending money
at interest. This led to various ingenious ways to get around the prohibition. For
example, often contracts specified a “penalty for late payment” rather than an interest
charge. The new willingness to finance business enterprises with loans signaled a
more positive attitude toward credit, risk, and profit.
Contracts and partnerships made large-scale productive enterprises possible. In
fact, light industry began in the eleventh century. One of the earliest products to
benefit from new industrial technologies was cloth. Water mills powered machines
such as presses to extract oil from fibers, and flails to clean and thicken cloth.
Machines also exploited raw materials more efficiently: new deep-mining technol-
ogy provided Europeans with hitherto untapped sources of metals. Simultaneously,
forging techniques improved, and for the first time since antiquity, iron was regu-
larly used for agricultural tools and plows. Iron tools — which were more durable
than wood — made farming more productive, which in turn fed the commercial
revolution.
Communes: Self-Government for the Towns

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, townspeople did not fit into the old catego-
ries of medieval types: those who prayed, those who fought, or those who labored
on the land. Just knowing they were different from those groups gave townspeople
a sense of solidarity. But practical reasons also contributed to their feeling of com-
mon purpose: they lived in close quarters, and they shared a mutual interest in laws
to facilitate commerce, freedom from servile dues and duties, reliable coinage, and
independence to buy and sell as the market dictated. Already in the early twelfth
century, the king of England granted to the citizens of Newcastle-upon-Tyne the
privilege that any unfree peasant who lived there unclaimed by his lord for a year
and a day would thereafter be a free person. This privilege became general. To towns-
people, freedom meant having their own officials and law courts. They petitioned
the political powers that ruled them — bishops, kings, counts, castellans — for the
right to govern themselves. Often they had to fight for this freedom and, if success-
ful, paid a hefty sum for it. A type of town institution of self-government arose called
a commune; citizens swore allegiance to the commune, forming a legal corporate
body.
Communes were especially common in northern and central Italy, France, and
Flanders. Even before the commercial revolution, Italian cities had become centers
of regional political power; the commercial revolution swelled them with trades-
people, whose interest in self-government was often fueled by religious as well as
economic concerns. At Milan in the second half of the eleventh century, popular
discontent with the archbishop, who effectively ruled the city, led to numerous armed
clashes. In 1097, the Milanese succeeded in transferring political power from the
[ 1050–1150
]
archbishop and his clergy to a government of leading men of the city, who called
themselves consuls, recalling the ancient Roman Republic. The consuls’ rule extended
beyond the town walls into the contado, the outlying countryside.
Outside Italy, movements for city independence took place within the frame-
work of larger kingdoms or principalities. Such movements were sometimes vio-
lent, as at Milan, but at other times peaceful. For example, William Clito, who
claimed the county of Flanders (today in Belgium), willingly granted the citizens of
St. Omer the privileges they asked for in 1127; he recognized them as legally free,
gave them the right to mint coins, allowed them their own laws and courts, and lifted
certain tolls and taxes. In return, the citizens supported his claims to rule Flanders.
Whether violently or peacefully, the men and women of many towns and cities
gained a measure of self-rule.
The Commercial Revolution in the Countryside

The countryside, too, was caught in the web of trade. By 1150, rural life in many
regions was organized for the marketplace. Great lords hired trained, literate agents
to administer their estates, calculate profits and losses, and make marketing decisions.
Aristocrats needed money not only because they relished luxuries but also because
their honor and authority continued to depend on their personal generosity, patron-
age, and displays of wealth. In the twelfth century, when some townsmen could boast
fortunes that rivaled the riches of the landed aristocracy, the economic pressures
on the nobles increased as their extravagance exceeded their income. Many went
into debt.
The lord’s need for money integrated peasants, too, into the developing com-
mercial economy. The increase in population and the resultant greater demand for
food required bringing more land under cultivation. Sometimes lords sponsored
land clearance. At other times peasants acted on their own to clear land and relieve
the pressure of overpopulation, as when the small freeholders in England’s Fenland
region cooperated to build banks and dikes to reclaim the land that led out to the
North Sea. Villages were founded on the drained land, and villagers shared respon-
sibility for repairing and maintaining the dikes even as each peasant family farmed
its new holding individually.
On old estates the rise in population strained to the breaking point the Caro-
lingian period’s manse organization, in which each household had been settled on
the land that supported it. Now, in the twelfth century, twenty peasant families might
live on what had been, in the tenth century, the manse of one family. With the manse
supporting so many more people, labor services and dues had to be recalculated,
and peasants and their lords often turned services and dues into money rents, pay-
able once a year.
The commercial revolution and the resulting money economy brought both ben-
efits and burdens to peasants. They gained from rising prices, which made their fixed
rents less onerous. They had access to markets where they could sell their surplus
[
1050–1150
] Church Reform 321
and buy what they lacked. Increases in land under cultivation and the use of iron
tools meant greater productivity. Peasants also gained increased personal freedom
as they shook off direct control by lords. Nevertheless, these advantages were par-
tially canceled out by their cash obligations. Peasants touched by the commercial
revolution ate better than their forebears
had eaten, but they also had to spend more REVIEW QUESTION What new institutions
money. resulted from the commercial revolution?
Church Reform
The commercial revolution affected the church no less than it affected other institu-
tions of the time. Typically, kings or powerful local lords appointed bishops, who
then ruled over the city. This transaction involved gifts: churchmen gave gifts and
money to secular leaders in return for their offices. Soon the same sorts of people
who appreciated the fates of Dives and Lazarus were condemning such transactions.
The impulse to free the church from “the world” — from rulers, wealth, sex, money,
and power — was as old as the origins of monasticism; but, beginning in the tenth
century and increasing to fever pitch in the eleventh, reformers demanded that the
church as a whole remodel itself and become free of secular entanglements.
This freedom was, from the start, as much a matter of power as of religion. Most
people had long believed that their ruler — whether king, duke, count, or castellan —
reigned by the grace of God and had the right to control the churches in his territory.
But by the second half of the eleventh century, more and more people saw a great
deal wrong with secular power over the church. They looked to the papacy to lead
the movement of church reform. The matter came to a head during the so-called
Investiture Conflict, when Pope Gregory VII clashed with Emperor Henry IV (whose
empire embraced both Germany and Italy). The Investiture Conflict ushered in a
major civil war in Germany and a great upheaval in the distribution of power across
western Europe. By the early 1100s, a reformed church — with the pope at its head —
was penetrating into areas of life never before touched by churchmen. Church reform
began as a way to free the church from the world, but in the end the church was
thoroughly involved in the new world it had helped create.
Beginnings of Reform
The project of freeing the church from the world began in the tenth century with
no particular plan and only a vague idea of what it might mean. The Benedictine
monastery of Cluny (today in France) may serve to represent the early phases of the
reform. The duke and duchess of Aquitaine founded Cluny in 910 and endowed it
with property. Then they did something new: instead of retaining control over the
monastery, like most other monastic founders, they gave it and its worldly posses-
sions to Saints Peter and Paul. In this way, they put control of the monastery into
the hands of heaven’s two most powerful saints. They designated the pope, as the
[ 1050–1150
]
successor of St. Peter, to be the monastery’s worldly protector if anyone should bother
or threaten it.
The whole notion of “freedom” at this point was vague. But Cluny’s prestige was
great because of its status as St. Peter’s property and the elaborate round of prayers
that the monks carried out there with scrupulous devotion. The Cluniac monks
fulfilled the role of “those who pray” in a way that dazzled their contemporaries.
Through their prayers, they seemed to guarantee the salvation of all Christians. Rul-
ers, bishops, rich landowners, and even serfs (if they could) donated land to Cluny,
joining their lands to the land of St. Peter and the fate of their souls to Cluny’s
efficacious prayers. Powerful men and women called on the Cluniac monks to reform
other monasteries along the Cluniac model.
The abbots of Cluny came to see themselves as reformers of the world as well.
They advocated clerical celibacy and argued against the prevailing norm, in which
parish priests and even some bishops were married. They thought that the laity (all
Christians who were not part of the clergy) could be reformed and become more
virtuous. In particular, they sought to curb the oppression of the poor by the rich
and powerful. In the eleventh century, the Cluniacs began to link their program of
internal monastic and external worldly reform to the papacy. When bishops and
laypeople encroached on their lands, they appealed to the popes for help. The causes
that the Cluniacs championed were soon taken up by a small group of clerics and
monks in the Empire, the political entity created by the Ottonians. They buttressed
their arguments with new interpretations of canon law — the laws decreed over the
centuries at church councils and by bishops and popes. They concentrated on two
breaches of those laws: clerical marriage and simony (buying church offices).* Later
they added the condemnation of lay investiture — the installation of clerics into their
offices by lay rulers. In the investiture ritual, the emperor or his representative sym-
bolically gave the church and the land that went with it to the priest or bishop or
archbishop chosen for the job.
At first the emperors supported the reformers. Many of the men who promoted
the reform lived in the highly commercialized regions of the empire — Italy and the
regions along the northern half of the Rhine River. Familiar with the impersonal
practices of a profit economy, they regarded the gifts that churchmen usually gave
in return for their offices as no more than crass purchases.
Emperor Henry III (r. 1039–1056) took seriously his position as the anointed of
God. He felt responsible for the well-being of the church in his empire. He denounced
simony and refused to accept money or gifts when he appointed bishops to their
posts. When in 1046 three men, each representing a different faction of the Roman
aristocracy, claimed to be pope, Henry, as ruler of Rome, traveled to Italy to settle
the matter. There Henry presided over the Synod of Sutri (1046), which deposed all
three popes and elected another. In 1049, Henry appointed a bishop from the Rhine-
*The word simony comes from the name Simon Magus, the magician in the New Testament who
wanted to buy the gifts of the Holy Spirit from St. Peter.
[1050–1150
] Church Reform 323
Investiture of a Bishop
This plaque, made of champlevé
enamel around 1180, shows a seated
ruler on the viewer’s right. He holds
an orb of the world in his left hand,
while with his right he gives the monk
on the left a cross-standard. The
inscription at the top says “E-P FIT,”
meaning “He becomes bishop.” What
is depicted here, then, is the investi-
ture of a bishop by a king. In the
eleventh century, this practice came
under heavy criticism by church
reformers. By the time this plaque
was made, the reformers had made
their point. The artist put the focus on
the monk who was about to become
bishop: he wears a halo and looms
in size over the king. In addition, the
inscription makes him — rather than
the king — the subject of the story.
(Museum for the Arts and Industry, Hamburg,
Germany / Interfoto / akg-images.)
land to the papacy as Leo IX (r. 1049–1054). But this appointment did not work out
as Henry had expected.
Leo set out to reform the church under his own, not the emperor’s, control. Under
his rule, the pope’s role expanded. He traveled to France and Germany, holding
councils to condemn bishops guilty of simony. He sponsored the creation of a canon
law textbook — Collection in 74 Titles — that emphasized the pope’s power. He brought
to the papal court the most zealous reformers of his day, including Humbert of Silva
Candida and Hildebrand (later Pope Gregory VII).
In 1054, his last year as pope, Leo sent Humbert to Constantinople on a diplomatic
mission to argue against the patriarch of Constantinople on behalf of the new, lofty
claims of the pope. When the patriarch treated him with contempt, Humbert became
furious and excommunicated him. In retaliation, the patriarch excommunicated Hum-
bert and his party, threatening them with eternal damnation. Clashes between the two
churches had occurred before and had been patched up, but this one, the schism
between the eastern and western churches (1054), proved insurmountable.* Thereafter,
the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches were largely separate.
*The mutual excommunications led to a permanent breach between the churches that largely remained
in effect until 1965, when Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I made a joint declaration regret-
ting “the offensive words” and sentences of excommunication the two sides had exchanged more than
nine hundred years before, deploring “the effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion,” and express-
ing the hope that in time the “differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox
Church” would be overcome.
[ 1050–1150
]
Leo also confronted a new power to his south. North Sea 0 150 300 miles
Elb
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this great power, tried to curtail it: in 1053, he sent D anu
a military force to Apulia, but it was soundly FRANCE

Milan
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their policy. In 1058, the reigning pope “invested” — Ad
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the still-unconquered Sicily to Roger’s brother, Capua
even though none of this was the pope’s to give. The Empire
Under Norman
The papacy was particularly keen to see the Nor- rule Sicily
mans gain Sicily. Once part of the Byzantine

Empire, the island had been taken by Muslims in The World of the Investiture
the tenth century; now the pope hoped to bring it Conflict, c. 1070–1122
under Catholic control. Thus, the pope’s desires to
convert Sicily meshed nicely with the territorial ambitions of Roger and his brother.
The agreement of 1058 included a promise that all of the churches of southern Italy
and Sicily would be placed under papal jurisdiction. No wonder that when the Inves-
titure Conflict broke out, the Normans played an important role as a military arm
of the papacy.
The popes were in fact becoming more and more involved in military enter-
prises. They participated in wars of expansion in Spain, for example. There, political
fragmentation into small and weak taifas (see page 288) made al-Andalus fair game
for the Christians to the north. Slowly the idea of the reconquista, the Christian
“reconquest” of Spain from the Muslims, took shape, fed by religious fervor as well
as by greed for land and power. In 1063, just before a major battle, the pope issued
an incentive to all who would fight — an indulgence that lifted the knights’ obligation
to do penance, although it did not go so far as to forgive all sins.
The Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Conflict, 1075–1122

Historians associate the papal reform movement above all with Gregory VII (r. 1073–
1085) and therefore often call it the Gregorian reform. Beginning as a lowly Roman
cleric named Hildebrand, with the job of administering the papal estates, Greg-
ory rose slowly through the hierarchy. A passionate advocate of papal primacy (the
theory that the pope was the head of the church), Gregory was not afraid to clash
head-on with Henry IV (r. 1056–1106), ruler of Germany and much of Italy, over
leadership of the church. As his views crystallized, Gregory came to see an anointed
ruler as just another layman who had no right to meddle in church affairs. At the
time, this was an astonishing position, given the traditional religious and spiritual
roles associated with kings and emperors.
[1050–1150
] Church Reform 325
Gregory was, and remains, an extraordinarily controversial figure. As pope, he

thought that he was acting as the vicar, or representative, of St. Peter on earth. In
his view, the reforms he advocated and the upheavals he precipitated were necessary
to free the church from the evil rulers of the world. But his great nemesis, Henry IV,
had a very different view of Gregory. He considered him an ambitious and evil man
who “seduced the world far and wide and stained the Church with the blood of her
sons.” Modern historians are only a bit less divided in their assessment of Gregory.
Few deny his sincerity and deep religious devotion, but many speak of his pride,
ambition, and single-mindedness.
Henry IV was less complex. He was raised in the traditions of his father, Henry III.
He believed that he and his bishops — who were, at the same time, his most valuable
supporters and administrators — were the rightful leaders of the church. He had no
intention of allowing the pope to become head of the church; he didn’t see that new
religious ideals were sweeping away the old traditions. The great confrontation
between Gregory and Henry that historians call the Investiture Conflict* began in
1075 over the appointment of the archbishop of Milan and a few other Italian prelates.
When Henry insisted on appointing these clergymen, Gregory admonished the king.
Henry responded by calling on Gregory to step down as pope. In turn, Gregory called
a synod that both excommunicated and suspended Henry from office:
I deprive King Henry [IV], son of the emperor Henry [III], who has rebelled
against [God’s] Church with unheard-of audacity, of the government over the
whole kingdom of Germany and Italy, and I release all Christian men from
the allegiance which they have sworn or may swear to him, and I forbid
anyone to serve him as king.
It was this last part of the decree that made it politically explosive; it authorized
everyone in Henry’s kingdom to rebel against him. Henry’s enemies, mostly German
princes (as German aristocrats were called), now threatened to elect another king.
They were motivated partly by religious sentiments and partly by political opportun-
ism. Some bishops joined forces with Gregory’s supporters, a great blow to royal
power because Henry desperately needed the troops supplied by his churchmen.
Attacked from all sides, Henry traveled to intercept Gregory, who was journeying
northward to visit the rebellious princes. In early 1077, king and pope met at a castle
belonging to Matilda, countess of Tuscany, at Canossa, high in central Italy’s snowy
Apennine Mountains. Gregory remained inside the fortress there; Henry stood out-
side as a penitent, begging forgiveness. Henry’s move was astute, for no priest could
*This movement is also called the Investiture Controversy, Investiture Contest, or Investiture Struggle.
The epithets all refer to the same thing: the disagreement and eventually war between the pope and
the emperor over the right to invest churchmen in particular and power over the church hierarchy in
general.
[ 1050–1150
]
Matilda of Tuscany
How often is a woman the
dominant figure in medieval
art? In this illustration, made
around 1115, Matilda, count-
ess of Tuscany, towers above
the king (Henry IV) and
upstages the abbot of Cluny
(Hugh). Matilda was a key sup-
porter of Pope Gregory VII. It
was at her castle at Canossa
that Henry IV did penance.
The words underneath the
picture emphasize Henry’s
abjection. They read: “The
king begs the abbot and
supplicates Matilda as well.”
(Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
The Vatican, Italy / Flammarion /
Bridgeman Images.)
refuse absolution to a penitent; Gregory had to lift the excommunication and receive
Henry back into the church. But, as Henry stood in the snow, Gregory had the
advantage of enjoying the king’s humiliation before the majesty of the pope.
Although Henry was technically back in the church’s fold, nothing of substance
had been resolved. The princes elected an antiking (a king chosen illegally), and
Henry and his supporters elected an antipope. From 1077 until 1122, papal and
imperial armies and supporters waged intermittent war in both Germany and Italy.
The Investiture Conflict was finally resolved long after Henry IV and Greg-
ory VII had died. The Concordat of Worms of 1122 ended the fighting with a com-
promise. Henry V, the heir of Henry IV, gave up the right in the investiture ceremony
to confer the ring and the pastoral staff — symbols of spiritual power. But he retained,
in Germany, the right to be present when bishops were elected. In effect, he would
continue to have influence over those elections. In both Germany and Italy he also
had the right to give the scepter to the churchman in a gesture meant to indicate
the transfer of the temporal, or worldly, powers and possessions of the church (the
lands by which it was supported).
Superficially, nothing much had changed; the Concordat of Worms ensured that
secular rulers would continue to have a part in choosing and investing churchmen.
In fact, however, few people would now claim that a king could act as head of the
[1050–1150
] Church Reform 327
church. Just as the concordat broke the investiture ritual into two parts — one spirit-
ual, with ring and staff, the other secular, with the scepter — so, too, it implied a new
notion of kingship that separated it from priesthood. The Investiture Conflict did not
produce the modern distinction between church and state — that would develop
slowly — but it set the wheels in motion.
The most important changes brought about by the Investiture Conflict, however,
were on the ground: the political landscape in both Italy and Germany was irrevo-
cably transformed. In Germany, the princes consolidated their lands and their posi-
tions at the expense of royal power. In Italy, the emperor lost power to the cities.
The northern and central Italian communes were formed in the crucible of the war
between the pope and the emperor. In fierce communal struggles, city factions, often
created by local grievances but claiming to fight on behalf of the papal or the impe-
rial cause, created their own governing bodies. In the course of the twelfth century,
these Italian cities became accustomed to self-government.
The Sweep of Reform

Church reform involved much more than the clash of popes, emperors, and their
supporters. It penetrated into the daily lives of ordinary Christians. It inspired new
ways to think about church personnel such as the priests and about church institu-
tions such as the sacraments. It brought about a new systemization of church law,
changed the way the papacy operated, inspired new monastic orders dedicated to
poverty, and led to the crusades.
The sacraments were, in the Catholic church’s terminology, the regular means
by which God’s heavenly grace infused mundane existence. They included rites such
as baptism, the Eucharist (holy communion), and marriage. But this did not mean
that Christians were clear about how many sacraments there were, how they worked,
or even what their significance was. Eleventh-century church reformers began the
process — which would continue into the thirteenth century — of emphasizing the
importance of the sacraments and the special nature of the priest, whose chief role
was to administer them.
Marriage, for example, became a sacrament only after the Gregorian reform.
Before the twelfth century, priests had little to do with weddings, which were family
affairs. After the twelfth century, however, priests were expected to consecrate mar-
riages. Churchmen also began to assume jurisdiction over marital disputes, not
simply in cases involving royalty (as they had always done) but also in those involv-
ing lesser aristocrats. The clergy’s prohibition of marriage partners as distant as sev-
enth cousins (since marriage between cousins was considered incest) had the poten-
tial to control dynastic alliances.
At the same time, churchmen began to stress the sanctity of marriage. Hugh
of St. Victor, a twelfth-century scholar, dwelled on the sacramental meaning of
marriage:
[ 1050–1150
]
Can you find anything else in marriage except conjugal society which makes
it sacred and by which you can assert that it is holy? . . . Each shall be to the
other as a same self in all sincere love, all careful solicitude, every kindness
of affection, in constant compassion, unflagging consolation, and faithful
devotedness.
In other words, Hugh saw marriage as a matter of Christian love.

The reformers also proclaimed the special importance of the sacrament of the
Eucharist, received by eating the wafer (the body of Christ) and drinking wine (the
blood of Christ) during the Mass. Gregory VII called the Mass “the greatest thing
in the Christian religion.” No layman, regardless of how powerful, and no woman
of any class or status at all could perform anything equal to it, for the Mass was the
key to salvation.
The new emphasis on the sacraments, along with a desire to distinguish the
clergy more clearly from the laity, led to vigorous enforcement of an old element of
church discipline: the celibacy of priests. The demand for a celibate clergy had far-
reaching significance for the history of the church. It distanced western clerics even
further from their eastern Orthodox counterparts (who did not practice celibacy),
exacerbating the east–west church schism of 1054. It also broke with local practices
in places where clerical marriage was customary. Undaunted, the reformers persisted,
and in 1123 the pope proclaimed all clerical marriages invalid.
Clerics found other ways to distinguish themselves from the laity. Even before
the Investiture Conflict, bishops made their power, prestige, and holiness visible by
wearing gorgeous clothing when they carried out their ceremonial roles. Their don-
ning of beautiful garb did not end once the Conflict was over. In fact, in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, the practice was extended to members of even the lower
clerical orders, such as deacons and subdeacons.
What were the foundations of this new power? Some of it came from the con-
solidation and imposition of canon, or church, law. These laws had begun simply
as rules determined at church councils. Later they were supplemented with papal
declarations. Churchmen had made several attempts to gather together and organize
these laws before the eleventh century. But the proliferation of rules during that
century, along with the desire of Gregory’s followers to clarify church law as they
saw it, made a systematic collection of rules even more necessary. Around 1140, a
teacher of canon law named Gratian achieved this goal with a landmark synthesis,
the Decretum. Collecting nearly two thousand passages from the decrees of popes
and councils as well as the writings of the church fathers, Gratian intended to dem-
onstrate their essential agreement. In fact, his book’s original title was Harmony of
Discordant Canons. If he found any discord in his sources, Gratian usually imposed
the harmony himself by arguing that the passages dealt with different situations. A
bit later, another legal scholar revised and expanded the Decretum, adding ancient
Roman law to the mix.
[1050–1150
] Church Reform 329
Dalmatic
This vestment, called a dal-
matic, is made of thirteenth-
century textiles and was used
at Roda, in Spain, as a garment
for a cleric. Made of red, white,
and blue silk threads woven with
gold, it was further ornamented
with panels of tapestry. In the
wake of the Gregorian reform,
even members of the lower
clerical orders such as deacons
began to wear splendid vest-
ments. As they put on each
layer of clothing, they said
prayers to remind them that
each piece of clothing signified
a virtue. (Museum of Costume and
Textiles, Barcelona, Spain / Ramon
Manent / The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY.)
Even while Gratian was writing, the papal curia (government), centered in Rome,
resembled a court of law with its own collection agency. In the course of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, the papacy developed a bureaucracy to hear cases, such as
disputed elections of bishops. Churchmen went to the papal curia for other purposes
as well: to petition for privileges for their monasteries or to be consecrated by the
pope. All these services were expensive, requiring lawyers, judges, hearing officers,
notaries, and collectors. The lands owned by the papacy were not sufficient to sup-
port the growing cost of its administrative apparatus, so the petitioners and litigants
themselves had to pay. The pope, with his law courts, bureaucracy, and financial
apparatus, had become a monarch.
New Monastic Orders of Poverty

Like the popes, the monks of Cluny and other Benedictine monasteries were reform-
ers. Unlike the popes, they spent nearly their entire day in large and magnificently
outfitted churches singing a long and complex liturgy consisting of Masses, prayers,
and psalms. These “black monks” — so called because they dyed their robes black —
reached the height of their popularity in the eleventh century. Their monasteries
often housed hundreds of monks, though convents for Benedictine nuns were usu-
ally less populated. Cluny was one of the largest monasteries, with some four hun-
dred brothers in the mid-eleventh century.
[ 1050–1150
]
In the twelfth century, the black monks’ lifestyle came under attack by groups
seeking a religious life of poverty. They considered the opulence of a huge and gor-
geous monastery like Cluny to be a sign of greed rather than honor. The Carthusian
order founded by Bruno of Cologne in the 1080s was one such group. Each monk
took a vow of silence and lived as a hermit in his own small hut. Monks occasionally
joined others for prayer in a common prayer room, or oratory. When not engaged
in prayer or meditation, the Carthusians copied manuscripts. They considered this
task part of their religious vocation, a way to preach God’s word with their hands
rather than their mouths. The Carthusian order grew slowly. Each monastery was
limited to only twelve monks, the number of the Apostles.
The Cistercians, by contrast, expanded rapidly. Their guiding spirit was St. Ber-
nard (c. 1090–1153), who arrived at the Burgundian monastery of Cîteaux (in Latin,
Cistercium, hence the name of the monks) in 1112 along with about thirty friends
and relatives. St. Bernard soon became abbot of Clairvaux, one of a cluster of Cis-
tercian monasteries in Burgundy. By the mid-twelfth century, more than three hun-
dred monasteries spread throughout Europe were following what they took to be the
customs of Cîteaux. Nuns, too — as eager as monks to live the life of simplicity and
poverty that they believed the Apostles had enjoyed and endured — adopted Cister-
cian customs. By the end of the twelfth century, the Cistercians were an order: all
of their houses followed rules determined at the General Chapter, a meeting at which
the abbots met to hammer out legislation.
Although they held up the rule of St. Benedict as the foundation of their monas-
tic life, the Cistercians created a lifestyle all their own, largely governed by the goal
of simplicity. Rejecting even the conceit of blackening their robes, they left them
undyed (hence their nickname, the “white monks”). As shown in Figure 10.1, a dia-
gram of Fountains Abbey in England, their monasteries were divided into two parts:
the eastern half was for the monks, and the western half was for the lay brothers.
The lay brothers did the hard manual labor necessary to keep the other monks — the
“choir” monks — free to worship.
Cistercian churches reflected the order’s emphasis on poverty. The churches were
small, made of smoothly hewn, undecorated stone. Wall paintings and sculpture
were prohibited. Their buildings cultivated a quiet beauty. Cistercian churches were
bright, cool, and serene.
The white monks dedicated themselves to monastic administration as well as to
private prayer and contemplation. Each house had large and highly organized farms
and grazing lands called granges. Cistercian monks spent much of their time man-
aging their estates and flocks, both of which were yielding handsome profits by the
end of the twelfth century. Although they had reacted against the wealth of the com-
mercial revolution, the Cistercians became part of it, and managerial expertise was
an integral part of their monastic life.
At the same time, the Cistercians emphasized a spirituality of intense emotion.
They cultivated a theology that stressed the humanity of Christ and Mary. They regu-
larly used maternal metaphors to describe the nurturing care that Jesus provided to
humans. The Cistercian Jesus was approachable, human, protective, even mothering.
[1050–1150
] The Crusades 331
Sanctuary Sacristy Chapter house
Monks’ Room for

Latrines
common room novices
Armarium (for books)

Calefactorium
Monks’ (warming room)
choir Fountain
(for washing)
Refectory
(dining room)
Pulpit
Choir of the Kitchen
lay brothers Benches (for reading)
Cellar
Latrines for
the lay brothers
Lay brothers’
refectory
FIGURE 10.1 Plan of Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey’s floor plan shows the key features of a Cistercian monastery. The eastern
half of the monastery was reserved for the monks, who were dedicated to contemplation and
prayer. The western half was for the lay brothers, who worked in the fields. The lay brothers
slept above their storeroom and refectory, the monks above their common room. No one had
a private bedroom, just as the rule of St. Benedict prescribed.
Many who were not members of the Cistercian order held similar views of
God; their spirituality signaled wider changes. For example, around 1099, St. Anselm
wrote a theological treatise entitled Why God Became Man, arguing that since man
had sinned, only a sinless man could redeem him. St. Anselm’s work represented a
new theological emphasis on the redemptive power of human charity, including that
of Jesus as a human being. As Anselm was writing, the crusaders were heading for
the very place of Christ’s crucifixion, making his humanity more real and power-
ful to people who walked in the holy “place of God’s humiliation and our redemp-
tion,” as one chronicler put it. Yet this new stress on the loving bonds that tied
Christians together also led to the persecu-
tion of non-Christians, especially Jews and REVIEW QUESTION What were the causes
Muslims. and consequences of the Gregorian reform?
The Crusades
The crusades were the culmination of two separate historical movements: pilgrim-
ages and holy wars. Like pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the place where Jesus had
lived and died, the crusades drew on a long tradition of making pious voyages to
[ 1050–1150
]
sacred shrines to petition for help or cure. The relics of Jesus’s crucifixion in Jerusalem,
and even the region around it, attracted pilgrims long before the First Crusade was
called in 1095.
As holy wars blessed by church leaders, the crusades had a prehistory. The Truce
of God, begun in the late tenth century, depended on knights ready to go to battle
to uphold it. The Normans’ war against Sicily had the pope’s approval. Already, as
we have seen, the battle of 1063 in the reconquista of Spain was fought with a papal
indulgence.
European crusaders established states in the Middle East that lasted for two hun-
dred years. A tiny strip of crusader states along the eastern Mediterranean survived —
perilously — until 1291.
Calling the Crusade

The events leading to the First Crusade began with the entry of the Seljuk Turks
into Asia Minor (Map 10.1). As noted in Chapter 9, the Muslim world had splin-
tered into numerous small states during the 900s. Weakened by disunity, those states
were easy prey for the fierce Seljuk Turks — Sunni Muslims inspired by religious zeal
to take over both Islamic and infidel (unbeliever) regions. By the 1050s, the Seljuks
had captured Baghdad, subjugated the Abbasid caliphate, and begun to threaten
Byzantium.
The difficulties the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV had in pulling together
an army to attack the Turks reveal how weak his position had become. Unable to
muster Byzantine troops — which either were busy defending their own districts or
were under the control of dynatoi (see page 283) wary of sending support to the
emperor — Romanus had to rely on a mercenary army made up of Normans, Franks,
Slavs, and even Turks. This motley force met the Seljuks at Manzikert in what is
today eastern Turkey. The battle was a disaster for Romanus: the Seljuks routed the
Byzantine army and captured the emperor. The battle of Manzikert (1071) marked
the end of Byzantine domination in the region.
Gradually settling in Asia Minor, the Turks extended their control across the
empire and beyond, all the way to Jerusalem, which had been under Muslim control
since the seventh century and most recently had been under the rule of the Shi‘ite
Fatimids. In 1095, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I (Alexius Comnenus) (r. 1081–
1118) appealed for help to Pope Urban II, hoping to get new mercenary troops for
a fresh offensive.
Urban II (r. 1088–1099) chose to interpret the request in his own way. At a
church council in Clermont (France) in 1095 he addressed an already excited throng,
telling them to “wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.”
The crowd responded with one voice: “God wills it.” Urban offered all who made
the difficult trek to the Holy Land to fight against the Muslims an indulgence — the
forgiveness of sins. The pains of the trip would substitute for ordinary penance.
[1050–1150
] The Crusades 333
ea
Nor th c S Crusaders’ routes to Holy Land
W S ea lti
Ba Extent of Seljuk Turks
E ENGLAND Byzantine Empire in 1097
S
Rhin
Battle
eR
Cologne
.
POLAND RUS
Kiev
Paris Metz Mainz Dni
ATL ANTIC eper
Worms R.
O CEAN Chartres Blois Speyer BOHEMIA
GERMANY
FRANCE HUNGARY
León Clermont
Provence R .
Ad Danube Bl ack S ea
Castile ITALY riat BULGARIA
ic SERBIA
Corsica Se BY Manzikert
a ZA Constantinople 1071
NT
IN Nicaea SELJUK DOMINIONS
EE
Brindisi MP
Sardinia
A
Aegean IRE Edessa

lm
Sea
r
o
a Sicily Antioch
v
i 1098 Baghdad
d
s Cyprus
Crete
Mediterranean Sea
Jerusalem
1099
0 200 400 miles

0 200 400 kilometers Fatimids
MAP 10.1 The First Crusade, 1096–1099

The First Crusade was a major military undertaking that required organization, movement over
both land and sea, and enormous resources. Four main groups were responsible for the con-
quest of Jerusalem. One began at Cologne, in northern Germany; a second group started out
from Blois, in France; the third originated just to the west of Provence; and the fourth launched
ships from Brindisi, at the heel of Italy. All joined up at Constantinople, where their leaders
negotiated with Alexius Comnenus for help and supplies in return for a pledge of vassalage
to the emperor.
Why did Urban make this call to arms? Certainly he hoped to win Christian
control of the Holy Land. He was also anxious to fulfill the goals of the Truce of God
by turning the crowd at Clermont into a peace militia dedicated to holy purposes.
Finally, Urban’s call placed the papacy in a new position of leadership, one that
complemented in a military arena the position the popes had gained in the church
hierarchy.
Inspired by local preachers, men and women, rich and poor, young and old,
laypeople and clerics heeded Urban’s call to go on the First Crusade (1096–1099).
Between 60,000 and 100,000 people abandoned their homes and braved the rough
journey to Jerusalem. They went to fight for God, to gain land and plunder, or to
follow their lord. Although women were discouraged from going, some crusaders
were accompanied by their wives. Other women went as servants; a few may have
been fighters. Children and old people, not able to fight, made the cords for siege
[ 1050–1150
]
engines — giant machines used to hurl stones at enemy fortifications. As Christians
undertook more crusades during the twelfth century, the transport and supply of
these armies became a lucrative business for the commercial classes of maritime
Italian cities such as Venice, strategically located on the route eastward.
The First Crusade

The armies of the First Crusade were organized not as one military force but rather
as separate militias, each commanded by a different individual authorized by the
pope. There were also irregular armies. Some of these, not heeding the pope’s official
departure date in August, left early. Historians call these loosely affiliated groups the
People’s (or Peasants’) Crusade. Some of the participants were peasants, others
knights. Inspired by the charismatic orator Peter the Hermit and others like him,
they took off for the Holy Land via the Rhineland. This unlikely route was no mis-
take: the crusaders wanted to kill Jews, who, like the Muslims, did not accept Christ’s
divinity. By 1095, three cities of the Rhineland — Speyer, Worms, and Mainz — had
especially large and flourishing Jewish populations with long-established relation-
ships with the local bishops.
The People’s Crusade — joined by local nobles, knights, and townspeople —
vented its fury against the Jews of the Rhineland. As one commentator put it, the
crusaders considered it ridiculous to attack Muslims when other infidels lived in
their own backyards: “That’s doing our work backward.” The Rhineland Jews had to
choose between conversion or death. Many Jews in Speyer found refuge in the bish-
op’s castle, but at Worms and Mainz hundreds were massacred. Similar pogroms —
systematic persecutions of Jews — took place a half century later, when the preaching
of the Second Crusade led to new attacks on the Jews.
After they had vented their fury in the Rhineland, some members of the People’s
Crusade dropped out. The rest continued through Hungary to Constantinople,
where Alexius Comnenus promptly shipped them to Asia Minor, where most of
them died. In the autumn, the main armies of the crusaders began to arrive, their
leaders squabbling with Alexius from the start.
Considering them too weak to bother with, the Turks spared the arriving crusad-
ers, who made their way south to the Seljuk capital at Nicaea. At first, their armies
were uncoordinated and their food supplies uncertain, but soon the crusaders orga-
nized themselves. They managed to defeat a Turkish army that attacked from nearby;
then, surrounding Nicaea and besieging it with catapults and other war machines,
they took the city on June 18, 1097.
Most of the crusaders then went toward Antioch, which stood in the way of
their conquest of Jerusalem, but one led his followers to Edessa, where they took
over the city and its outlying area, creating the first of the crusader states. Meanwhile,
the main body of crusaders took Antioch after a long stalemate. From there, it was
only a short march to Jerusalem. Quarrels among Muslim rulers eased the way. In
[1050–1150
] The Crusades 335
Crusade Warfare
This battle scene, painted on paper (already common in the Islamic world) in the twelfth cen-
tury, depicts an Islamic garrison defending against Western knights. At the center is a Muslim
warrior wearing a large turban. Fully clad in chain mail, he sits atop a horse and wields a sword
and shield. Behind him to the left are archers, also in mail armor and turbans. Above him and
to the right are Muslim foot soldiers protected only by large shields. Their enemy, the knight on
the black horse, has been defeated and is falling to the ground. (Early-12th-century paper fragment,
Cairo, Egypt / British Museum, London, UK / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
early June 1099, a large force of crusaders amassed before the walls of Jerusalem; in
mid-July, they attacked, breaching the walls and entering the city. “Now that our men
had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen,” wrote
Raymond d’Aguiliers, a priest serving one of the crusade leaders. “Some of our men
(and this was the more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them
with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting
them into the flames.”
The Crusader States

The main objective of the First Crusade — to wrest the Holy Land from the Muslims
and subject it to Christian rule — had now been accomplished. The leaders of the
expedition did not give the conquered territories to Alexius but held on to them
instead. By 1109, they had carved out several tiny states in the Holy Land.
[ 1050–1150
]
Because the crusader states were created by
Crusader states
conquest, they were treated as lordships. The rul- COUNTY
Byzantine Empire OF EDESSA
ers granted fiefs to their vassals, and some of these
LITTLE
in turn gave portions of their holdings as fiefs to ARMENIA
Ti
Edessa
gr
SELJUKS s R.
i
their own vassals. Since most Europeans went Antioch PRINCIPALITY
Cyprus OF ANTIOCH
home after the First Crusade, the rulers who SYRIA
Tripoli
COUNTY OF Eu
remained learned to coexist with the indigenous Mediterranean
TRIPOLI ph
Sea
ra
Damascus
population, which included Muslims, Jews, and KINGDOM OF Jerusalem
tes
R.
JERUSALEM
Greek Orthodox Christians. They encouraged a Dead
Sea ARABIA
lively trade at their ports. FATIMIDS
0 100 200 miles
R.
The main concerns of these rulers were mili-
N i le
tary. They set up castles and recruited knights
from Europe. So organized for war was this soci- The Crusader States in 1109
ety that it produced a new and militant kind of
monasticism: the Knights Templar. The Templars vowed themselves to poverty and
chastity. But unlike monks, the Templars, whose name came from their living quar-
ters in the area of the former Jewish Temple at Jerusalem, devoted themselves to
warfare. Their first mission — to protect the pilgrimage routes from Palestine to
Jerusalem — soon diversified. They manned the town garrisons of the crusader
states, and they transported money from Europe to the Holy Land. In this way, the
Order of the Templars became enormously wealthy (even though individual monks
owned nothing), with branch “banks” in major cities across Europe.
The Disastrous Second Crusade

The presence of the Knights Templar did not prevent the Seljuks from taking the
county of Edessa in 1144. This was the beginning of the slow but steady shrinking
of the crusader states. It sparked the Second Crusade (1147–1149), which attracted,
for the first time, ruling monarchs to the cause: Louis VII of France and Emperor
Conrad III in Germany. (The First Crusade had been led by counts and dukes.)
St. Bernard, the charismatic and influential Cistercian abbot, was its tireless preacher.
Little organization or planning went into the Second Crusade. The emperor at
Byzantium was hardly involved. Louis VII and Conrad had no coordinated strategy.
A chronicler of the crusade wryly remarked, “Those whose common will had under-
taken a common task should also use a common plan of action.” All the armies were
badly hurt by Turkish attacks. Furthermore, they largely acted at cross-purposes with
the Christian rulers still in the Holy Land.
At last the leaders met at Acre (today in Israel) and agreed to storm Damascus,
which was under Muslim control and a thorn in the side of the Christian king of
Jerusalem. On July 24, 1148, they were on the city’s outskirts, but, encountering a
stiff defense, they abandoned the attack after five days, suffering many losses as they
retreated. The crusade was over.
[1050–1150
] The Revival of Monarchies 337
The Second Crusade had one decisive outcome: it led Louis VII to divorce his
wife, Eleanor, the heiress of Aquitaine. He was disappointed that she had provided
him with a daughter but no son, and he suspected her of infidelity. After the pope
“dissolved” their marriage — that is, found it to have been uncanonical in the first
place — Eleanor promptly married Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy.
This marriage had far-reaching consequences, as we shall see, when Henry became
King Henry II of England in 1154.
The Long-Term Impact of the Crusades

The success of the First Crusade was a mirage. The European toehold in the Middle
East could not last. Numerous new crusades were called, and eight major ones took
place between the first in 1096 and the last at the end of the thirteenth century. But
most Europeans were not willing to commit the vast resources and personnel that
would have been necessary to maintain the crusader states, which fell to the Muslims
permanently in 1291. In Europe, the crusades to the Holy Land became a sort of
myth — an elusive goal that receded before more pressing ventures nearer to home.
Yet they inspired far-flung expeditions like Columbus’s in 1492. Although the cru-
sades stimulated trade a bit, especially enhancing the prosperity of Italian cities like
Venice, the commercial revolution would have happened without them. On the other
hand, modern taxation systems may well have been stimulated by the machinery of
revenue collection used to finance the crusades.
In the Middle East, the crusades worsened — but did not cause — Islamic disunity.
Before the crusades, Muslims had a complex relationship with the Christians in their
midst — taxing but not persecuting them, allowing their churches to stand and be
used, permitting pilgrims into Jerusalem to visit the holy sites of Christ’s life and
death. In many ways, the split between Shi‘ite and Sunni Muslims was more serious
than the rift between Muslims and Christians. The crusades, and especially the con-
quest of Jerusalem, shocked and dismayed
Muslims: “We have mingled blood with REVIEW QUESTION How and why was the
flowing tears,” wrote one of their poets, First Crusade a success, and how and why
“and there is no room left in us for pity.” was it a failure?
The Revival of Monarchies

Even as the papacy was exercising its authority by annulling marriages and calling
crusades, most kings and other rulers were enhancing and consolidating their own
power. They created new ideologies and dusted off old theories to justify their hege-
mony (dominating influence), they hired officials to work for them, and they found
vassals and churchmen to support them. Money gave them greater effectiveness, and
the new commercial economy supplied them with increased revenues. The exception
was the emperor in Germany, who was weakened by the Investiture Conflict.
[ 1050–1150
]
Reconstructing the Empire at Byzantium
Ten years after the disastrous battle at Manzikert, Alexius Comnenus became the
Byzantine emperor. He was an upstart — from a family of dynatoi — who saw the
opportunity to seize the throne in a time of crisis. The people of Constantinople
were suffering under a combination of high taxes and rising living costs. In addition,
the empire was under attack on every side — from Normans in southern Italy, Seljuk
Turks in Asia Minor, and new groups in the Balkans. However, the emperor managed
to avert the worst dangers.
To wage all the wars he had to fight, Alexius relied on mercenaries and allied
dynatoi, armed and mounted like European knights and accompanied by their own
troops. In return for their services, he gave these nobles lifetime possession of large
imperial estates and their dependent peasants. Meanwhile, Alexius satisfied the urban
elite by granting them new offices. He normally got on well with the patriarch and
Byzantine clergy, for emperor and church depended on each other to suppress heresy
and foster orthodoxy. The emperors of the Comnenian dynasty (1081–1185) thus
gained in prestige and military might, but at the price of significant concessions to
the nobility.
England under Norman Rule

In the twelfth century, the kings of England were
the most powerful monarchs of Europe, in large
The Anglo-Norman realm
part because they ruled their whole kingdom by William
right of conquest. When the Anglo-Saxon king Harold
Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066) died childless 0 100 200 miles
in 1066, three main contenders vied for the English 0 100 200 kilometers
throne: Harold, earl of Wessex, an Englishman
close to the king but not of royal blood; Harald SCOTLAND
Hardrada, the king of Norway, who had unsuc-
cessfully attempted to conquer the Danes and now North
Sea
turned hopefully to England; and William, duke of
Normandy, who claimed that Edward had prom- York
ised him the throne fifteen years earlier. On his

ENGLAND
deathbed, Edward had named Harold of Wessex to
succeed him, and a royal advisory committee that Hastings
Canterbury
Wessex 1066 Flanders

had the right to choose the king had confirmed
the nomination. When he learned that Harold had
been anointed and crowned, William (1027–1087) Normandy
prepared for battle. Appealing to the pope, he
received the banner of St. Peter and with this sym-
bol of God’s approval launched the invasion of Norman Conquest of England,
England, filling his ships with warriors recruited 1066
[1050–1150
Bayeux “Tapestry” (detail)

This famous “tapestry” is misnamed; it is really an embroidery, 230 feet long and 20 inches
wide, created to tell the story of the Norman conquest of England from William’s point of view.
In this detail, the Norman archers are lined up along the lower margin, in a band below the
armies. In the central band, the English warriors are on foot, while the Norman knights are on
horseback. Who seems to be winning? (Musee de la Tapisserie, Bayeaux, France / With special authorization
of the City of Bayeux / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
from many parts of France. Just before William’s invasion force landed, Harold
defeated Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge, near York, in the north of England.
When he heard of William’s arrival, Harold turned his forces south, marching them
250 miles and picking up new soldiers along the way to meet the Normans.
The two armies clashed at the battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, in one
of history’s rare decisive battles. Most of Harold’s men were on foot, armed with
battle-axes and stones tied to sticks, which could be thrown with great force. Wil-
liam’s army consisted of perhaps three thousand mounted knights, a thousand
archers, and the rest infantry. At first William’s knights broke rank, frightened by the
deadly battle-axes thrown by the English; but then some of the English also broke
rank as they pursued the knights. Gradually Harold’s troops were worn down, par-
ticularly by William’s archers, whose arrows flew a hundred yards, much farther than
an Englishman could throw his battle-ax. (Some of the archers are depicted on the
lower margin of the Bayeux “Tapestry.”) By dusk, King Harold was dead and his army
defeated.
Some Anglo-Saxons in England supported William. But William — known to
posterity as William the Conqueror — wanted to replace, not assimilate, the Anglo-
Saxons. During William’s reign, families from the European continent almost totally
supplanted the English aristocracy. Although the English peasantry remained — now
with new lords — many of them “perished . . . by famine or the sword,” as William
[ 1050–1150
]
confessed on his deathbed. Modern historians estimate that one out of five people
in England died as a result of the Norman conquest and its immediate aftermath.
Yet, although the Normans destroyed a generation of English men and women,
they preserved and extended many Anglo-Saxon institutions. For example, the new
kings retained the old administrative divisions and legal system of the shires. At the
same time, they drew from continental institutions. They set up a political hierar-
chy, culminating in the king, whose strength was reinforced by his castles. Because
all of England was the king’s by conquest, he could treat it as his booty; William
kept about 20 percent of the land for himself and divided the rest, distributing it
in large but scattered fiefs to a relatively small number of his barons and family
members, lay and ecclesiastical, as well as to some lesser men. In turn, these fief-
holders maintained their own vassals; they owed the king military ser vice — and
the ser vice of a fixed number of their vassals — along with certain dues, such as
reliefs (money paid upon inheriting a fief) and aids (payments made on important
occasions).
In addition to these revenues from the nobles, the king of England made sure
that he would get his share from the peasantry. In 1086, William ordered a survey
and census of England, popularly called Domesday because, like the reckoning
Christians expected at doomsday, it provided facts that could not be appealed. It was
the most extensive inventory of land, livestock, taxes, and population that had ever
been compiled in Europe. The king’s men consulted Anglo-Saxon tax lists and took
testimony from local men. From these inquests, scribes drew up reports, which were
then summarized in Domesday itself.
William was not just the ruler of England; he was also duke of Normandy. The
Norman conquest tied England to the languages, politics, institutions, and culture
of the European continent. English commerce was linked to the wool industry in
Flanders. St. Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury and author of Why God Became
Man, was born in Italy and served as the abbot of a monastery in Normandy before
crossing the Channel to England. Modern English is an amalgam of Anglo-Saxon
and Norman French.
The barons of England retained their estates in Normandy and elsewhere, and
the kings of England often spent more time on the continent than they did on the
island. When William’s son Henry I (r. 1100–1135) died without male heirs, civil
war soon erupted: the throne of England was fought over by two French counts, one
married to Henry’s daughter, the other to his sister. The story of England after 1066
was, in miniature, the story of Europe.
Praising the King of France

The twelfth-century kings of France were much less obviously powerful than their
English and Byzantine counterparts. Yet they, too, took part in the monarchical
revival. Louis VI, called Louis the Fat (r. 1108–1137), was a tireless defender of
[1050–1150
royal power. We know a good deal about him and his reputation because a contem-
porary and close associate, Suger (1081–1152), abbot of Saint-Denis, wrote Louis’s
biography.
Although a churchman, Suger was a propagandist for his king. When Louis set
about consolidating his rule in the Île-de-France, Suger portrayed him as a righteous
hero. He thought that the king had rights over the French nobles because they were
his vassals. He believed that the king had a religious role as the protector of the church
and the poor. To be sure, the Gregorian reform had made its mark: Suger did not
claim that Louis was the head of the church. But he nevertheless emphasized the
royal dignity and its importance to the papacy. He stressed Louis’s piety and active
defense of the faith.
When Louis VI died in 1137, Suger’s notion of the might and right of the king
of France reflected reality in an extremely small area. Nevertheless, Louis laid the
groundwork for the gradual extension of royal power in France. As the lord of vas-
sals, the king could call on his men to aid him in times of war, though the most
powerful among them sometimes disregarded the summons. As a king and land-
lord, he could obtain many dues and taxes. He drew revenues from Paris, a thriving
city not only of commerce but also of scholarship. Officials called provosts enforced
his royal laws and collected taxes. With money and land, Louis dispensed the favors
and gave the gifts that added to his prestige and his power. Louis VI and Suger
together created the territorial core and royal ideal of the future French monarchy.
Surviving as Emperor
Henry IV lost much of the power over the church and over Italy that his father had
wielded. The Investiture Conflict meant that he could no longer control the church
hierarchy in Germany and northern Italy, nor could he depend on bishops to work
as government officials. The German princes rebelled against him, and the cities of
northern Italy found ways to declare their independence of him.
The Concordat of Worms (1122) conceded considerable power within the church
to the king, but said nothing about the ruler’s relations with the German princes or
the Italian cities. When Henry V (r. 1105–1125) died childless, the position of the
emperor was extremely uncertain.
When a German king died childless, the great bishops and princes would meet
together to elect the next emperor. In 1125, numerous candidates were put forward;
the winner, Lothar III (r. 1125–1137), was chosen largely because he was not the per-
son designated by Henry V. Lothar had little time to reestablish royal control before
he, too, died childless, leaving the princes
to elect Conrad III. It was Conrad’s nephew,
REVIEW QUESTION Which ruler — Alexius
Frederick Barbarossa, who would have a Comnenus, William the Conqueror, or Louis VI —
chance to find new sources of imperial was the strongest, which the feeblest, and why?
power in a post-Gregorian age.
[ 1050–1150
]
Conclusion
The commercial revolution and the building boom it spurred profoundly changed
Europe. New trade, wealth, and business institutions became common in its thriving
cities. Merchants and artisans became important. Mutual and fraternal organizations
like the guilds and communes expressed and reinforced the solidarity and economic
interests of city dwellers. The countryside became reorganized for the market.
Sensitized by the commercial revolution to the corrupting effects of money and
inspired by the model of Cluny, which seemed to “free the church from the world,”
reformers began to demand a new and purified church. Under Pope Gregory VII,
the reform asserted a new vision of the church with the pope at the top. But many
people — especially rulers — depended on the old system. Henry IV was particularly
affected; for him the Gregorian reform meant war. The Investiture Conflict, though
officially ended by a compromise, in fact greatly enhanced the power of the papacy
and weakened that of the emperor.
The First Crusade was both cause and effect of the pope’s new power. But the
crusades were not just papal projects. They were fueled by enormous popular piety
as well as by the ambitions of European rulers. They resulted in a ribbon of crusader
states along the eastern Mediterranean.
Apart from the emperor, rulers in the period after the Investiture Conflict gained
new prestige and, with the wealth of the commercial revolution, the ability to hire
civil servants and impose their will as never before. The Norman ruler of England
is a good example of the new-style king; William the Conqueror was interested not
only in waging war but also in setting up the most efficient possible taxation system
in times of peace. The successes of these rulers signaled a new era: the flowering of
the Middle Ages.
[ 1050–1150
] Conclusion 343
NORWAY
SWEDEN Stockholm
SCOTLAND
Riga BULGARS
Nor th ESTONIA
a
Se
Sea
IRELAND DENMARK c
lti
LITHUANIANS
Ba Smolensk
Volga R.
WALES
ENGLAND POMERANIA
RUS
London
AT L AN T IC POLAND
Rhin
El
be
nie
D
O CEA N English Channel Kiev pe
R.
r R.
eR
Cologne
Krakow
.
Prague
Normandy Paris
Worms BOHEMIA CUMANS
Orleans FRENCH
ROYAL GERMANY Regensburg ALANS
Loire R. DOMAIN
Pest
Buda
BURGUNDY
Poitiers HUNGARY GE O
Lyon RGI
A
R.
Milan CROATIA
Rhône
Genoa Venice
LEÓN Toulouse ITALY BOSNIA R. Bl ack S e a
NAVARRE Danube
BULGARIA
L
Marseilles Pisa Ad SERBIA

GA
ARAGON r ia
U
CASTILE ti c
BY
Serdica
RT
PAPAL Rome Se
ZA Constantinople
PO
Toledo Barcelona Corsica a

Tagus R. STATE NT
Thessalonica INE Angora SELJUK
EMPIRE DOMINIONS
Córdoba Sardinia
Balearic
Islands KINGDOM Iconium
Seville Granada OF SICILY Smyrna
DOMINIONS OF Athens
Tangier
THE ALMORAVIDS Tarsus
Sicily
Tunis
Cyprus
Crete CRUSADER Damascus
STATES
N Mediterranean Sea
Jerusalem
0 200 400 miles W E
0 200 400 kilometers Alexandria
S
Cairo
FATIMID CALIPHAT E
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the Mediterranean, c. 1150

A comparison with Mapping the West in Chapter 9 (page 309) reveals the major changes
wrought during the century 1050–1150. England was politically tied to the continent with the
Norman invasion of 1066. Soon the Seljuk Turks settled most of Anatolia, and the eastern wing
of Byzantium was tightly wedged around Constantinople. At the end of the eleventh century, a
narrow ribbon of crusader states was set up in the Holy Land. Meanwhile, Sicily and southern
Italy came under Norman rule.
Chapter 10 Review
commercial revolution commune (p. 319) sacraments (p. 327)
(p. 314) simony (p. 322) St. Bernard (p. 330)
guild (p. 318) lay investiture (p. 322) Alexius I (Alexius Comnenus)
apprentices (p. 318) reconquista (p. 324) (p. 332)
journeymen/journeywomen Gregorian reform (p. 324) Urban II (p. 332)
(p. 318) Henry IV (p. 324) First Crusade (p. 333)
masters (p. 318) Investiture Conflict (p. 325) battle of Hastings (p. 339)
capitalism (p. 318) Concordat of Worms (p. 326)
Review Questions
1. What new institutions resulted from the commercial revolution?
2. What were the causes and consequences of the Gregorian reform?
3. How and why was the First Crusade a success, and how and why was it a failure?
4. Which ruler — Alexius Comnenus, William the Conqueror, or Louis VI — was the strongest,
which the feeblest, and why?
Making Connections
1. What were the similarities — and what were the differences — between the powers wielded
by the Carolingian kings and those wielded by twelfth-century rulers?
2. In what ways was the movement for church reform a consequence of the commercial
revolution?
3. How may the First Crusade be understood as a consequence of the Gregorian reform?
Lopez was the first to recognize the importance of the commercial revolution, and Little makes
crucial connections between the new commerce and religious reform. Miller’s running narrative
and primary sources provide the best introduction to the Investiture Conflict and its aftermath,
and her book on clerical clothing shows that “fashion” is not a modern invention. Asbridge
offers a vivid account of the crusades, while Nicholson gives a quick overview along with pri-
mary sources. Fuhrmann, Hallam, and Huscroft cover the new western monarchies well, while
Waley takes up the Italian republics.
Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land. 2010.
*Bayeux Tapestry: http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/Index.htm
Clanchy, Michael. From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307. 3rd ed. 2006.
Fuhrmann, Horst. Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050–1200. 2002.
Hallam, Elizabeth M., and Judith Everard. Capetian France, 987–1328. 2nd ed. 2001.
Huscroft, Richard. The Norman Conquest: A New Introduction. 2009.
Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. 1978.
Lopez, Robert S. The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350. 1976.
* ———, and Irving W. Raymond. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. 1955.
*Primary source.
344
[1050–1150
Important Events
910 Founding of Cluny

1049–1054 Papacy of Leo IX
1054 Schism between eastern and western churches begins
1066 Battle of Hastings: Norman conquest of England under William I
1071 Battle between Byzantines and Seljuk Turks at Manzikert
1073–1085 Papacy of Gregory VII
1077 Henry IV does penance before Gregory VII at Canossa; war breaks out
1086 Domesday survey
1095 Council of Clermont; Pope Urban II calls First Crusade
1096–1099 First Crusade
1097 Establishment of commune at Milan
1108–1137 Reign of Louis VI
1109 Establishment of the crusader states
1122 Concordat of Worms ends Investiture Conflict
c. 1140 Gratian’s Decretum published
1147–1149 Second Crusade
Consider three events: Papacy of Gregory VII (1073–1085), Concordat of Worms ends
Investiture Conflict (1122), and Gratian’s Decretum published (c. 1140). How did these
events serve to enhance the power of the papacy? How might the papacy have been
different had any of these events not occurred?
Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200. 2014.
*———. Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict. 2005.
Moore, Robert I. The First European Revolution, c. 970–1215. 2000.
Morris, Colin. The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250. 1989.
Nicholson, Helen. The Crusades. 2004.
*Peters, Edward, ed. The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source
Materials. 1971.
*Suger. The Deeds of Louis the Fat. Trans. Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead. 1992.
Tyerman, Christopher. God’s War: A New History of the Crusades. 2006.
Waley, Daniel. The Italian City-Republics. 1969.
11
The Flowering of the Middle Ages
1150–1215
I
n 1194 a raging fire burned most of the town of Chartres, in France, including
its cathedral. Worried citizens feared that their most prized relic, the sacred tunic
worn by the Virgin Mary when Christ was born, had gone up in flames as well.
Had the Virgin abandoned the town? Suddenly the bishop and his clerics emerged
from the cathedral crypt carrying the sacred tunic, which had remained unharmed.
They took it as a sign that the Virgin had not only not abandoned her city but also
wanted a new and more magnificent cathedral to house her relic. The town dedicated
itself to the task; the bishop, his clerics, and the town guilds all gave generously to
pay for stonecutters, carvers, glaziers, countless other workmen, and a master builder.
Donations poured in from the counts, dukes,
and even the king of France. The new cathedral
Chartres Cathedral
Rebuilt after a fire in 1194, the was finished in twenty-six years — a very short
cathedral of Chartres reconciled old time in an age when such churches usually
and new. The three doorways of its took a century or more to build. Its vault soared
west end (shown here) were rem- 116 feet high; its length stretched more than
nants of the former church. But they 100 yards. Its western portals, which had been
were crowned by a rose window, a
form newly in vogue. (Ingram Publish-
spared the flames, retained the sculptural dec-
ing / Newscom.) oration — carved around 1150 — of the old
church: three doorways surrounded and sur-
mounted by figures that demonstrated the close
relationship between the truths of divine wisdom, the French royal house, and the
seven liberal arts — grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astron-
omy. The rest of the church was built in a new style: Gothic.
The rebuilt cathedral at Chartres sums up in stone the key features that charac-
terized the period from 1150 to 1215 and would mark the rest of the Middle Ages.
Its Gothic style — with its high vault, flying buttresses, and enormous stained-glass
windows — became the quintessential style of medieval architecture. The celebration
of the liberal arts on one of its doorways mirrored the new schools that flourished
in the twelfth century and culminated in the universities of the thirteenth. The
twenty-four statues of Old Testament figures flanking its western portals were meant
to prefigure the kings of France; they demonstrate the extraordinary importance of
powerful princes in this period, when monarchies and principalities ceased to be the
347
348 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
[ 1150–1215
]
personal creation of each ruler and became permanent institutions, with professional
bureaucratic staffs. The outpouring of popular support that culminated in the build-
ing of the cathedral is evidence of a vibrant vernacular (non-Latin-speaking) culture,
which expressed itself not only in stone but in literature as well. Finally, the emphasis
at Chartres on the divine wisdom echoes
the age’s fervor about Christian truths, a
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the cultural and
zeal that led to the creation of new religious
political achievements of the late twelfth cen-
tury, and what downsides did they have? movements even as it stoked the fires of
intolerance.
New Schools and Churches

Key to the flowering of the Middle Ages was a new emphasis on learning and a new
form of church architecture termed Gothic. In many ways, these developments laid
the foundation for other trends of the period. The schools trained men to staff new
bureaucracies and at the same time fed religious fervor. The Gothic style gave luster
to its rich patrons, the increasingly powerful rulers of the time, who offered needed
support both to the schools and to the architects who produced the style.
The New Learning and the Rise of the University

Since the Carolingian period schools had been connected to monasteries and cathe-
drals, where they trained men to become either monks or priests. Some schools were
better endowed with books and masters (or teachers) than others; a few developed
a reputation for a certain kind of theological approach or specialized in a particular
branch of learning, such as literature, medicine, or law. By the end of the eleventh
century, the best schools were generally in the cathedrals of the larger cities: Reims,
Paris, and Montpellier in France, and Bologna in Italy.
Finding these schools both exciting and practical, eager students flocked to them.
Teachers were forced to search out larger halls to accommodate the crush. Some set
up shop by renting a room. If a teacher could prove his mettle in the classroom, he
had no trouble finding paying students.
Because schools hitherto had been the training grounds for clergymen, all stu-
dents were considered clerics, whether or not they had been ordained. Using Latin,
Europe’s common language, students could drift from, say, Italy and Spain to France
and England, wherever a noted master had settled. Students joined crusaders, pil-
grims, and merchants to make the roads of Europe crowded indeed as the consolida-
tion of castellanies, counties, and kingdoms made violence against travelers less fre-
quent. Markets, taverns, and lodgings sprang up in urban centers to serve the needs
of transients.
What the students sought, above all, was knowledge of the seven liberal arts.
Grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic) belonged to the beginning arts, the so-
called trivium. Logic, involving the technical analysis of texts as well as the applica-
[1150–1215
] New Schools and Churches 349
tion and manipulation of mental constructs, was a transitional subject leading to the
second part of the liberal arts, the quadrivium. This comprised four areas of study
that we might call theoretical math and science: arithmetic, geometry, music (theory),
and astronomy. Of all these arts, logic appealed the most to twelfth-century students.
Medieval students and masters were convinced that logic could order and clarify
every issue, even questions about the nature of God.
After studying the trivium, students went on to schools of medicine, theology,
or law. Paris was renowned for theology, Montpellier for medicine, and Bologna for
law. All of these schools trained men for jobs. The law schools, for example, taught
men who would later serve popes, bishops, kings, princes, and communes. Scholars
interested in the quadrivium tended to pursue those studies outside the normal
school curriculum, and few gained their living through such pursuits. With books
expensive and hard to find, lectures were the chief method of communication. Stu-
dents committed the lectures to memory.
The remarkable renewal of scholarship in the twelfth century had an unexpected
benefit: we know a great deal about the men involved in it — and a few of the women —
because they wrote so much, often about themselves. Three important figures may
serve to typify the scholars of the period: Abelard and Heloise, who were early
examples of the new learning; and Peter the Chanter, the product of a slightly later
period.
Although Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was expected to become a lord and warrior,
he gave up his inheritance to become one of the twelfth century’s greatest thinkers.
In his autobiographical account, The Story of My Misfortunes, Abelard described how
he first studied with one of the best-known teachers of his day in Paris. Soon he
began to lecture and to gather students of his own. Around 1122–1123, he composed
a textbook for his students, Sic et Non (Yes and No). It consisted of opposing positions
on 156 subjects, among them “That God is one and the contrary” and “That all are
permitted to marry and the contrary.” Abelard arrayed passages from the Bible, the
church fathers, and other authorities on both sides of each question. The juxtaposi-
tion of such sources was nothing new; what was new was calling attention to their
contradictions. Abelard’s students loved the challenge: they were eager to find the
origins of the quotes, consider the context of each one carefully, and seek to reconcile
the opposing sides by using the tools of logic.*
Abelard’s fame as a teacher was such that a Parisian cleric named Fulbert gave
Abelard room and board and engaged him as tutor for his niece, Heloise (c. 1100–
c. 1163/1164). Brought up under Fulbert’s guardianship, Heloise had been sent as a
young girl to a convent school, where she received a thorough literary education.
*Abelard’s students did not yet have the sophisticated rules of logic that had been worked out by the
ancient philosopher Aristotle (see page 118). Until the middle of the twelfth century, very little of
Aristotle’s work was available in Europe because it had not been translated from Greek into Latin. By
the end of the century, however, that situation had been rectified by translators who traveled to cities
such as Córdoba in Spain and Syracuse in Sicily, where they found Islamic scholars who had already
translated Aristotle’s Greek into Arabic and could help them translate from Arabic to Latin.
[ 1150–1215
]
Her uncle hoped to continue her education at home by hiring Abelard. Abelard,
however, became Heloise’s lover as well as her tutor. “Our desires left no stage of
love-making untried,” wrote Abelard in his Misfortunes.
At first their love affair was secret. But Heloise became pregnant, and Abelard
insisted they marry. They did so clandestinely to prevent damaging Abelard’s career,
for the new emphasis on clerical celibacy meant that Abelard’s professional success
and prestige would have been compromised if news of his marriage were made pub-
lic. After they were married, Heloise and Abelard rarely saw one another; Abelard’s
sister took in their child. Fulbert, suspecting that Abelard had abandoned his niece,
plotted a cruel revenge against him: he paid a servant to castrate Abelard. Soon after,
Abelard and Heloise entered separate monasteries.
For Heloise, separation from Abelard was a lasting blow. Although she became
a successful abbess, carefully tending to the physical and spiritual needs of her nuns,
she continued to call on Abelard for “renewal of strength.” In a series of letters
addressed to him, she poured out her feelings as “his handmaid, or rather his daugh-
ter, wife, or rather sister.”
For Abelard, however, the loss of Heloise and even his castration were not the
worst disasters of his life. The heaviest blow came later, and it was directed at his
intellect. He wrote a book that applied “human and logical reasons” (as he put it) to
the Trinity; the book was condemned at the Council of Soissons in 1121, and he was
forced to throw it, page by page, into the flames. Bitterly weeping at the injustice,
Abelard lamented, “This open violence had come upon me only because of the purity
of my intentions and love of our Faith, which had compelled me to write.”
By the second half of the twelfth century, masters like Abelard had become far
more common. Many of them taught in Paris. Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) was one
of the most influential and prolific. He studied at the cathedral school at Reims and
was given the honorary title of chanter of Notre Dame in Paris in 1183. The chant,
as we shall see, consisted of the music and words of the church liturgy. But Peter
had his underlings work with the choir singers; he himself was far more interested
in lecturing, disputing, and preaching.
Peter’s lectures followed the pattern established by other masters. The lecture
began with the recitation of a passage from an important text. The master then explained
the text, giving his comments. He then “disputed” — mentioning other explanations
and refuting them, often drawing on the logic of Aristotle, which by Peter’s time was
fully available. Sometimes masters held public debates on their interpretations.
Peter chose to comment on biblical texts. There were many ways to interpret
the Bible. Some commentators chose to talk about it as an allegory; others preferred
to stress its literal meaning. Peter was interested in the morals it taught. While most
theology masters commented on just the Psalms and the New Testament, Peter
taught all the books of the Bible. He wrote two important treatises and was particu-
larly interested in exploring social issues and the sacrament of penance.
Peter also took the fruits of his classroom experience to the public. His sermons
have not survived, but he inspired a whole group of men to preach in and around
[1150–1215
Paris. One of his protégés, for example, was renowned for turning prostitutes, usu-
rers, and immoral clerics from their sinful ways.
Around 1200, the pope wrote to the masters of theology, church law, and the
liberal arts at Paris. He called them a universitas — the Latin word for a corporation
or guild. The pope was right: universities were guilds. Like guilds, they had appren-
tices (students) and masters (schoolmasters). They issued rules to cover their trade
(the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge). They had provisions for disciplin-
ing, testing, and housing students and regulated the masters in similar detail. For
example, masters at the University of Paris were required to wear long black gowns,
follow a particular order in their lectures, and set the standards by which students
could become masters themselves. The University of Bologna was unique in having
two guilds, one of students and one of masters. At Bologna, the students participated
in the appointment of masters and paid their salaries.
University curricula differed in content and duration. At the University of Paris in
the early thirteenth century, for example, a student had to spend at least six years study-
ing the liberal arts before he could begin to teach. If he wanted to continue his studies
with theology, he had to attend lectures on the subject for at least another five years.
Because masters and students were considered clerics, and clerics were male, it
meant that women could be neither students nor masters. And because clerics were
subject to church courts only, no secular jurisdiction, whether town courts or lords,
could touch those who attended the university. For example, in 1200 the king of
France promised that “neither our provost nor our judges shall lay hands on a stu-
dent [at the University of Paris] for any offense whatever.” The emperor in Germany
declared that in his territories — Germany and northern Italy — “no one shall be so
rash as to venture to inflict any injury on scholars.”
The combination of clerical status and special privileges made universities vir-
tually self-governing corporations within the towns. This sometimes led to friction.
For example, when a student at Oxford was suspected of killing his mistress and
the townspeople tried to punish him, the masters protested by refusing to teach and
leaving town. Incidents such as this explain why historians speak of the hostility
between “town” and “gown.” Yet, as in our own time, university towns depended on
scholars to patronize local restaurants, shops, and hostels. Town and gown normally
learned to negotiate with each other to their mutual advantage.
Architectural Style: From Romanesque to Gothic

While Peter the Chanter lectured at Notre Dame, the cathedral itself was going up
around him — in Gothic style. This was a new architectural style, associated at first
with the Île-de-France and the Capetian kings of France. Elsewhere the reigning style
was Romanesque. But in the course of the thirteenth century Gothic style took much
of Europe by storm, and by the fourteenth it was the quintessential cathedral style.
Romanesque is the term art historians use to describe the massive church buildings
of eleventh-century monasteries like Cluny. Heavy, serious, and solid, Romanesque
[ 1150–1215
]
Vézelay
In this view down the nave of a
French monastic church built in
the early twelfth century, almost
all the elements of Romanesque
architecture are visible: a “tunnel”
vault, here enlivened with black
and while stone ribbing; round
arches between the piers (here
made up of several columns); and
relatively small windows. Roman-
esque churches impress by their
sober solidity, which is, however,
often relieved, as here, by carved
capitals above the columns.
Some Romanesque churches
also boasted wall paintings.
(Andrea Jemolo / akg-images.)
churches were decorated with brightly colored wall paintings and sculpture. The
various parts of the church — the chapels in the chevet, or apse (the east end), for
example — were handled as discrete units, with the forms of cubes, cones, and cyl-
inders (Figure 11.1). Inventive sculptural reliefs, both inside and outside the church,
enlivened the geometrical forms. Emotional and sometimes frenzied, Romanesque
sculpture depicted themes ranging from the beauty of Eve to the horrors of the Last
Judgment. (See the frieze depicting Dives and Lazarus on page 312 for an example.)
Romanesque churches were above all houses for prayer, which was neither silent
nor private. The musical style for prayer was called plainchant, or Gregorian chant.
Monks sang plainchant melodies in unison and without instrumental accompani-
ment. Rhythmically free and lacking a regular beat, plainchant’s melodies ranged
from extremely simple to highly ornate and embellished. By the twelfth century, a
large repertoire of melodies had grown up, at first composed and transmitted orally
and then, starting in the ninth century, using written notation. Echoing within the
stone walls and the cavernous choirs, plainchant worked well in a Romanesque
church.
Gothic architecture, to the contrary, was a style of the cities, reflecting the self-
confidence and wealth of merchants, guildspeople, bishops, and kings.* Usually a
*Gothic is a modern term, originally meant to denigrate the style’s “barbarity” but now used admiringly.
[1150–1215
FIGURE 11.1 Floor Plan of a

Romanesque Church
As churchgoers entered a Romanesque Chevet or “apse”
church, they passed through the nar-
thex, an anteroom decorated with
sculptures depicting scenes from the Transept Absidioles
Bible. Walking through the portal of the chapels (chapels)
narthex, they entered the church’s nave, Choir
at the east end of which — just after
the crossing of the transept and in front
of the choir — was the altar. Walking Transept Piers
down the nave, they passed tall, mas-
sive piers leading up to the vault (the
ceiling) of the nave. Each of these piers Aisle
was decorated with sculpture, and the
walls were brightly painted. Roman-
esque churches were both lively and Nave
colorful (because of their decoration)
and solemn and somber (because of
their heavy stones and massive scale).
Narthex
cathedral — the bishop’s principal church — rather than a monastic church, the Gothic
church was the religious, social, and commercial focal point of a city. The style, popu-
lar from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, was characterized by pointed arches,
ribbed vaults, and stained-glass windows. The arches began as architectural motifs
but were soon adopted in every art form. Flying buttresses permitted much of the
wall to be cut away and the open spaces to be filled with glass. Soaring above the
west, north, south, and often east ends of many Gothic churches is a rose window: a
large round window shaped like a flower. Gothic churches appealed to the senses the
way that Peter the Chanter’s lectures and disputations appealed to human logic and
reason: both were designed to lead people to knowledge that touched the divine. The
atmosphere of a Gothic church was a foretaste of heaven.
The style had its beginnings around 1135, with the project of Abbot Suger, the
close associate of King Louis the Fat of France (see page 341), to remodel portions
of the church of Saint-Denis. Suger’s rebuilding was part of the fruitful melding of
royal and ecclesiastical interests and ideals in the north of France. At the west end
of his church, the place where the faithful entered, Suger decorated the portals with
figures of Old Testament kings, queens, and patriarchs, signaling the links between
the present king and his illustrious predecessors. At the eastern end, behind the altar,
Suger used pointed arches and stained glass to let in light, which Suger believed
[ 1150–1215
]
Chartres (interior) Sant’Andrea

The three doorways of Chartres’s west end open onto The church of Sant’Andrea at Vercelli suggests that
this view of the nave. Chartres illustrates all the ele- Italian church architects and patrons adopted what
ments of a Gothic church: a multistory elevation made they liked of French Gothic, particularly its pointed
to seem even higher by pointed arches; a ribbed, arches, while remaining uninterested in soaring
pointed-arch vault; and (taking the place of walls) large heights and grand stained-glass windows. The real
lancet windows filled with stained glass. The vault interest of the interior of Sant’Andrea is its inventive
was supported not by walls but by flying buttresses and lively use of contrasting light and dark stone.
on the church’s exterior. (Paul M. Maeyaer / akg-images.) (Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
would transport the worshipper from the “slime of earth” to the “purity of Heaven.”
Suger said that the father of lights, God himself, “illuminated” the minds of the
beholders through the light that filtered through the stained-glass windows.
By the mid-thirteenth century, Gothic architecture had spread from France to other
European countries. The style varied by region, most dramatically in Italy. At Sant’Andrea
in Vercelli, for example, there are only two
stories, and light filters in from small win-
REVIEW QUESTION What was new about
dows. Yet with its pointed arches and ribbed
education and church architecture in the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries? vaulting, Sant’Andrea is considered a Gothic
church. At its east end is a rose window.
[1150–1215
] Governments as Institutions 355
Governments as Institutions
Around the same time that architects, workers, patrons, theologians, and city dwellers
were coming together to produce Gothic cathedrals, rulership was becoming insti-
tutionalized. By the end of the twelfth century, western Europeans for the first time
spoke of their rulers not as kings of a people (for example, the king of the Franks)
but as kings of a territory (for example, the king of France). This new designation
reflected an important change in medieval rulership. However strong earlier rulers
had been, their political power had been personal (depending on ties of kinship,
friendship, and vassalage) rather than territorial (touching all who lived within the
borders of their state). Renewed interest in Roman law, a product of the schools,
served as a foundation for strong, centralized rule. Money allowed kings to hire sala-
ried professionals — talented, literate officials, many of whom had been schooled in
the new universities cropping up across Europe — to carry out the will of the ruler.
The process of state building had begun.
In England, the governmental system was institutionalized early, with royal offi-
cials administering both law and revenues. In other regions, such as France and Ger-
many, bureaucratic administration did not develop that far. In eastern Europe, it
hardly existed at all. At Byzantium, the bureaucracy that had long been in place frayed
badly, leaving the state open to conquest by western crusaders.
England: Unity through Common Law

In the mid-twelfth century, the government of England was by far the most institu-
tionalized in Europe. The king hardly needed to be present: royal government func-
tioned smoothly without him, since officials handled all the administrative matters
and record keeping. The very circumstances of the English king favored the growth
of an administrative staff — the king’s frequent travels to and from the European con-
tinent meant that officials needed to work in his absence, and his enormous wealth
meant that he could afford them.
Henry II (r. 1154–1189) was the driving force in extending and strengthening the
institutions of English government. He took the throne in the wake of a terrible civil
war (1139–1153) between two royal claimants. The chaos had benefited the English
barons and high churchmen, who gained new privileges and powers as the monarch’s
authority waned. Newly built private castles, already familiar on the continent, now
appeared in England as symbols of the rising power of the English barons. But when
Henry was crowned king of England, ushering in the Angevin (from Anjou) dynasty
there, he reversed the trend.*
Even beyond England, Henry had enormous power. His marriage to Eleanor of
Aquitaine in 1152, after her marriage to Louis VII of France was annulled, brought
*Henry’s father, Geoffrey of Anjou, was nicknamed “Plantagenet,” from the genet, a shrub he liked.
Historians sometimes use the name to refer to the entire dynasty, so Henry II was the first Planta-
genet as well as the first Angevin king of England.
[ 1150–1215
]
0 100 200 miles Ruled by Henry II directly as king
0 100 200 kilometers Held by Henry II as vassal of the king of France
Held by vassals of Henry II
Royal domain of the king of France
N Held by other vassals of the king of France
W
The Empire
E Territories straddling border of the Empire
S Boundary of the Empire, 1152
SCOTLAND
North
a
Sea
Se
Dublin
DENMARK ic
York lt
IRELAND Ba
Newburgh
WALES
PRUSSIANS
ENGLAND Frisia
LübeckPomerania
Bremen
Runnymede London
Saxony
Canterbury
Bruges
POLAND
English Channel Brandenburg
Ghent Cologne
Silesia
Prague Neisse
Normandy
Mainz
el R.
Brittany Trier Bohemia

Maine Paris Worms
Orléans
M os
Nantes Anjou
Blois Swabia
Augsburg
Poitou Touraine Bourges Staufen AUSTRIA
ATLANTIC Poitiers Bavaria
OCEAN Aquitaine
Clermont Burgundy HUNGARY
Legnano
Bordeaux Savoy
KINGDOM Milan
VE Da
nub
Gascony OF ARLES LOMBARDY NI e R.
Avignon CE
Navarre Toulouse Canossa Bologna
Arles Provence
Languedoc Marseille Pisa Florence Ad
ria
Castile Aragon tic
Corsica Patrimony of Se
a
Barcelona St. Peter
M e d i t e r r a n e a n Se a Rome KINGDOM OF
SICILY
Sardinia Naples
MAP 11.1 Europe in the Age of Henry II and Frederick Barbarossa, 1150–1190
The second half of the twelfth century was dominated by two men, King Henry II and Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa. Of the two, Frederick seemed to control more land, but this was deceptive.
Although he was emperor, he had great difficulty ruling the territory that was theoretically part
of the Empire. Frederick’s base was in central Germany, and even there he had to contend with
powerful vassals. Henry II’s territory was more compact but also more surely under his control.
the enormous inheritance of the duchy of Aquitaine to the English crown. Although
Henry was technically the vassal of the king of France for his continental lands, he
effectively ruled a territory that stretched from England to southern France (Map 11.1).
Eleanor gave Henry not only an enormous inheritance but also the sons he
needed to maintain his dynasty. He gave her much less. As queen of France, Eleanor
had enjoyed an important position: she disputed with St. Bernard, the Cistercian
[1150–1215
Eleanor and
Henry
Nothing about their
side-by-side tombs
suggests the
stormy relation-
ship of Eleanor of
Aquitaine and King
Henry II of England.
Their effigies,
carved of lime-
stone and walnut,
suggest peace and
piety. How does
Eleanor’s book help
project this image?
What do you sup-
pose she is reading? The placement of the couple’s tombs also attests to their religious fervor:
they were buried in the powerful monastery of Fontevraud, a “double monastery” that housed
(in separate quarters) both monks and nuns. An abbess presided over all. (Hervé Champollion /
© Cephas Picture Library / Alamy.)
abbot who was the most renowned churchman of the day, and when she accompanied
Louis on the Second Crusade, she brought more troops than he did. Of independent
mind, she determined to separate from Louis even before he considered leaving her.
But with Henry, she lost much of her power, for he dominated her just as he came
to dominate his barons. Turning to her offspring in 1173, Eleanor, disguised as a
man, tried to join her eldest son, Henry the Younger, in a plot against his father. But
the rebellion was put down, and she spent most of her years thereafter, until her
husband’s death in 1189, confined under guard at Winchester Castle. (In death, how-
ever, she gained dignity, with her tomb next to Henry’s.)
As soon as Henry II became king of England, he destroyed or confiscated the new
castles and regained crown land. Then he proceeded to extend monarchical power,
above all by imposing royal justice. His judicial reforms built on an already well-
developed legal system. The Anglo-Saxon kings had royal district courts: the king
appointed sheriffs to police the shires, muster military levies, and haul criminals into
court. The Norman kings retained these courts and had the right to summon large
landowners in the shire to attend them. To these established institutions, Henry II
added a system of judicial visitations called eyres (from the Latin iter, “journey”).
Under this system, royal justices made regular trips to every locality in England to
judge those accused of murder, arson, or rape — all defined as crimes against the
“king’s peace.” The justices summoned representatives of the knightly class to meet
and either give the sheriff the names of those suspected of committing crimes in the
vicinity or arrest the suspects themselves and hand them over to the royal justices.
During the eyres, the justices also heard cases between individuals, today called
civil cases. Free men and women (that is, people of the knightly class or above) could
[ 1150–1215
]
Hanging Thieves
The development of common law in England
meant mobilizing royal agents to bring
charges and arrest people throughout the
land. In 1124, the royal justice Ralph Basset
hanged forty-four thieves. It could not have
been very shocking in that context to see,
in this miniature from around 1130, eight
thieves hanged for breaking into the shrine
of St. Edmund. Under Henry II, all cases of
murder, arson, and rape were considered
crimes against the king himself. The result
was not just the enhancement of the king’s
power but also new definitions of crime,
more thorough policing, and more system-
atic punishments. Even so, hanging was
probably no more frequent than it had been
before. (The Thieves Are Hanged, from The Life, Pas-
sion, and Miracles of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, in
Latin, Bury St. Edmund’s, c. 1130. MS. M.736, f. 19v.
The Pierpont Morgan Library / Art Resource, NY.)
bring their disputes over such matters as inheritance, dowries, and property claims
to the king’s justices. Earlier courts had generally relied on duels between litigants
to determine verdicts. Henry’s new system offered a different option, an inquest under
royal supervision.
The new system of common law — law that applied to all of England — was praised
for its efficiency, speed, and conclusiveness in a twelfth-century legal treatise known
as Glanvill (after its presumed author). Glanvill might have added that the king also
speedily gained a large treasury. The exchequer, as the financial bureau of England
was called, recorded all the fines paid for judgments and the sums collected for writs.
The amounts, entered on parchment sewn together and stored as rolls, became the
Receipt Rolls and Pipe Rolls, the first of many such records of the English monarchy
and an indication that writing had become a mechanism for institutionalizing royal
power in England.
The stiffest opposition to Henry’s extension of the royal courts came from the
church, where a separate system of trial and punishment had long been available to
the clergy and to others who enjoyed church protection. The punishments for crimes
meted out by church courts were generally quite mild. Protective of their special status,
churchmen refused to submit to the jurisdiction of Henry’s courts. Henry insisted, and
the ensuing contest between Henry II and his archbishop, Thomas Becket (1118–
1170), became the greatest battle between the church and the state in the twelfth
century. The conflict simmered for six years, with Becket refusing to allow “crimi-
nous clerics” — clergy suspected of committing a crime — to come before royal courts.
[1150–1215
Then Henry’s henchmen murdered Becket, right in his own cathedral. The desecration
unintentionally turned Becket into a martyr. Henry was forced by a general public
outcry to do penance for the deed. In the end, both church and royal courts expanded
to address the concerns of an increasingly litigious society.
In England, Henry II made the king’s presence felt everywhere through his sys-
tem of traveling royal courts. On the continent, he maintained his position through
a combination of war and negotiation. He bequeathed to his sons Richard I (r. 1189–
1199) and John (r. 1199–1216) an omnipresent and wealthy monarchy. Its omnipres-
ence derived largely from its eyre system of justice and its administrative apparatus.
Its wealth came from court fees, income from numerous royal estates both in England
and on the continent, taxes from cities, and customary feudal dues (reliefs and aids)
collected from barons and knights. Enriched by the commercial economy of the late
twelfth century, the English kings encouraged their knights and barons not to serve
them personally in battle but, in lieu of service, to pay the king a tax called scutage.
The monarchs preferred to hire mercenaries both as troops to fight external enemies
and as police to enforce the king’s will at home.
Richard I, known as the Lion-Hearted, went on the Third Crusade the very year
he was crowned. On his way home, he was captured and held for ransom by political
enemies for a long time; he died soon thereafter while defending his possessions on
the continent. His successor, John, lived longer but gained no admiring epithet. In
fact, he presided over the whittling away of the English empire. In 1204, the king of
France confiscated the northern French territories held by John. Between 1204 and
1214, John did everything he could to add to the crown revenues so that he could pay
for an army to win back the territories. He forced his vassals to pay ever-increasing
scutages, and he extorted money in the form of new feudal dues. He compelled the
widows of his vassals either to marry men of his choosing or to pay him a hefty fee.
Despite John’s heavy investment in the war, his army was defeated in 1214 at the
battle of Bouvines. The defeat caused discontented English barons to rebel openly
against the king. At Runnymede in June 1215, John was forced to agree to the charter
of baronial liberties that has come to be called Magna Carta (“Great Charter”).
The English barons intended Magna Carta to be a conservative document defining
the “customary” obligations and rights of the nobility and forbidding the king to break
from these customs without consulting his barons. It maintained that all free men in
the land had certain rights that the king was obligated to uphold. In this way, Magna
Carta implied that the king was not above the law. In time, as the definition of free
men expanded to include all the king’s subjects, Magna Carta came to be seen as a
guarantee of the rights of Englishmen (and eventually Englishwomen) in general.
France: Consolidation and Conquest

John’s territorial loss was the gain of the French king Philip II (Philip Augustus)
(r. 1180–1223). When Philip came to the throne, the royal domain, the Île-de-France,
was sandwiched between territory controlled by the counts of Flanders, Champagne,
[ 1150–1215
]
0 150 300 miles
and Anjou. King Henry II and the counts of Flan-
0 150 300 kilometers Flanders ders and Champagne vied to control the young
Bouvines
1214 king. Philip, however, quickly learned to play the
Normandy three rulers against one another. Contemporaries
Champagne
Brittany Maine Île-de-
France
were astounded when Philip successfully gained ter-
Anjou The ritory: he wrested land from Flanders in the 1190s
Touraine Burgundy
ATLANTIC Poitou and then, as we have seen, he took Normandy,
OCEAN Anjou, Maine, the Touraine, and Poitou from King
Aquitaine
(English) John of England in 1204. No wonder he was given
the epithet Augustus, after the first Roman emperor.
After Philip’s army confirmed its triumph over
most of John’s continental territories in 1214, the
French royal domain
(Île-de-France), c. 1180 French monarch could boast that he was the richest
Acquired by Philip Augustus, and most powerful ruler in France. Most impor-
1180–1223
French royal fiefs tant, Philip had sufficient support and resources to
Battle keep a tight hold on Normandy.* He received hom-
age and fealty from most of the Norman aristoc-
The Consolidation of France racy, and his officers carried out their work there
under Philip Augustus,
in accordance with Norman customs.
1180–1223
Wherever he ruled, Philip instituted new admin-
istrative practices. Before Philip’s day, most French royal arrangements were committed
to memory rather than to writing. If decrees were recorded at all, they were saved by
the recipient, not by the government. The king did keep some documents, which he
generally carried with him in his travels like personal possessions. But in a battle in
1194, Philip lost his meager cache of documents along with much treasure when he
had to abandon his baggage train. After 1194, the king had all his decrees written
down, and he established a permanent repository in which to keep them.
Like the English king, Philip relied largely on members of the lesser nobility —
knights and clerics, many of whom were masters educated in the city schools of
France. They served as officers of his court, tax collectors, and overseers of the royal
estates, making the king’s power felt locally as never before.
Germany: The Revived Monarchy of Frederick Barbarossa

Theoretically, Henry V and his successors were kings of Germany and Italy, and at
Rome they received the crown and title of emperor from the popes as well. But the
Investiture Conflict (see page 325) reduced their power and authority. Meanwhile,
the German princes strengthened their position, enjoying near independence as they
built castles on their properties and established control over whole territories. When
they elected a new king, the princes made sure that he would give them new lands
*Philip was particularly successful in imposing royal control in Normandy; later French kings gave
most of the other territories conquered by Philip to various members of the royal family.
[1150–1215
and powers. The German kings were in a difficult position: they had to balance the
many conflicting interests of their royal and imperial offices, their families, and the
German princes, and they had to contend with the increasing power of the papacy
and the Italian communes. All this prevented the consolidation of power under a
strong German monarch during the first half of the twelfth century.
During the Investiture Conflict, the two sides (imperial and papal) were repre-
sented by two noble families. Leading the imperial party was the Staufer, or Hohen-
staufen, clan; opposing them were the Welfs. (Two later Italian factions, the Ghibel-
lines and the Guelphs, corresponded, respectively, to the Hohenstaufens and the
Welfs.) The enmity between these families was legendary, and warfare between the
groups raged long after the Concordat of Worms in 1122. Decades of constant battles
exhausted all parties, who began to long for peace. In an act of rare unanimity, they
elected Frederick I (Barbarossa). In Frederick (r. 1152–1190) they seemed to have a
candidate who could end the strife: his mother was a Welf, his father a Staufer. Con-
temporary accounts of the king’s
career represented Frederick in
the image of Christ as the corner-
stone that joined two houses and
reconciled enemies.
Frederick’s very appearance
impressed his contemporaries —
the name Barbarossa referred to
his red-blond hair and beard. But
beyond appearances, Frederick
impressed those around him by
what they called his firmness. He
affirmed royal rights, even when
he handed out duchies and allowed
others to name bishops, because
in return for these political pow-
ers Frederick required the princes
to concede formally and publicly
that they held their rights and
territories from him as their lord.
By making them his vassals,
although with nearly royal rights
Frederick Barbarossa
within their principalities, Freder- In this image of Frederick, made during his lifetime,
ick defined the princes’ subordi- the emperor is dressed as a crusader, and the inscrip-
nate relationship to the German tion tells him to fight the Muslims. The small figure on
king. the right is the abbot of the Monastery of Schäftlarn,
As the king of Germany, who gives Frederick a book that contains an account
of the First Crusade. (By Robert, a monk of Reims, History of
Frederick had the traditional Jerusalem, Fol. 1 / Vatican Apostolic Library, The Vatican, Italy /
right to claim the imperial crown. Photo © Tarker / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1150–1215
]
When, in 1155, he marched to Rome to be crowned emperor, the fledgling commune
there protested that it alone had the right to give him the crown. Frederick interrupted
them, asserting that the glory of Rome, together with its crown, came to him by right
of conquest. He was equally insistent with the pope, who wrote to tell him that Rome
belonged to St. Peter. Frederick replied that his imperial title gave him rights over
the city. In part, Frederick was influenced by the revival of Roman law — the laws of
Theodosius and Justinian — that was taking place in the schools of Italy. In part, too,
he was convinced of the sacred — not just secular — origins of the imperial office.
Frederick called his empire sacer (“sacred”), asserting that it was in its own way as
precious, worthwhile, and God-given as the church.
Frederick buttressed this high view of his imperial right with worldly power. He
married Beatrice of Burgundy, whose vast estates in Burgundy and Provence enabled
him to establish a powerful political and territorial base centered in Swabia (today
southwestern Germany). From Swabia, Frederick looked south to Italy, with its
wealthy cities. Swabia and northern Italy together could give Frederick a compact
and centrally located territory.
Nevertheless, Frederick’s ambitions in Italy were problematic. Since the Investi-
ture Conflict, the emperor had ruled Italy in name only. The communes of the north-
ern cities guarded their liberties jealously, while the pope considered Italy his own
sphere of influence. Frederick’s territorial base just north of Italy threatened those
interests (see Map 11.1, page 356).
Despite the opposition of the cities and the pope, Frederick was determined to
conquer northern Italy, which he managed to do by 1158. Adopting an Italian solu-
tion for governing the communes — appointing outsiders as magistrates — Frederick
appointed his own men to these powerful positions. But that was where Frederick
made a mistake. He chose German officials who lacked a sense of Italian communal
traditions. Their heavy hand created enormous resentment. By 1167, most of the
cities of northern Italy had joined with the pope to form the Lombard League against
Frederick. Defeated by the league at the battle of Legnano in 1176, Frederick made
peace and withdrew most of his forces from Italy. The battle marked the triumph of
the cities over the crown in Italy, which would not have a centralized government
until the nineteenth century; its political history would instead be that of its various
regions and their dominant cities.
Frederick was the victim of traditions that were rapidly becoming outmoded.
He based much of his rule in Germany on the bond of lord and vassal at the very
moment when rulers elsewhere were relying less on such personal ties and more on
salaried officials. He lived up to the meaning of emperor, with all its obligations to
rule Rome and northern Italy, when other leaders were consolidating their territorial
rule bit by bit. In addition, as “universal” emperor, he did not recognize the impor-
tance of local pride, language, customs, and traditions; he tried to rule Italian com-
munes with his own men from Germany, and he failed.
Frederick also had problems in Germany, where he had to contend with princes
of near-royal status who acted as independent rulers of their principalities, though
[1150–1215
acknowledging Frederick as their feudal lord. One of the most powerful was Henry
the Lion (c. 1130–1195), who was duke of Saxony and Bavaria, which gave him impor-
tant bases in both the north and the south of Germany. A confident and aggressive
ruler, Henry dominated his territory by investing bishops (usurping the role of the
emperor as outlined in the Concordat of Worms), collecting dues from his estates,
and exercising judicial rights over his territories. Henry also actively extended his
rule, especially in Slavic regions, pushing northeast past the Elbe River to reestablish
dioceses and to build the commercial city of Lübeck (today in northern Germany).
He was lord of many vassals and ministerials (people of unfree status but high pres-
tige). He organized a staff of clerics and ministerials to collect taxes and tolls and to
write up his legal acts.
Yet like kings, princes could fall. Henry’s growing power so threatened other
princes and even Frederick that in 1179 Frederick called Henry to the king’s court
for violating the peace. When Henry chose not to appear, Frederick exercised his
authority as Henry’s lord and charged him with violating his duty as a vassal. Because
Henry refused the summons to court and avoided serving his lord in Italy, Frederick
condemned him, confiscated his holdings, and drove him out of Germany.
However, successfully challenging one recalcitrant prince/vassal meant negotiating
costly deals with the others, since their support was vital. Frederick wanted to retain
Henry’s duchy for himself, as Philip Augustus had managed to do with Normandy. But
Frederick was not powerful enough to do so and was forced to divide and distribute
it to the supporters he had relied on to enforce his decrees against Henry.
Eastern Europe and Byzantium: Fragmenting Realms

The importance of governmental and bureaucratic institutions such as those devel-
oped in England and France is made especially clear by comparing the experience of
regions where they were not established. In eastern Europe, the characteristic pattern
was for states to form under the leadership of one great ruler and then to fragment
under his successor. For example, King Béla III of Hungary (r. 1172–1196) built up
a state that looked superficially like a western European kingdom. He married a
French princess, sent his officials to Paris to be educated, and built his palace in the
French Romanesque style. The annual income from his estates, tolls, dues, and taxes
equaled that of the richest western monarchs. But Béla did not set up enduring
governmental institutions, and in the decades that followed his death, wars between
his sons splintered his monarchical holdings, and aristocratic supporters divided the
wealth.
Rus underwent a similar process. Although twelfth-century Kiev was politically
fragmented, autocratic princes to the north constructed Vladimir (also known as
Suzdalia), the nucleus of the later Muscovite state. Within the clearly defined borders
of this principality, well-to-do towns prospered and monasteries and churches flour-
ished; one chronicler wrote that “all lands trembled at the name [of its ruler].” Yet early
in the thirteenth century this nascent state began to crumble as princely claimants
[ 1150–1215
]
fought one another for power, much as Béla’s sons had done in Hungary. Soon Rus
would be conquered by the Mongols (see page 400).
Although the Byzantine Empire was already a consolidated bureaucratic state,
after the mid-twelfth century it gradually began to show weaknesses. Traders from
the west — the Venetians especially — dominated its commerce. The Byzantine emper-
ors who ruled during the last half of the twelfth century downgraded the old civil
servants, elevated imperial relatives to high offices, and favored the military elite,
who nevertheless rarely came to the aid of the emperor. As Byzantine rule grew more
personal and European rule became more bureaucratic, the two gradually became
more alike.
The Byzantine Empire might well have continued like this for a long time. Instead,
its heart was knocked out by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204). At the
instigation of Venice, the crusaders made a detour to Constantinople on their way
to the Holy Land, capturing the city in 1204. Although one of the crusade leaders
was named “emperor” and ruled in Constantinople and its surrounding territory, the
Byzantine Empire itself continued to exist,
though disunited and weak. It retook Con-
REVIEW QUESTION What new sources and
institutions of power became available to rulers
stantinople in 1261, but it never regained
in the second half of the twelfth century? the power that it had had in the eleventh
century.
The Growth of a Vernacular High Culture

With their consolidation of territory, wealth, and power in the last half of the twelfth
century, kings, barons, princes, and their wives and daughters supported new kinds
of literature and music. For the first time on the continent, though long true in
England, poems and songs were written in the vernacular, the spoken language,
rather than in Latin. Meant to be read or sung aloud, sometimes with accompanying
musical instruments, they celebrated nobles’ lives and provided a common experi-
ence for aristocrats at court. Patrons and patronesses in the cities of Italy and in the
more isolated courts of northern Europe spent the profits from their estates and
commerce on the arts. Their support helped develop and enrich the spoken language
while it heightened their prestige as aristocrats.
The Troubadours: Poets of Love and Play

Already at the beginning of the twelfth century, Duke William IX of Aquitaine (1071–
1126), the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine, had written lyric poems in Occitan,
the vernacular of southern France. Perhaps influenced by Arabic and Hebrew love
poetry from al-Andalus, he was the first of the troubadours, lyric poets who wrote
in Occitan. (Women poets using this language were known as trobairitz.) Their
poems were clever and inventive. The final four-line stanza of one such poem dem-
onstrates the poet’s skill:
[1150–1215
] The Growth of a Vernacular High Culture 365
Per aquesta fri e tremble, For this one I shiver and tremble,
quar de tan bon’ amor l’am; I love her with such a good love;
qu’anc no cug qu’en nasques I do not think the like of her was
semble ever born
en semblan de gran linh n’Adam. in the long line of Lord Adam.
The rhyme scheme of this poem appears to be simple — tremble goes with semble,
l’am with n’Adam — but the entire poem has five earlier verses, all six lines long and
all containing the -am, -am rhyme in the fourth and sixth lines, while every other
line within each verse rhymes as well.
Troubadours and trobairitz varied their rhymes and meters endlessly to dazzle
their audiences with brilliant originality. Their most common topic, love, echoed the
twelfth-century church’s emphasis on the emotional relationship between God and
humans. But the troubadours concentrated on the various forms of human love and
its joys and sorrows. Thus the trobairitz Contessa de Dia (flourished c. 1160) wrote
about her unrequited love for a man:
So bitter do I feel toward him

whom I love more than anything.
With him my mercy and cortesia [fine manners] are in vain.
The key to these lines, as to troubadour verse in general, is the idea of cortesia. The
word refers to courtesy (the refinement of people living at court) and to the struggle
to achieve an ideal of virtue.
Historians and literary critics used to use the term courtly love to emphasize one
of the themes of this literature: overwhelming love for a beautiful married noblewoman
who is far above the poet in status and utterly unattainable. But this theme was only
one of many aspects of love that the troubadours sang about: some of the songs boasted
of sexual conquests, others played with the notion of equality between lovers, and still
others preached that love was the source of virtue. The real overall theme of this litera-
ture is not courtly love; it is the power of women. And no wonder: there were many
powerful ladies (the female counterparts of lords) in southern France. They owned
property, had vassals, led battles, decided disputes, and entered into and broke political
alliances as their advantage dictated. Both men and women appreciated troubadour
poetry, which recognized and praised women’s power even as it eroticized it.
Troubadour poetry was not read; it was sung, typically by a jongleur, a medieval
musician. Manuscripts from the thirteenth century show troubadour music written
on four- and five-line staves, so scholars can at least determine relative pitches, and
modern musicians can sing some troubadour songs with the hope of sounding rea-
sonably like the original. This popular music is the earliest that can be re-created
authentically (Figure 11.2).
From southern France, the troubadours’ songs spread to Italy, northern France,
England, and Germany. Similar poetry appeared in other vernacular languages: the
minnesingers (“love singers”) sang in German; the trouvères sang in the Old French
[ 1150–1215
]
Anc no mori per amor ni per al
I Never Died for Love
Anc no mo ri per a mor ni per al,

I nev er died for love or for aught else,
Mais ma vi da pot be va ler mu rir

But my life is surely the e qual of death
Quan vei la ren qu’eu plus am e de zir

When I see the creature I most love and desire,
E ren no.m fai mas quan do lor e mal.

And it brings me only pain and suf fer ing.
FIGURE 11.2 Troubadour Song: “I Never Died for Love”

This music is the first part of a song written by troubadour poet Peire Vidal sometime between
1175 and 1205. It has been adapted here for the treble clef. There is no time signature, but
the music may easily be played by calculating one beat for each note, except for the two-note
slurs, which fit into one beat together. (From Samuel N. Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot,
eds., Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères. Copyright © 1997 by Samuel N. Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, and
Gerard Le Vot. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis / Garland Publishing, http://www.taylorandfrancis.com.)
of northern France. One trouvère was the English king Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Taken prisoner on his return from the Third Crusade, Richard wrote a poem express-
ing his longing not for a lady but for the good companions of war, the knightly
“youths” he had joined in battle:
They know well, the men of Anjou and Touraine,
. . . that I am arrested, far from them, in another’s hands.
There’s no lordly fighting now on the barren plains,
because I am a prisoner.
Clearly some troubadour poetry was about war rather than love.
The Birth of Epic and Romance Literature

War was not as common a topic in lyric poetry as love, but some long vernacular
poems, called chansons de geste (“songs of heroic deeds”) and later termed epic
poems, were all about warriors and their battles. They were written down at about
[1150–1215
] Religious Fervor and Crusade 367
the same time as love poems. Like the songs of the troubadours, these epic poems
implied a code of behavior for aristocrats, in this case on the battlefield. They served
as heroic models for nobles and knights, whose positions were being threatened by
the newly emerging merchants in the cities on the one hand and newly powerful
kings on the other. The knights’ ascendancy on the battlefield, where they unhorsed
one another with lances and long swords and took prisoners rather than killing their
opponents, was also beginning to wane in the face of mercenary infantrymen who
wielded long hooks and knives that ripped easily through chain mail. A knightly
ethos and sense of group solidarity emerged in the face of these social, political, and
military changes. Even while heroic poems celebrated battles, they explored the moral
issues that made war tragic, if inevitable.
Other long poems, later called romances, explored the relationships between
men and women. Often inspired by the legend of King Arthur, romances reached
their zenith of popularity during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In
one romance, for example, the heroic knight Lancelot, who is in love with King
Arthur’s wife, Queen Guinevere, chooses humiliation over honor because of his love
for the queen. When she sees him — the greatest knight in Christendom — fighting
in a tournament, she tests him by asking him to do his “worst.” The poor knight is
obliged to lose all his battles until she changes her mind.
Lancelot was the perfect chivalric knight. The word chivalry derives from the
French word cheval (“horse”); the fact that the knight was a horseman marked him
as a warrior of the most prestigious sort. Perched high on his horse, his heavy lance
couched in his right arm, the knight was both imposing and menacing. Chivalry
made him gentle — except to his enemies on the battlefield. The chivalric hero was
a knight constrained by a code of refine-
ment, fair play, piety, and devotion to an
REVIEW QUESTION What do the works of the
ideal. Historians debate whether real
troubadours and vernacular poets reveal about
knights lived up to the codes implicit in the nature of entertainment — its themes,
epics and romances, but there is no doubt its audience, its performers — in the twelfth
that knights saw themselves mirrored there. century?
They were the poets’ audience.
Religious Fervor and Crusade

The new vernacular culture was one sign of the growing wealth, sophistication, and
self-confidence of the late twelfth century. New forms of religious life were another.
Unlike the reformed orders of the early half of the century, which had fled the cities,
the new religious groups embraced (and were embraced by) urban populations. Rich
and poor, male and female joined these movements. They criticized the existing
church as too wealthy, impersonal, and spiritually superficial. Intensely interested in
the life of Christ, men and women in the late twelfth century made his childhood,
agony, death, and presence in the Eucharist — the bread and wine that became the
body and blood of Christ in the Mass — the emotional focus of their own lives.
[ 1150–1215
]
Religious fervor mixed with greed in new crusades that had little success in the
Holy Land but were victorious on the borders of Europe and, as we have already
seen, at Constantinople. These were the poisonous flowers of the Middle Ages.
New Religious Orders in the Cities

The quick rebuilding of the cathedral at Chartres reveals the religious fervor of late-
twelfth-century city dwellers. This helps explain the new religious orders that appeared
in the cities. The church accepted many new orders; some, however, so threatened
the established doctrine and hierarchy that they were condemned as heresies.
St. Francis (c. 1182–1226) founded one of the most successful of the movements
within the church, the Franciscans. Son of a well-to-do trader in the city of Assisi
in Italy, Francis began to experience doubts, dreams, and illnesses that spurred him
to religious self-examination. Eventually, he renounced his family’s wealth, put on a
simple robe, and went about preaching penance to anyone who would listen.
Clinging to poverty as if, in his words, “she” were his “lady” (and thus borrowing
the vocabulary of chivalry), Francis accepted no money, walked without shoes, and
wore only one coarse tunic. He brought religious devotion out of the monastery and
into the streets. Intending to follow the model of Christ, he received, as his biogra-
phers put it, a miraculous gift of grace: the stigmata, bleeding sores corresponding
to the wounds Christ suffered on the cross.
By all accounts Francis was a spellbinding speaker, and he attracted many fol-
lowers. Because they went about begging, those followers were called mendicants,
from the Latin verb mendicare (“to beg”). Recognized as a religious order by the
pope, the Brothers of St. Francis (or friars, from the Latin term for “brothers”) spent
their time preaching, ministering to the sick, and doing manual labor. Eventually
they dispersed, setting up fraternal groups throughout Italy and then in France,
Spain, Germany, England, and the Holy Land.
Francis converted not only men but women. One of these, Clare, formed the
nucleus of a community of pious women, that became the Order of the Sisters of
St. Francis. At first, the women worked alongside the friars; but both Francis and
the church hierarchy disapproved of their activities in the world, and soon Francis-
can sisters were confined to cloisters under the rule of St. Benedict.
Clare was one of many women who sought outlets for religious expression. Some
women joined convents; others became recluses, living alone like hermits; still others
sought membership in new lay sisterhoods. In northern Europe at the end of the
twelfth century, laywomen who lived together in informal pious communities were
called Beguines. Without permanent vows or an established rule, the Beguines chose
to be celibate (though they were free to leave their Beguinage to marry) and often
made their living by weaving cloth or tending to the sick and old. Some of them may
have prepared and illustrated their own reading materials. (See the illustration on page
369.) Although their daily occupations were ordinary, the Beguines’ spiritual lives
were often emotional and ecstatic, infused with the combined imagery of love and
[1150–1215
Beguine Psalter
Although emphasizing labor and caring
for others, most Beguines were also
literate. The Psalter (book of Psalms)
illustrated here was probably made by
Beguines. The painting focuses on Mary:
in the bottom tier is the Annunciation,
when she learns that she will give birth
to the Savior. At the top Mary reigns as
Queen of Heaven, with a crown on her
head and the baby Jesus on her lap.
(© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.
Liège Psalter, BL Add. Ms. 2114, fol. 8v.)
religion so pervasive in both mon-

asteries and courts. One renowned
Beguine, Mary of Oignies (1177–
1213), who like St. Francis was
rumored to have received stigmata,
said that sometimes “she held
[Christ] close to her so that He nes-
tled between her breasts like a baby.”
The church tentatively tolerated
the Beguines. But other religious
movements so contradicted officially accepted ideas that church authorities labeled
them heresies. Heresies were not new in the twelfth century. But the eleventh-century
Gregorian reform had created for the first time in the West a clear church hierarchy
headed by a pope who could enforce a single doctrine and discipline. Clearly defined
orthodoxy meant that people in western Europe now perceived deviant religious
ideas as a serious problem.
Among the most visible heretics were dualists who saw the world as being torn
between two great forces — one good, the other evil. In Languedoc, an area of south-
ern France, the dualists were called Albigensians, a name derived from the town of
Albi. Calling themselves “Christ’s poor” — though modern historians have given
them the collective name Cathars (from a Greek word meaning “pure”) — these men
and women believed that the devil had created the material world. They renounced
the world, rejecting wealth, meat, and sex. Their repudiation of sex reflected some
of the attitudes of eleventh-century church reformers (whose orthodoxy, however,
was never in doubt), while their rejection of wealth echoed the same concerns that
moved St. Francis to embrace poverty. In many ways, the dualists simply took these
attitudes to an extreme; but unlike orthodox reformers, they also challenged the
efficacy and legitimacy of the church hierarchy. Attracting both men and women,
young and old, literate and unlettered, and giving women access to all but the highest
[ 1150–1215
]
positions in their church, the dualists saw themselves as followers of Christ’s original
message. But the church called them heretics.
Disastrous Crusades to the Holy Land

Did religious fervor also inspire the crusades of the later twelfth century? Some
Europeans thought so. The pope called the Third Crusade “an opportunity for repen-
tance and doing good.” This crusade was indirectly a result of the fall of the Seljuk
Empire at the hands of Nur al-Din and his successor Saladin (1138–1193), Sunni
Muslims eager to impose their brand of Islam in the region. They took Syria and
Egypt, and, in 1187, Saladin conquered Jerusalem.
The Third Crusade was an unsuccessful bid to retake the Holy City. The greatest
rulers of Europe — Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), Philip II of France, Leopold of
Austria, and Richard I of England — led it. But they spent most of their time quar-
reling with one another or harassing the Byzantines. After they went home, the cru-
sader states remained a shadow of themselves — minus Jerusalem — until they were
entirely snuffed out in 1291. Islamic hegemony over the Holy Land would remain a
fact of life for centuries.
The hostilities that surfaced during the Third Crusade made it a dress rehearsal
for the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204). Hostility toward the Byzantines had begun long
before the thirteenth century. Now it combined with Venetian opportunism. When
the pope called the crusade, the Venetians fitted out a fine fleet of ships and galleys
for the expedition. But when the crusaders arrived in Venice, there were far fewer
fighters to pay for the transport than had been anticipated. To defray the costs of the
ships and other expenses, the Venetians convinced the crusaders to do them some
favors before taking off against the Muslims. First, they had the crusaders attack Zara,
a Christian city in Dalmatia (today’s Croatia) that was Venice’s competitor in the
Adriatic. Then they urged the army to attack Constantinople itself, where they hoped
to gain commercial advantage over their rivals (Map 11.2).
Convinced of the superiority of their brand of Christianity over that of the Byz-
antines, the crusaders killed many inhabitants of Constantinople and ransacked the
city for treasure and relics. When one crusader discovered a cache of relics, a chroni-
cler recalled, “he plunged both hands in and, girding up his loins, he filled the folds
of his gown with the holy booty of the Church.” The pope decried the sack of Con-
stantinople, but he also took advantage of it, ordering the crusaders to stay there for
a year to consolidate their gains. Plans to go on to the Holy Land were never carried
out. The crusade leaders chose one of themselves — Baldwin of Flanders — to be
emperor, and he, the other princes, and the Venetians divided the conquered lands
among themselves. Popes continued to call crusades to the Holy Land until the mid-
fifteenth century, but the Fourth Crusade marked the last major mobilization of men
and leaders for such an enterprise. Working against these expeditions were the new
values of the late twelfth century, which placed a premium on the interior pilgrimage
of the soul and valued rulers who stayed home and cared for their people.
[ 1150–1215
FINLAND
NORWAY Third Crusade, 1189–1192
N
SWEDEN Fourth Crusade, 1202–1204
W
ESTONIA Christian attacks in Spain, to 1212
E SCOTLAND
LIVONIA Northern Crusades, twelfth century
ea
S
Nor th Albigensian Crusade, to 1215
cS
IRELAND Sea DENMARK LITHUANIA
ti
l Crusader states, c. 1189
Ba
Lübeck Battle
ENGLAND Pomerania PRUSSIA
Bremen
London
Saxony
POLAND RUS
Od
Flanders r R Silesia
AT L ANTIC
e
.
Dni
O CEA N Paris THE e pe r
R.
EMPIRE
HUNGARY
Vézelay Vienna
FRANCE AUSTRIA (route of
Toulouse Frederick
1212 Rhône Venice
Barbarossa)
León R. Genoa
ALBIGENSIANS Zara R.
Marseille 1202 Danube Bl ack S e a
Portugal Ad
Castile Aragon Corsica r ia
tic BULGARIA Constantinople
Languedoc Se 1204
Lisbon Rome a
Valencia
Sardinia
Las Navas BYZANTINE EMPIRE
A
de Tolosa
L
1212 O
M
Edessa
H Sicily
A SYRIA
D Cyprus
D (route of
O Me
M dit Crete Richard I) Damascus
IN err
ane
IO a n S e a (route of Philip II) Acre
N
S Alexandria Jerusalem
0 200 400 miles

0 200 400 kilometers EGYPT
MAP 11.2 Crusades and Anti-heretic Campaigns, 1150–1215

Europeans aggressively expanded their territory during the second half of the twelfth century. To
the north, knights pushed into the Baltic Sea region. To the south, warriors pushed against the
Muslims in al-Andalus and waged war against the Cathars in southern France. To the east, the
new crusades were undertaken to shore up the tiny European outpost in the Holy Land. Although
most of these aggressive activities had the establishment of Christianity as at least one motive,
the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 had no such justification. It grew in part out of general
European hostility toward Byzantium but mainly out of Venice’s commercial ambitions.
Victorious Crusades in Europe and on Its Frontiers

Armed expeditions against those perceived as infidels were launched not only to the
Holy Land but also much nearer to home. In Spain, the reconquista continued with
increasing success and virulence in the second half of the twelfth century. Christian
Spain took on the political configuration that would last for centuries: Aragon in the
east, Castile in the middle, and Portugal in the west. The leaders of these polities
competed for territory and power, but above all they sought an advantage against
the Muslims to the south (Map 11.3).
[ 1150–1215
]
N Compostela
W
FRANCE
E León
Pamplona
S LEÓN Burgos
Porto ro NAVARRE PYREN
Eb
R. EES
Valladolid
Duero R.
PORTUGAL
A T LA N T IC CASTILE
Saragossa ARAGON
Barcelona
OC E A N Tagus
R. Toledo
Lisbon Tarragona
Badajoz
Gu
ad
ia n
aR Valencia
.
Las Navas de Tolosa
uivir R.
alq Córdoba
1212
BALEARIC
ad
Seville Murcia ISLANDS

Gu
AL-ANDALUS
Reconquest, 1150–1212 Cádiz
Med i terran ean S ea
by Castile Gibraltar
by Aragon Tangier Ceuta
by Portugal
Islamic areas
0 100 200 miles
Battle NORTH AFRICA
MAP 11.3 The Reconquista, 1150–1212

Slowly but surely the Christian kingdoms of Spain encroached on al-Andalus, taking Las Navas
de Tolosa, deep in Islamic territory, in 1212. At the center of this activity was Castile. It had
originally been a tributary of León, but in the twelfth century it became a power in its own right.
(In 1230, León and Castile merged into one kingdom.) Meanwhile, the ruler of Portugal, who
had also been dependent on León, began to claim the title of king, which was recognized offi-
cially in 1179, when he put Portugal under the protection of the papacy. Navarre was joined
to Aragon until 1134, when it became, briefly, an independent kingdom. (In 1234, the count
of Champagne came to the throne of Navarre, and thereafter its history was as much tied to
France as to Spain.)
Piecemeal conquests — followed by the granting of law codes to regulate rela-

tions among new Christian settlers as well as the Muslims, Mozarabs (Christians who
had lived under the Muslims), and Jews who remained — gradually brought more
territory under northern control. In 1212, a crusading army of Spaniards led by the
kings of Aragon and Castile defeated the Muslims decisively at the battle of Las
Navas de Tolosa. “On their side 100,000 armed men or more fell in the battle,” the
king of Castile wrote afterward, “but . . . incredible though it may be, unless it be a
miracle, hardly 25 or 30 Christians of our whole army fell. O what happiness! O
what thanksgiving!” The decisive turning point in the reconquista had been reached,
though all of Spain came under Christian control only in 1492.
Christians flexed their military muscle along Europe’s northern frontiers as well
(see Map 11.2, page 371). Already during the Second Crusade a number of campaigns
had been launched against the people on the Baltic coast. Those campaigns were the
[1150–1215
Almourol Castle
In the early twelfth century,
the papacy recognized the
reconquista as equivalent to
a crusade, and the rulers of
Portugal, Castile, and Aragon
persuaded the Templars and
other military orders to help
them hold on to regions that
had formerly been Muslim.
When the Portuguese ruler
conquered the western end
of the Tagus River valley in
the mid-twelfth century, he
entrusted some of the Mus-
lim strongholds there to the
Templars. They rebuilt one
of them as Almourol castle,
using it to defend Portugal’s
new frontier. (Index / Bridgeman
Images.)
beginnings of the Northern Crusades, which continued intermittently until the early
fifteenth century. The first phase was led by the king of Denmark and the Saxon
duke Henry the Lion. Their initial attacks on the Slavs were uncoordinated, but in
the 1160s and 1170s, the two leaders worked together to bring much of the region
west of the Oder River under their control. They took some land outright; even more
frequently, they turned Slavic princes into their vassals. Meanwhile, the Cistercians
arrived even before the first phase of fighting had ended, building monasteries to
the very banks of the Oder River. Soon German traders, craftspeople, and colonists
poured in, populating new towns and cities along the Baltic coast and dominating
the shipping that had once been controlled by non-Christians. The leaders of the
crusades gave these townsmen some political independence but demanded a large
share of the cities’ wealth in return.
Slavic peasants suffered from the conquerors’ fire and pillage, but the Slavic rul-
ing classes ultimately benefited from the Northern Crusades. Once converted to
Christianity, they found it advantageous for both their eternal salvation and their
worldly profit to join new crusades to areas still farther east.
Although less well known than the crusades to the Holy Land, the Northern
Crusades had far more lasting effects: they settled the Baltic region with German-
speaking lords and peasants and forged a permanent relationship between northeast-
ern Europe and its neighbors to the south and west. With the Baltic dotted with
churches and monasteries and its peoples dipped into baptismal waters, the region
[ 1150–1215
]
0 150 300 miles gradually adopted the institutions of western medi-
0 150 300 kilometers eval society — cities, guilds, universities, castles, and
Rh
ine
English Channel Douai manors. Only the Lithuanians managed to resist
Liège
R.
western conquest, settlement, and conversion.
Se
ne Trier
i
R. THE Crusades were also launched within Europe
EMPIRE
R. itself. The first of these attacked the Cathars in
Loire
FRANCE southern France. To be sure, the papacy initially
Lyon tried conversion, and the Dominican Order had
Bordeaux
Garonne
Rhône R. its start as preachers to the heretics. Its founder,
R.
Toulouse
Albi Avignon St. Dominic (1170–1221), and his followers rejected
Eb
Montpellier material riches and went about on foot, preaching
ro Narbonne Marseille
R. and begging and trying to bring the Cathars back
into the church. Resembling the Franciscans both
Major concentrations
of heretics organizationally and spiritually, the Dominicans,
Albigensian crusade too, were called friars. But their missions did not
have much success, and in 1208 the pope called
The Albigensian Crusade, upon northern princes to take up the sword, invade
1209–1229 Languedoc, wrest the land from the heretics, and
populate it with orthodox Christians.
The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) for the first time offered warriors fighting
an enemy within Christian Europe all the spiritual and temporal benefits of a crusade
to the Holy Land. Like all other crusades, the Albigensian Crusade had political as
well as religious dimensions. It pitted southern French princes, who often had hereti-
cal sympathies, against northern leaders eager to demonstrate their piety and win
new possessions. After sixteen years of
warfare, the Capetian kings of France took
REVIEW QUESTION How did the idea of cru-
sade change from the time of the original
over leadership of the crusade. By 1229, all
expedition to the Holy Land? resistance was broken, and Languedoc was
brought under the French crown.
Conclusion
In the second half of the twelfth century, Christian Europe expanded from the Baltic
Sea to the southern Iberian peninsula. European settlements in the Holy Land, by
contrast, were nearly obliterated. When western Europeans sacked Constantinople in
1204, Europe and the Islamic world became the dominant political forces in the West.
Powerful territorial kings and princes established institutions of bureaucratic
authority. They hired staffs to handle their accounts, record acts, collect taxes, issue
writs, and preside over courts. A money economy provided the finances necessary
to support the new bureaucracy. Cathedral schools and universities became its train-
ing ground. A new lay vernacular culture celebrated the achievements and power of
the ruling class, while Gothic architecture reflected above all the pride and power of
the cities.
[1150–1215
] Conclusion 375
ESTONIA Islamic areas

SCOTLAND English territories
Boundary of the Empire
a
N Nor th
Se
IRELAND S ea
c
W
ti
l LITHUANIA
E Ba
S Wales
ENGLAND
Oxford London
Saxony RUS
Lewes
Antwerp POLAND
Liège
ATL A NT IC Thuringia
O CEAN Chartres Paris GERMANYBohemia Cracow
Franconia
Anjou Moravia
FRANCE Vienna
Swabia Bavaria
Limoges Burgundy HUNGARY
Carinthia
Aquitaine Lyon Venice
LEÓN Milan
Romagna
León Albi Lombardy (Area claimed
Genoa Bologna
Languedoc Provence by papacy) Bl ack S e a
ITALY Florence
PORTUGAL Tuscany Ad LATIN
CASTILE ARAGON Corsica BULGARIA
r ia SERBIA EMPIRE
tic
Toledo Rome Se
a Constantinople
Sardinia PAPAL Naples
Seville STATES
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
KINGDOM OF
SICILY
NORTH AFRICA Mediterranean Sea 0 200 400 miles
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and Byzantium, c. 1215

The major transformation in the map of the West between 1150 and 1215 was the conquest of
Constantinople and the setting up of European rule there until 1261. The Byzantine Empire was
now split into two parts. Bulgaria once again gained its independence. If Venice had hoped to
control the Adriatic by conquering Constantinople, it must have been disappointed, for Hungary
became its rival over the ports of the Dalmatian coast.
New religious groups blossomed — Beguines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and

heretics. However dissimilar the particulars, the beliefs and lifestyles of these groups
reflected the fact that people, especially city dwellers, yearned for a deeper
spirituality.
Intense religiosity helped fuel the flames of crusades, which were now fought
more often and against an increasing variety of foes, not only in the Holy Land but
also in Spain, in southern France, and on Europe’s northern frontiers. The peoples
on the Baltic coast became targets for new evangelical zeal; the Byzantines became
the butt of envy, hostility, and finally enmity. With heretics voicing criticisms, the
church, led by the papacy, now defined orthodoxy and declared dissenters its ene-
mies. European Christians still considered Muslims arrogant heathens, and the
deflection of the Fourth Crusade did not stem the zeal of popes to call for new
crusades to the Holy Land.
[ 1150–1215
]
Confident and aggressive, the leaders of Christian Europe in the thirteenth cen-
tury would attempt to impose their rule, legislate morality, and create a unified
worldview impregnable to attack. But this drive for order would be countered by
unexpected varieties of thought and action, by political and social tensions, and by
intensely personal religious quests.
Chapter 11 Review
Romanesque (p. 351) Philip II (Philip Augustus) chansons de geste (p. 366)
Gothic architecture (p. 352) (p. 359) chivalry (p. 367)
Henry II (p. 355) Frederick I (Barbarossa) Franciscans (p. 368)
common law (p. 358) (p. 361) Fourth Crusade (p. 370)
Magna Carta (p. 359) troubadours/trobairitz (p. 364)
Review Questions
1. What was new about education and church architecture in the twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries?
2. What new sources and institutions of power became available to rulers in the second half
of the twelfth century?
3. What do the works of the troubadours and vernacular poets reveal about the nature of
entertainment — its themes, its audience, its performers — in the twelfth century?
4. How did the idea of crusade change from the time of the original expedition to the Holy Land?
Making Connections
1. What were the chief differences that separated the ideals of the religious life in the period
1150–1215 from those of the period 1050–1150?
2. How was the gift economy associated with Romanesque architecture and the money econ-
omy with the Gothic style?
3. How do political developments — the growth of bureaucratic institutions, the development
of strong monarchies, the growth of city governments — help explain the rise and popularity
of vernacular literature and song in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries?
[1150–1215
Important Events
1139–1153 Civil War in England

1152–1190 Reign of Frederick Barbarossa
1154–1189 Reign of King Henry II
1176 Battle of Legnano
1180–1223 Reign of Philip II Augustus
c. 1182–1226 Life of Francis of Assisi
1189–1192 The Third Crusade
1202–1204 The Fourth Crusade
1204 Fall of Constantinople to crusaders
1204 Philip takes Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou from John
1209–1229 Albigensian Crusade
1212 Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa; triumph of the reconquista
1214 Battle of Bouvines
1215 Magna Carta
Consider three events: The Third Crusade (1189–1192), The Fourth Crusade (1202–
1204), and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229). What were their various causes and
results? How were they differently waged and led?
For the new schools, Abelard is a key primary source, while Clanchy provides perceptive back-
ground. Both Burl and Coldstream discuss cultural and artistic developments. Bartlett and
Bradbury are essential for politics.
*Abelard’s The Story of My Misfortunes: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/abelard-sel.html
Aurell, Martin. The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224. Trans. David Crouch. 2007.
Bartlett, Robert. England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225. 2000.
Bouchard, Constance Brittain. “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted”: The Discourse of Opposites in
Twelfth-Century Thought. 2003.
Bradbury, Jim. Philip Augustus: King of France. 1998.
Burl, Aubrey. Courts of Love, Castles of Hate: Troubadours and Trobairitz in Southern France,
1071–1321. 2008.
Cheyette, Fredric L. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. 2001.
Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades. 2nd ed. 1998.
Clanchy, Michael. Abelard: A Medieval Life. 1997.
Coldstream, Nicola. Medieval Architecture. 2002.
*Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and
Related Texts. Trans. G. A. Loud. 2010.
Hudson, John. The Formation of the English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the
Norman Conquest to Magna Carta. 1996.
Moore, R. I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe,
950–1250. 2nd ed. 2007.
Paden, William, and Frances Freeman Paden, eds. and trans. Troubadour Poems from the South
of France. 2007.
Pegg, Mark Gregory. A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom. 2008.
*Primary source.
The Medieval Synthesis —
12
and Its Cracks
1215–1340
T
oward the end of the thirteenth century, a Paris workshop produced an
elegantly illustrated translation of some of Aristotle’s works. On the opening
page of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in the large O of the first word, omnes (“all”),
an artist depicted Aristotle seated on a bench and pointing to the sky. Although
Aristotle was a Greek who had lived before the time of Christ, the artist showed him
instructing monks while he pointed to a sky
Aristotle Instructs the Monks
dominated by Christ himself. In this way, the
“All men by nature desire to learn” artist subtly but surely incorporated the pagan
says the opening text of this trans- Aristotle into Christian belief and practice.
lation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and In the period from 1215 to 1340, Europe-
that explains why the artist placed ans at every level, from workshop artisans to
in the initial letter a depiction of
kings and popes, thought that they could har-
Aristotle as a teacher. Notice that
he wears a turban, a tribute to the monize all ideas with Christianity, all aspects
fact that Aristotle’s works were of this world with the next, and all of nature
transmitted to Europe via Arabic with revelation. Sometimes, as in the case of
scholarship. Above the sky to which the illumination made for Aristotle’s treatise,
Aristotle points is Christ himself. In
the synthesis worked. But often it was forced,
this way, the artist revealed his cer-
tainty that the ancient teachings of
fragile, or elusive. Not everyone was willing to
Aristotle and Christian belief worked subordinate his or her beliefs to the tenets of
together. (Opening page of the Metaphys- Christianity; kings and popes argued, without
ics of Artistotle, 13th century / Bibliotheque resolution, about the limits of their power; and
Mazarine, Paris, France / Archives Charmet /
Bridgeman Images.)
theologians fought over the place of reason in
matters of faith. Discord continually threat-
ened expectations of unity and harmony.
Medieval thinkers, writers, musicians, and artists attempted to reconcile faith
and reason and to find the commonalities in the sacred and secular realms. At the
level of philosophy, this quest led to a new method of inquiry and study known as
scholasticism. Yet some scholastic thinkers pointed out cracks and disjunctions in
the syntheses achieved.
379
380 Chapter 12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks
[ 1215–1340
]
To impose greater order and unity, kings and other rulers found new ways to
extend their influence over their subjects. They used the tools of taxes, courts, and
even representative institutions to control their realms. Popes issued new laws for
Christians and established courts of inquisition to find and punish heretics (those
who dissented from church teachings). Both secular and religious authorities at times
persecuted Jews and lepers. Yet none of this prevented dissent, and rulers often did
not gain all the power they wanted.
From 1215 to 1340, the Empire weak-
ened, the papacy asserted itself but was
CHAPTER FOCUS In what areas of life did
eventually forced to move out of Rome, and
thirteenth-century Europeans try to find har-
mony and impose order, and how successful
the Mongols challenged Christian rulers.
were these attempts? Soon natural disasters — crop failures and
famine — added to the tension.
The Church’s Mission

The church had long sought to reform the secular world. In the eleventh century,
during the Gregorian reform, it focused on the king. In the thirteenth century, it
hoped to purify all of society. It tried to strengthen its institutions of law and justice
to combat heresy and heretics, and it supported preachers who would bring the
official views of the church to the streets. In this way, the church attempted to reorder
the world in the image of heaven, with everyone following the laws of God as set
forth by the church. It succeeded in this endeavor to some degree, but it also came
up against the limits of control as dissident voices and forces clashed with its vision.
Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council

Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) was the most powerful, respected, and prestigious of
medieval popes. As pope, he allowed St. Francis’s group of impoverished followers
to become a new church order, and he called the Fourth Crusade, which mobilized
a large force drawn from every level of European society. The first university-trained
pope, Innocent studied theology at Paris and law at Bologna. From theology, he
learned to tease new meaning out of canonical writings to magnify papal authority:
he thought of himself as ruling in the place of Christ the King, with kings and emper-
ors existing to help the pope. From law, Innocent gained his conceptions of the pope
as lawmaker and of law as an instrument of moral reformation.
Innocent used the traditional method of declaring church law: a council. Presided
over by Innocent, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) attempted to regulate all aspects
of Christian life. Its comprehensive legislation aimed at reforming both the clergy
and the laity. Those attending the council expected Christians, clerical and lay alike,
to work together harmoniously to achieve the common goal of salvation. They did
not anticipate either the sheer variety of responses to their message or the persistence
of those who defied it altogether.
[1215–1340
] The Church’s Mission 381
For laypeople, perhaps the most important canons (church laws) of the Fourth
Lateran Council concerned the sacraments, the rites the church believed Jesus had
instituted to confer sanctifying grace. For example, Fourth Lateran required Chris-
tians to attend Mass and to confess their sins to a priest at least once a year. It also
precisely defined the sacrament of the Eucharist: “[Christ’s] body and blood are truly
contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread
and wine having been changed in substance [transubstantiated], by God’s power, into
his body and blood.” The word transubstantiated was meant to explain how the
Eucharist could look like bread and wine even though it had been transformed dur-
ing the Mass into Christ’s body and blood.
Other canons concerned marriage. The church declared that it had the duty to
discover any impediments to a union (such as a close relationship by blood), and it
claimed jurisdiction over marital disputes. It insisted that children conceived within
clandestine or forbidden marriages were illegitimate; they were not to receive inheri-
tances or become priests.
The impact of the council’s provisions was perhaps less dramatic than church
leaders hoped. All church laws took effect only when local political powers enforced
them. Well-to-do London fathers still included their bastard children in their wills.
On English manors, sons conceived out of wedlock regularly took over their parents’
Jewish Couple
In this illustration from a Hebrew
prayer book, a couple sits in a garden
of lilies under a starry sky, illustrating
the Bible’s Song of Solomon 4:8:
“Come with me from Lebanon, my
bride.” Hebrew commentators on this
verse interpreted the bride as stand-
ing for Israel, while the speaker, the
groom, was God. Here the artist has
portrayed the groom wearing a tradi-
tional Jewish hat, while Israel is a
woman with a crown. There is an
irony here: Christians portrayed the
church as a crowned female. How-
ever, in this case the woman wears
a blindfold. This makes her like the
Christian depiction of the allegorical
figure of the Jewish synagogue. In
short, this seemingly innocuous
illustration gives the synagogue
the status and dignity of the church.
(Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg
Carl von Ossietzky, Cod. Levy 37, fol. 169.)
[ 1215–1340
]
land. Men and women continued to marry in secret, and even churchmen had to
admit that the consent of both parties made any marriage valid. Nevertheless, many
men and women accepted the obligation to take communion and confess once a year,
and priests proceeded to call out the banns (announcements of marriages) to discover
any impediments to them.
The Fourth Lateran Council wanted to control Jews as well as Christians. It
required all Jews to advertise their religion by some outward sign: “We decree that
[Jews] of either sex in every Christian province at all times shall be distinguished
from other people by the character of their dress in public.” Eventually Jews almost
everywhere had to wear some sign of their second-class status. In southern France
and in a few places in Spain, they wore round badges. In England, Oxford required
a rectangle, while Salisbury demanded that Jews wear special clothing. In Vienna and
Germany, Jews were told to put on pointed hats. (See the illustration on page 381.)
The Fourth Lateran Council’s longest decree blasted heretics: “Those condemned
as heretics shall be handed over to the secular authorities for punishment.” If the
secular authority did not carry out the punishment, the heretic was to be excommu-
nicated. If he or she had vassals, they were to be released from their oaths of fealty
and their lands taken over by orthodox Christians. Church authorities set up a court
of papal inquisitors; this court and its activities, later known as the Inquisition,
became permanent in 1233.
The Inquisition
The word inquisition simply means “investigation”; secular rulers had long used the
method to summon people together, either to discover facts or to uncover and pun-
ish crimes. In its zeal to end heresy, the thirteenth-century church used the Inquisi-
tion to ferret out “heretical depravity.” Calling suspects to testify, inquisitors, aided by
secular authorities, rounded up virtually entire villages, first preaching to the throngs
and then questioning each man and woman who seemed to know something about
heresy: “Have you ever seen any heretics? Have you heard them preach?” Relatively
lenient penalties were given to those who were not aware that they held heretical
beliefs and to heretics who quickly recanted. But unrepentant heretics were punished
severely because the church believed that such people threatened the salvation of all.
Lay Piety
The church’s zeal to reform the laity was matched by the desire of many laypeople
to become more involved in their religion. Men and women flocked to hear the
preaching of friars, who made themselves a permanent feature of the towns. When
Berthold, a Franciscan preacher who traveled the length and breadth of Germany
giving sermons, came to a town, a high tower was set up for him outside the town
walls. A pennant advertised his presence and let people know which way the wind
would blow his voice.
[1215–1340
] The Church’s Mission 383
Townspeople gathered to hear preachers like Berthold because they wanted to

know how the Christian message applied to their daily lives. They were concerned,
for example, about the ethics of moneymaking, sex in marriage, and family life. The
preachers in turn met the laity on their own turf, spoke in the vernacular that all
could understand, and taught them to shape their behaviors to church teachings.
Laypeople further tied their lives to the mendicants, particularly the Franciscans,
by becoming tertiaries. A tertiary was one who adopted the practices of the friars —
prayer and works of charity, for example — while continuing to live in the world, work
at his or her usual occupation, raise a family, and tend to the normal tasks of daily life.
Although for many people religion was only one facet of life, for some — especially
women — it was a focus. Within the towns and cities, powerful families founded new
nunneries for their wealthy daughters. Less well-to-do women sought the life of quiet
activity and rapturous mysticism led by the Beguines. Others pursued a life of char-
ity and service in women’s mendicant orders. Still others, like Elisabeth of Hungary,
raised their children while devoting their free time to fasting, prayer, and service to
the poor.
The new emphasis on the holiness of the transformed wine and bread encour-
aged some pious women to eat nothing but the Eucharist. They believed that Christ’s
crucifixion was the literal sacrifice of his body, to be eaten by sinful men and women
as the way to redeem themselves and others. Some bypassed their priests, receiving
the Eucharist (as they explained) directly from Christ. Furthermore, renouncing all
other foods became part of a life of charity because many of these devout women
gave the poor the food they refused to eat. Thus, pious women used their control
over ordinary food to gain new kinds of social and religious prestige and power.
Jews and Lepers as Outcasts

While Christian women found new roles for themselves, non-Christians were pushed
further into the category of “outsiders.” To be sure, the First and Second Crusades
gave outlet to anti-Jewish feeling. Nevertheless, they were abnormal episodes in the
generally stable if tense relationship between Christians and Jews in Europe up to
the middle of the twelfth century. Then things changed dramatically as kings became
more powerful, popular piety deepened, and church law singled out Jews in particu-
lar for discrimination.
Even though Jews had been ousted from manors and banned from town guilds,
they were essential to the surrounding Christian community. Although there were
some Christian moneylenders (despite the Bible’s prohibition against charging interest
for loans), lords, especially kings, preferred to borrow from Jews because, along with
their newly asserted powers, they claimed the Jews as their serfs and Jewish property
as their own. In England, where Jews had arrived with the Norman conquest in 1066,
a special exchequer of the Jews was created in 1194 to collect for the king any unpaid
debts due after the death of a Jewish creditor. Even before that, the king of England
had imposed new and arbitrary taxes on the Jewish community.
[ 1215–1340
]
Similarly in France, persecuting Jews and confiscating their property benefited
both the treasury and the authoritative image of the king. In 1198, the French king
declared that Jews must be moneylenders or money changers exclusively. Their activ-
ities were to be taxed and monitored by royal officials. Limiting Jews to moneylend-
ing in an increasingly commercial economy clearly served the interests of kings. But
lesser lords who needed cash also benefited: they borrowed money from Jews and
then, as happened in York, England, in 1190, they orchestrated an attack to rid them-
selves of their debts and of the Jews to whom they owed money. Churchmen, too,
borrowed from Jews but resented having to repay.
Rulers of both church and state exploited and coerced the Jews while drawing
on and encouraging a wellspring of elite and popular anti-Jewish feeling. But attacks
against Jews were inspired by more than resentment against Jewish money and the
desire for power and control: they also grew out of the codification of Christian
religious doctrine and the anxieties of Christians about their own institutions. For
example, the newly rigorous definition of the Eucharist meant to many pious Chris-
tians that the body of Christ literally lay on the altar. Even as some Christians found
this thought unsettling, sensational stories (originating in clerical circles but soon
widely circulated) told of Jews who secretly sacrificed Christian children in their
Passover ritual — a charge that historians have termed blood libel. (In truth, of course,
Jews had no rituals involving blood sacrifice at all.)
In 1144, in one of the earliest instances of this charge, the body of a young boy
named William was found in the woods near Norwich, England. His uncle, a priest,
accused local Jews of killing the child. A monk connected to the cathedral at Norwich,
Thomas of Monmouth, took up the cause, writing The Life and Martyrdom of St.
William of Norwich. According to his account, the Jews carefully prepared at Passover
for the horrible ritual slaughter of the boy, whom they had chosen “to be mocked
and sacrificed in scorn of the Lord’s passion.” Similar charges were brought against
Jews elsewhere in England as well as in France, Spain, and Germany, leading to mas-
sacres of the Jewish population. Some communities expelled Jews, and in 1291 the
kingdom of England cast them out entirely. Most dispersed to France and Germany,
but to a sad welcome. In 1306, for example, King Philip the Fair had Jews driven
from France, though they were allowed to reenter, tentatively, in 1315.
Meanwhile, lepers were suffering a similar fate. People afflicted with leprosy —
a disease that causes skin lesions and attacks the peripheral nerves — were an unim-
portant minority in medieval society until the eleventh century. Then, beginning
around 1075 and extending to the fourteenth century, lepers, though still a small
minority, became the objects of both charity and disgust. Houses for lepers were set
up both to provide for them and to segregate them from everyone else.
Leprosy delivered three blows: it was horribly disfiguring, it was associated with
sin in the Bible, and it was contagious. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council took note
of the fact that “lepers cannot dwell with the healthy or come to church with others”
and asked that, where possible, special churches and cemeteries be set aside for
[1215–1340
] Reconciling This World and the Next 385
them. No doubt this inspired a boom in the founding of leper houses, which peaked
between 1175 and 1250.
Before the leper went to such a house, he or she was formally expelled from the
community of Christians via a ceremony of terrible solemnity. In northern France,
for example, the leper had to stand in a cemetery with his or her face veiled. The
priest intoned Mass and threw dirt on the leper as if he or she were being buried.
“Be dead to the world, be reborn in God,” the priest said, continuing, “I forbid you to
ever enter the church or monastery, fair, mill, marketplace, or company of persons. . . .
I forbid you to wash your hands or any thing about you in the stream or in the
fountain.” The prohibition against drink-
ing in the stream or fountain gained more
sinister meaning in 1321, when false REVIEW QUESTION How did people respond
rumors spread that Muslims had recruited to the teachings and laws of the church in the
early thirteenth century?
both Jews and lepers to poison all the wells
of Christendom.
Reconciling This World and the Next

Just as the church in the early thirteenth century wanted to regulate worldly life in
accordance with God’s plan for salvation, so thinkers, writers, musicians, and artists
sought to harmonize the secular and the sacred realms. Scholars wrote treatises that
reconciled faith with reason, poets and musicians sang of the links between heaven
and human life on earth, and artists expressed the same ideas in stone and sculpture
and on parchment. In the face of many contradictions, all of these groups were largely
successful in communicating an orderly image of this world and the next.
The Achievement of Scholasticism

Scholasticism was the culmination of the method of logical inquiry and exposition
pioneered by masters like Peter Abelard and Peter the Chanter (see pages 349–53).
In the thirteenth century, the method was used to summarize and reconcile all knowl-
edge. Many of the thirteenth-century scholastics (those who practiced scholasticism)
were members of the Dominican or Franciscan Orders and taught in the universities.
On the whole, they were confident that knowledge obtained through the senses and
reason was compatible with the knowledge derived from faith and revelation.
One of the scholastics’ goals was to demonstrate this harmony. The scholastic
summa, or summary of knowledge, was a systematic exposition of the answer to every
possible question about human morality, the physical world, society, belief, action,
and theology. Another goal of the scholastics was to preach the conclusions of these
treatises.
The method of the summa borrowed much of the vocabulary and many of the
rules of logic outlined by Aristotle in ancient Greece. Even though Aristotle lived
[ 1215–1340
]
before the time of Christ, scholastics considered his coherent and rational body of
thought the most perfect that human reason alone could devise. They thought that
because they had the benefit of Christ’s revelations, they could take Aristotle’s phi-
losophy one necessary step further and reconcile human reason with Christian faith.
Confident in their method and conclusions, scholastics embraced the world and its
issues.
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was perhaps the most famous scholastic. When
he was about eighteen years old, Thomas thwarted his family’s wishes that he become
a bishop and joined the Dominicans. He soon became a university master. Like many
other scholastics, Thomas considered Aristotle to be “the Philosopher,” the authori-
tative voice of human reason, which he sought to reconcile with divine revelation
in a universal and harmonious scheme. In 1273, he published his monumental Summa
Theologiae (sometimes called Summa Theologica), intended to cover all important
topics, human and divine. He divided these topics into questions, exploring each one
thoroughly and concluding with a decisive position and a refutation of opposing
views.
Many of Thomas’s questions spoke to the keenest concerns of his day. He asked,
for example, whether it was lawful to sell something for more than its worth. Arrang-
ing his argument systematically, Thomas first quoted authorities that seemed to
declare every sort of selling practice, even deceptive ones, to be lawful; this was the
sic (“yes”) position. Then he quoted an authority that opposed selling something for
more than its worth; this was the non. Following that, he gave his own argument,
prefaced by the words “I answer that.” Thomas arrived at clear conclusions that
harmonized both the yes and the no responses. In the case of selling something for
more than it was worth, he concluded that charging more than a seller had originally
paid could be legitimate at times, as, for example, “when a man has great need of a
certain thing, while another man will suffer if he is without it.”
Scholastics like Thomas were great optimists. They believed that everything had
a place in God’s scheme of things, that the world was orderly, and that human beings
could make rational sense of it. Their logical arguments filled the classrooms, spilled
into the friars’ convents, found their way into the shops of artisans, and even crept
between the sheets of lovers. Scholastic philosophy helped give ordinary people a
sense of purpose and a guide to behavior.
Yet even among scholastics, unity was elusive. In his own day, Thomas was
accused of placing too much emphasis on reason and relying too fully on Aristotle.
Later scholastics argued that reason could not find truth through its own faculties
and energies. In the summae of the Franciscan John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308),
for example, the world and God were less compatible. For John, human reason could
know truth only through the “special illumination of the uncreated light,” that is, by
divine illumination. Unlike Thomas, John believed that this illumination came not
as a matter of course, but only when God chose to intervene. John — and others —
experienced God as sometimes willful rather than reasonable. Human reason could
not soar to God; God’s will alone determined whether or not a person could know
[
1215–1340
him. In this way, John separated the divine and secular realms, and the medieval
synthesis cracked.
New Syntheses in Writing and Music

Thirteenth-century vernacular writers, like scholastics, synthesized seemingly con-
tradictory ideas. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) harmonized the mysteries of faith with
the poetry of love. Born in Florence in a time of political turmoil, Dante incorporated
the major figures of history and his own day into his most famous poem, Commedia,
written between 1313 and 1321. Later known as Divina commedia (Divine Comedy),
Dante’s poem describes the poet taking an imaginary journey from hell to purgatory
and finally to paradise. At the most literal level, the poem is about Dante’s travels.
At a deeper level, it is about the soul’s search for meaning and enlightenment and its
ultimate discovery of God in the light of divine love. Just as Thomas Aquinas employed
Aristotle’s logic to reach important truths, so Dante used the pagan poet Virgil as his
guide through hell and purgatory. And just as Thomas believed that faith went beyond
reason to even higher truths, so Dante found a new guide representing earthly love
to lead him through most of paradise. That guide was Beatrice, a Florentine girl with
whom Dante had fallen in love as a boy and whom he never forgot. But only faith,
in the form of the divine love of the Virgin Mary, could bring Dante to the culmina-
tion of his journey — a blinding and inexpressibly awesome vision of God.
Dante’s poem electrified a wide audience. By elevating one dialect of Italian —
the language that ordinary Florentines used in their everyday life — to a language
of exquisite poetry, Dante was able to communicate an orderly and optimistic vision
of the universe in an even more exciting and accessible way than the scholastics had.
So influential was his work that it is no exaggeration to say that modern Italian is
based on Dante’s Florentine dialect.
Other writers of the period used different methods to express the harmony
between heaven and earth. The anonymous author of the Quest of the Holy Grail
(c. 1225), for example, wrote about the adventures of some of the knights of King
Arthur’s Round Table to convey the doctrine of transubstantiation and the wonder
of the vision of God.
Just as vernacular writers asserted the harmony of heavenly and earthly things,
so musicians combined sacred and secular music. This was quite new. The music
before this time, plainchant (see page 352), had a particular sequence of notes for a
given text. It is true that sometimes a form of harmony was achieved when two voices
sang exactly the same melody an interval apart. This was the first form of polyphony,
the simultaneous sounding of two or more melodies. In the twelfth century, musi-
cians experimented with freer melodies. One voice might go up the scale, for example,
while the other went down, achieving even so a pleasing harmony. Or one voice
might hold a pitch while the other danced around it.
Now, in the thirteenth century, some musicians put secular and sacred tunes
together. This form of music, which probably originated in Paris, was called the
[ 1215–1340
]
Singing a Motet
In this fourteenth-century English
Psalter, the artist has illustrated
the first letter of Psalm 96 — which
begins “O sing to the Lord a new
song” — with a depiction of three
clerics singing a motet. Its words
and musical notation are written
on a scroll draped over a lectern.
(Illustration from the Howard Psalter and
Hours, c. 1310–1320 / British Library,
London, UK, Bridgeman Images.)
motet (from the French mot, meaning “word”). It typically had two or three melody
lines, or “voices.” The lowest was usually a plainchant melody sung in Latin. The
remaining melodies had different texts, either Latin or French (or one of each), which
were sung simultaneously. Latin texts were usually sacred, whereas French ones were
secular, dealing with themes such as love and springtime. The motet thus wove the
sacred (the chant melody in the lowest voice) and the secular (the French texts in
the upper voices) into a sophisticated tapestry of words and music.
Like the scholastic summae, motets were written by and for a clerical elite. Yet
they incorporated the music of ordinary people, such as the calls of street vendors
and the boisterous songs of students. In turn, they touched the lives of everyone, for
polyphony influenced every form of music, from the Mass to popular songs that
entertained laypeople and churchmen alike.
Complementing the motet’s complexity was the development of a new notation
for rhythm. Music theorists of the thirteenth century developed increasingly precise
methods to indicate rhythm, with each note shape allotted a specific duration. The
music of the thirteenth century reflected both the melding of the secular and the
sacred and the possibilities of greater order and control.
[1215–1340
Gothic Art
Gothic architecture — like philosophy, literature, and music — brought together this
world and the next. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Gothic style had spread
across most of Europe. Some of its elements began to appear as well in other forms
of art, like stained glass. Because pointed arches and flying buttresses allowed the
walls of a Gothic church to be pierced with large windows, stained glass became a
newly important art form. To make this colored glass, workers added chemicals to
sand, heated the mixture until it was liquid, and then blew and flattened it. From
these colored glass sheets, artists cut shapes, holding them in place with lead strips.
The size of the windows allowed the artists to depict complicated themes ranging
from heaven to hell. As the sun shone through the finished windows, they glowed
like jewels.
The exteriors of Gothic cathedrals were decorated with figures sculpted in the
round. The figures evoked motion — turning, moving, and interacting; at times, they
even smiled. Like stained glass, Gothic sculptures evoked complex ideas. For example,
the figures on the south portals of the cathedral at Chartres tell the story of the soul’s
pilgrimage from the suffering of this world to eternal life: on the left doorway are
the martyrs (who died for their beliefs), on the right the confessors (who were tor-
tured), and in the center the Last Judgment (when the good receive eternal life and
the bad eternal damnation).
The allure of Gothic was so great that painters began to use elements of its style.
Manuscript illuminations feature the pointed shapes of Gothic cathedral windows
and vaults as common background themes. (See the illustration on page 394 for one
Last Judgment
Stained glass could illustrate
complex theological truths. In this
thirteenth-century depiction of the
Last Judgment from the cathedral
at Bourges, in France, two colorful
devils force two naked sinners into
the toothy mouth of hell. Licks of red
flame greet them. While the devils
enjoy their task (the green one is
smiling), the sinners grimace and
seem to cry out in pain. (Saint-Etienne
Cathedral, Bourges, France / Bridgeman
Images.)
[ 1215–1340
]
Giotto’s Birth of the Virgin

This depiction of the Virgin Mary’s birth pays attention to the homey details of a thirteenth-
century Florentine aristocratic household. Those details portray a sequence: the baby is bathed
and swaddled by maidservants in the bottom tier, while above she is handed to her mother,
St. Anne, who reaches out eagerly for the child. (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy / Collection Dagli Orti /
Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
example.) The colors of Gothic manuscripts echoed the rich hues of stained glass.
Gothic sculpture inspired painters like Giotto (1266–1337), an Italian artist. When
he filled the walls of a private chapel at Padua with paintings depicting scenes of
Christ’s life, Giotto experimented with the
illusion of depth, figures in the round, and
REVIEW QUESTION How did artists, musi-
cians, and scholastics in the thirteenth and
emotional expression. By fusing naturalis-
early fourteenth centuries try to link the physi- tic forms with religious meaning, Giotto
cal world with the divine? found yet another way to fuse the earthly
and divine realms.
The Politics of Control

The quest for order, control, and harmony also became part of the political agendas
of princes, popes, and cities. These rulers and institutions imposed — or tried to
impose — their authority ever more fully and systematically through taxes, courts,
[1215–1340
] The Politics of Control 391
The Annunciation
Figures decorating Gothic churches,
such as this one at Reims (in north-
ern France), were carved in the
round. Here the angel Gabriel (on
the left) turns and smiles joyfully
at Mary, who looks down modestly
as he announces that she will give
birth to Jesus. (Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
and sometimes representative institutions. Vestiges of these systems live on in mod-

ern European parliaments and in the U.S. Congress.
Louis IX of France is a good example of a ruler whose power increased during
this period. In contrast, the emperor had to give up Italy and most of his power in
Germany. At first powerful, the papacy was later forced to move from Rome to Avignon,
a real blow to its prestige. In Italy the rise of signori (lords) meant that the communes,
which had long governed many cities, gave way to rule by one strong man.
A new political entity, the Mongols, directly confronted the rulers of Russia,
Poland, and Hungary even as they opened up new trade routes to the East. But just
as this was taking place, a series of calamities known as the Great Famine hit Europe.
[ 1215–1340
]
The Weakening of the Empire
During the thirteenth century, both popes and emperors sought to dominate Italy.
After Barbarossa failed in his bid for northern Italy (see page 362), his son Henry VI
tried a new approach to gain Italy: he married Constance, the heiress of Sicily. With
Sicily as a base, Henry hoped to make good his imperial title in Italy. But he died
suddenly, leaving as his heir his three-year-old son. It was a perilous moment. The
imperial office became the plaything of the German princes and the papacy. But
Pope Innocent III miscalculated when, in 1212, he gave the imperial crown to Henry’s
son, Frederick II (r. 1212–1250), now a young man ready to take up the reins of power.
Frederick was an amazing ruler: stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”) his con-
temporaries called him. Heir to two cultures, Sicilian on his mother’s side and Ger-
man on his father’s, he cut a worldly and sophisticated figure. In Sicily, he moved
easily within a diverse culture of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Here he could play
the role of all-powerful ruler. In Germany, he was less at home. There Christian
princes, often churchmen with ministerial retinues, were acutely aware of their cru-
cial role in royal elections and jealously guarded their rights and privileges.
Both emperor and pope needed to dominate Italy to maintain their power and
position. The papacy under Innocent III was expansionist, gathering money and
troops to make good its claim to the Papal States. The pope expected dues and taxes,
military service, and the profits of justice from this region. To ensure the survival of
the Papal States, the pope refused to tolerate any imperial claims to Italy.
Frederick, in turn, could not imagine ruling as an emperor unless he controlled
Italy. He attempted to do this throughout his life, as did his heirs. Frederick had a
three-pronged strategy. First, he revamped the government of Sicily to give himself
more control and yield greater profits. His Constitutions of Melfi (1231), an eclectic
body of laws, set up a system of salaried governors who worked according to uniform
procedures. The Constitutions called for nearly all court cases to be heard by royal
courts, regularized commercial privileges, and set up a system of taxation. Second,
to ensure that he would not be hounded by opponents in Germany, Frederick granted
them important concessions in his Statute in Favor of the Princes, finalized in 1232.
These concessions allowed the German princes to turn their principalities into virtu-
ally independent states. Third, Frederick sought to enter Italy through Lombardy, as
his grandfather had done.
Each of the four popes who ruled after Innocent died in 1216 followed Freder-
ick’s every move and excommunicated the emperor a number of times. The most
serious of these condemnations came in 1245, when the pope and other churchmen
assembled at the Council of Lyon to excommunicate and depose Frederick, absolving
his vassals and subjects of their fealty to him and forbidding anyone to support him.
By 1248, papal legates were preaching a crusade against Frederick and all his follow-
ers. Frederick’s death, in 1250, ensured their triumph.
The fact that Frederick’s vision of the Empire failed is of less long-term impor-
tance than the way it failed. His concessions to the German princes allowed them
[1215–1340
to divide Germany into discrete principalities.
Danube R.
R.
Drava
(In fact, Germany would not be united as a nation
Milan Verona
until the nineteenth century.) Between 1254 and Lombardy Venice
1273, the princes kept the German throne empty. Ferrara HUNGARY
Claimed
Splintered into factions, they elected two differ- Florence
by papacy
ent foreigners, who spent their time fighting each Fermo
Ad
ria
other. Rome tic
Se
a
In one of history’s great ironies, it was during PAPAL Anagni
STATES Naples
this low point of the German monarchy that the KINGDOM OF NAPLES
Sardinia (Anjou after 1265)
term Holy Roman Empire was coined, emphasiz- (Aragon)
ing its sacrality and power over Rome precisely

when it was at its weakest. In 1273, the princes at
KINGDOM OF SICILY
last united and elected a German, Rudolf (r. 1273– (Aragon after 1282)
NORTH 0 100 200 miles
1291), whose family, the Habsburgs, was new to AFRICA
imperial power. Rudolf used the imperial title to
help him consolidate control over his own prin- Italy at the End of the
cipality, Swabia, but he did not try to fulfill the Thirteenth Century
meaning of the imperial title elsewhere. For the
first time, the word emperor was freed from its association with Italy and Rome. For
the Habsburgs, the title Holy Roman Emperor was a prestigious but otherwise mean-
ingless honorific.
The failure of Frederick II in Italy meant that the Italian cities would continue
their independent course. To ensure that Frederick’s heirs would not continue their
rule in Sicily, the papacy called successively on other rulers to take over the island —
first Henry III of England and then Charles of Anjou. Forces loyal to Frederick’s
family turned to the king of Aragon (Spain). The move left two enduring claimants
to Sicily’s crown — the kings of Aragon and the house of Anjou — and it spawned a
long war that impoverished the region.
The popes won the war against Frederick, but at a cost. Even the king of France
criticized the popes for doing “new and unheard-of things.” By making its war against
Frederick part of its crusade against heresy, the papacy came under attack for using
religion as a political tool.
Louis IX and a New Ideal of Kingship

In hindsight, we can see that Frederick’s fight for an empire that would stretch from
Germany to Sicily was doomed. The successful rulers of medieval Europe were those
content with smaller, more compact, more united polities. In France, a new ideal of
a stay-at-home monarch started in the thirteenth century with the reign of Louis IX
(r. 1226–1270). Louis’s two crusades to the Holy Land made clear to his subjects just
how much they needed him in France, even though his place was ably filled during
his first trip by his mother, Blanche of Castile.
[ 1215–1340
]
Louis IX and Blanche of Castile

This miniature shows Louis IX (St. Louis), portrayed as a young boy, sitting opposite his mother,
Blanche of Castile. Blanche served as regent twice in Louis’s lifetime, once when he was too
young to rule and a second time when he was away on crusade. The emphasis on the equality
of queen and king may be evidence of Blanche’s influence on and patronage of the artist.
(Detail from Moralized Bible, France, c. 1230. MS. M. 240, F.8. The Pierpont Morgan Library / Art Resource, NY.)
Louis was revered not because he was a military leader but because he was an
administrator, a judge, and a “just father” of his people. On warm summer days, he
would sit under a tree in the woods near his castle at Vincennes, on the outskirts of
Paris, hearing disputes and dispensing justice personally. Through his administra-
tors, he vigorously imposed his laws and justice over much of France. At Paris he
appointed a salaried chief magistrate, who could be supervised and fired if necessary.
During Louis’s reign, the influence of the parlement of Paris (the royal court of
justice) increased significantly. Originally a changeable and movable body, part of
the king’s personal entourage when he dealt with litigation, the parlement was now
permanently housed in Paris and staffed by professional judges who heard cases and
recorded their decisions.
Unlike his grandfather Philip Augustus, Louis did not try to expand his territory.
He inherited a large kingdom that included Poitou and Languedoc (Map 12.1), and
he was content. Although at first Henry III, the king of England, attacked France
continually to try to regain territory lost under Philip Augustus, Louis remained unpro-
voked. Rather than prolong the fighting, he conceded a bit and made peace. At the
[1215–1340
same time, Louis was a zealous

crusader. He took seriously the ENGLAND
need to defend the Holy Land Flanders
el
from the Muslims when most of English Chann Artois
Rhi
his contemporaries were weary Vermandois
ne
Picardy
R.
of the idea. Normandy
Paris Champagne
Respectful of the church Brittany Chartres Île-de-France THE
Maine
and the pope, Louis never (Royal Domain)
Blois Orléans EMPIRE
Se
Nantes Anjou
ine
claimed power over spiritual Tours
R.
Touraine Burgundy
matters. Nevertheless, he vigor-
Lo
Poitiers
Bourges
ire
Poitou .
ously maintained the dignity of
R
Bourbonnais Cluny
Bay of
the king and his rights. He Biscay Lyon
Aquitaine
expected royal and ecclesiastical Bordeaux
e R.
power to work in harmony, and
Ga
ro
nn
Rhôn
he refused to let the church dic- Gascony .
eR
Languedoc Avignon
tate how he should use his tem-
Toulouse Montpellier
poral authority. For example, Marseille
French bishops wanted royal

officers to support the church’s
SPAIN
sentences of excommunication. Louis IX’s kingdom
But Louis declared that he would 0 100 200 miles English possessions
in France in 1259
authorize his officials to do so 0 100 200 kilometers
only if he was able to judge each

case himself, to see if the excom- MAP 12.1 France under Louis IX, r. 1226–1270
Louis IX did not expand his kingdom as dramatically as
munication had been justly pro-
his grandfather Philip Augustus had done. He was greatly
nounced or not. The bishops admired, nevertheless, for he was seen by contempo-
refused, and Louis held his raries as a model of Christian piety and justice. After his
ground. Royal and ecclesiastical death, he was recognized as a saint and thus posthu-
power would work side by side, mously enhanced the prestige of the French monarchy.
neither subservient to the other.
It would be easy to fault Louis for his policies toward Jews. His hatred of them
was well-known. He did not exactly advocate violence against them, but on occasion
he subjected Jews to arrest, canceling the debts owed to them (but collecting part
into the royal treasury) and confiscating their belongings. In 1253, he ordered Jews
to live “by the labor of their hands” or leave France. He meant that they should no
longer lend money, in effect taking away their one means of livelihood. Louis’s con-
temporaries did not criticize him for his Jewish policies. If anything, his hatred of
Jews enhanced his reputation.
In fact, many of Louis’s contemporaries considered him a saint, praising his care
for the poor and sick, the pains and penances he inflicted on himself, and his regu-
lar participation in church services. In 1297, Pope Boniface VIII canonized him as
St. Louis. The result was enormous prestige for the French monarchy. This prestige,
[ 1215–1340
]
joined with the renown of Paris as the center of scholarship and the repute of French
courts as the hubs of chivalry, made France the cultural model of Europe.
The Birth of Representative Institutions

As thirteenth-century monarchs and princes expanded their powers, they devised a
new political tool to enlist more broadly based support: all across Europe, from Spain
to Poland, from England to Hungary, rulers summoned parliaments. These grew out
of the ad hoc advisory sessions kings had held in the past with men from the two
most powerful classes, or orders, of medieval society — the nobility and the clergy.
In the thirteenth century, the advisory sessions turned into solemn, formal meetings
of representatives of the orders to the kings’ chief councils — the precursor of par-
liamentary sessions. Eventually these groups became institutions through which
people not ordinarily present at court could articulate their wishes. In practice,
thirteenth-century kings did not so much command representatives of the orders to
come to court as they simply summoned the most powerful members of their realm —
whether clerics, nobles, or important townsmen — to support their policies.
The cortes of Castile-León in Spain were among the earliest representative
assemblies called to the king’s court and the first to include townsmen. Enriched by
plunder, fledgling villages soon burgeoned into major commercial centers. Like the
cities of Italy, Spanish towns dominated the countryside. No wonder King Alfonso IX
(r. 1188–1230) summoned townsmen to the cortes in the first year of his reign, get-
ting their representatives to agree to his plea for military and financial support and
for help in consolidating his rule. Once convened at court, the townsmen joined bish-
ops and noblemen in formally counseling the king and assenting to royal decisions.
Beginning with Alfonso X (r. 1252–1284), Castilian monarchs regularly called on the
cortes to participate in major political and military decisions and to assent to new
taxes to finance them.
The English Parliament also developed as a new tool of royal government.* In
this case, however, the king’s control was complicated by the power of the barons,
manifested, for example, in Magna Carta. In the twelfth century, the king had used
great councils of churchmen and barons to ratify and gain support for his policies.
Although Magna Carta had nothing to do with such councils, the barons thought
the document gave them an important and permanent role in royal government as
the king’s advisers and a solid guarantee of their customary rights and privileges. In
the thirteenth century, while Henry III (r. 1216–1272) was still a child, England was
governed by a council consisting of a few barons, some university-trained adminis-
*Although parlement and Parliament are similar words, both deriving from the French word parler
(“to speak”), the institutions they named were very different. The parlement of France was a law
court, whereas the English Parliament, although beginning as a court to redress grievances, had by
1327 become above all a representative institution. The major French representative assembly, the
Estates General, first convened at the beginning of the fourteenth century (see page 398).
[
1215–1340
trators, and a papal legate. Although not quite “government by Parliament,” this
council set a precedent for baronial participation in government.
A parliament that included commoners came only in the midst of war and as a
result of political weakness. Once in power, Henry III so alienated nobles and com-
moners alike by his wars, debts, choices of advisers, and demands for money that
the barons threatened to rebel. At a meeting at Oxford in 1258, they forced Henry to
dismiss his foreign advisers. Henceforth he was to rule with the advice of a so-called
Council of Fifteen, chosen jointly by the barons and the king. Chief royal officers
were to serve for one year only, after which they were to account for their actions
to the council. However, this new government was itself plagued by strife among the
barons, and civil war erupted in 1264. At the battle of Lewes in the same year, the
leader of the baronial opposition, Simon de Montfort (c. 1208–1265), routed the king’s
forces, captured the king, and became England’s de facto ruler.
Because only a minority of the barons followed him, Simon sought new support
by convening a parliament in 1265, to which he summoned not only the earls, bar-
ons, and churchmen who backed him but also representatives from the towns, the
“commons” — and he appealed for their help. Thus, for the first time, the commons
were given a voice in English government. Even though Simon’s brief rule ended that
very year and Henry’s son Edward I (r. 1272–1307) became a rallying point for royal-
ists, the idea of representative government in England had emerged, born out of the
interplay between royal initiatives and baronial revolts.
The Weakening of the Papacy

In contrast with England, representative institutions developed in France out of the
conflict between Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303) and King Philip IV (r. 1285–
1314), known as Philip the Fair. At the time, this confrontation seemed to be just
one more episode in the ongoing struggle between medieval popes and secular rulers
for power and authority. Throughout the thirteenth century, the papacy confidently
asserted its prerogatives. In fact, however, kings were gradually gaining ground. The
conflict between Boniface and Philip signaled the turning point, when royal power
trumped papal power.
The conflict began over taxation. Traditionally, clerics were not taxed except in
the case of religious wars. But Philip the Fair and the English king Edward I both
financed their wars (mainly against one another) by taxing the clergy along with
everyone else. The new principle of national sovereignty that they were claiming led
them to assert jurisdiction over all people who lived within their borders, even
churchmen. For the pope, however, the principle at stake was his role as head of the
clergy. Thus, Pope Boniface VIII declared that only the pope could authorize taxes
on clerics. Threatening to excommunicate kings who taxed churchmen without
papal permission, he called on clerics to disobey any such royal orders.
Edward and Philip reacted swiftly. Taking advantage of the role English courts
played in protecting the peace, Edward declared that all clerics who refused to pay
[ 1215–1340
]
Portrait of a Pope
Celebrating the power of the papacy,
Pope Nicholas III (r. 1277–1280)
sponsored a thorough redecoration of
Rome’s ancient basilica of St. Paul’s
Outside the Walls (the burial place of
St. Paul). In the space above each of
the columns running down the nave,
he had his artists paint portraits of
the popes, linking all to one another
and ultimately to St. Peter (whose
portrait was nearest the altar). In
this image of Anacletus (r. c. 79–
c. 91), the artist asserted the pope’s
gravity, solemnity, and otherworldli-
ness. Anacletus wears a pallium, a
white scarf symbolizing papal power,
even though the pallium did not exist
in the first century. (Nimatallah / Art
Resource, NY.)
his taxes would be considered outlaws — that is, “outside the law.” Clergymen who
were robbed, for example, would have no recourse against their attackers; if accused
of crimes, they would have no defense in court. Relying on a different strategy, Philip
forbade the exportation of precious metals, money, or jewels — effectively sealing the
French borders. Immediately, the English clergy cried out for legal protection, while
the papacy itself cried out for the revenues it had long enjoyed from French pilgrims,
litigants, and travelers. Boniface was forced to back down, conceding in 1297 that
kings had the right to tax their clergy in emergencies.
But this concession did not end the confrontation. In 1301, Philip the Fair tested
his jurisdiction in southern France by arresting Bernard Saisset, the bishop of Pam-
iers, on a charge of treason for slandering the king by comparing him to an owl.
Saisset’s imprisonment violated the principle, maintained both by the pope and by
French law, that a clergyman was not subject to lay justice. Pope Boniface reacted
angrily, and King Philip seized the opportunity to deride and humiliate him, orches-
trating a public relations campaign against Boniface. Philip convened representatives
of the clergy, nobles, and townspeople to explain, justify, and propagandize his posi-
tion. This new assembly, which met in 1302, was the ancestor of the French repre-
sentative institution, the Estates General. The pope’s reply, the bull* Unam Sanctam
*An official papal document is called a bull, from the bulla, or seal, that was used to authenticate it.
[1215–1340
(1302), intensified the situation to fever pitch by declaring bluntly that “it is alto-
gether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman
Pontiff.” At meetings of the king’s inner circle, Philip’s agents declared Boniface a
false pope, accusing him of sexual perversion, various crimes, and heresy.
In 1303, French royal agents, acting on Philip’s orders, invaded Boniface’s palace
at Anagni (southeast of Rome) to capture the pope, bring him to France, and try
him. Fearing for the pope’s life, the people of Anagni joined forces and drove the
French agents out of town. Yet even after such public support for the pope, the king
made his power felt. Boniface died very shortly thereafter, and the next two popes
quickly pardoned Philip and his agents for their actions.
Just as Frederick II’s failure revealed the weakness of the empire, so Boniface’s
humiliation demonstrated the limits of papal control. The two powers that claimed
“universal” authority had very little weight in the face of new, limited, but tightly
controlled national states such as France and England. After 1303, popes continued
to denounce kings and emperors, but their words had less and less impact. Against
newly powerful medieval states — sustained by vast revenues, judicial apparatuses,
representative institutions, and even the loyalty of churchmen — the papacy could
make little headway. The delicate balance between church and state, reflecting a sense
of universal order and harmony and a hallmark of the reign of St. Louis, broke down
at the end of the thirteenth century.
The papacy’s weakness was dramatically demonstrated by its move to Avignon.
In 1309, forced from Rome by civil strife, the papacy settled in this city close to
France. Here it remained until 1378, and thus the period 1309–1378 is called the
Avignon papacy. Europeans ashamed that the pope lived so far from Rome called
it the Babylonian captivity. They were thinking of the Old Testament story of the
Hebrews captured and brought into slavery in ancient Babylon.*
The Avignon popes, many of them French, established a sober and efficient orga-
nization that took in regular revenues and gave the papacy more say than ever before
in the appointment of churchmen. Slowly, they abandoned the idea of leading all of
Christendom, tacitly recognizing the growing power of the secular states to regulate
their internal affairs.
The Rise of the Signori

During the thirteenth century, new groups, generally made up of the non-noble
classes — the popolo (“people”), who fought on foot — attempted to take power from
the nobility in many Italian communes. The popolo incorporated members of city
associations such as craft and merchant guilds, parishes, and the commune itself. In
fact, the popolo was a kind of alternative commune. Armed and militant, the popolo
demanded a share in city government. In 1223 at Piacenza, the popolo and the nobles
*See 2 Kings 24–25.

[ 1215–1340
]
worked out a plan to share the election of their city’s government; such power shar-
ing was a typical result of the popolo’s struggle. In some cities, however, nobles dis-
solved the popolo, while in others the popolo virtually excluded the nobles from gov-
ernment. Such factions turned northern Italian cities into centers of civil discord.
Weakened by this constant friction, the communes were tempting prey for great
regional nobles who, allying with one or another urban group, often succeeded in
establishing themselves as signori (singular signore, “lord”) of the cities, keeping the
peace at the price of repression. Thirteenth-century Piacenza was typical: first domi-
nated by nobles, the popolo gained a voice by 1225; but then by midcentury both
the nobles and the popolo were eclipsed by the power of a signore.
The Mongol Takeover

Europeans were not the only warring society in the thirteenth century: to the east,
the Mongols (sometimes called Tatars or Tartars) created an aggressive army under
the leadership of Chingiz (or Genghis) Khan (c. 1162–1227) and his sons. In part,
economic necessity drove them out of Mongolia: changes in climate had reduced the
grasslands that sustained their animals and their nomadic way of life. But they were
also inspired by Chingiz’s hope of conquering the world. By 1215, the Mongols held
Beijing and most of northern China. Some years later, they moved through central
Asia and skirted the Caspian Sea (Map 12.2).
In the 1230s, the Mongols began concerted attacks against Rus, Poland, and
Hungary, where native princes were weak. Fighting mainly on horseback with heavy
lances and powerful bows and arrows whose shots traveled far and penetrated deeply,
the Mongols initially pushed through Hungary. Only the death of the second Great
Khan, Chingiz’s son Ogodei (1186–1241), and disputes over his succession prevented
a concentrated assault on Germany. In the 1250s, the Mongols took Iran and Iraq.
Soon retreating from Hungary, the Mongols established themselves in Rus, where
in 1240 they had captured Kiev. This remained the center of their power, but they
dominated all of Russia for about two hundred years. The Mongol Empire in Rus,
later called the Golden Horde (golden probably from the color of their leader’s tent;
horde from a Turkish word meaning “camp”), adopted much of the local government
apparatus and left many of the old institutions in place. The Mongols allowed Rus
princes to continue ruling as long as those princes paid homage and tribute to the
khan, and they tolerated the Rus church, exempting it from taxes. The Mongols’ chief
undertaking was a series of population censuses on the basis of which they recalcu-
lated taxes and recruited troops.
The Mongol invasion changed the political configuration of Europe and Asia.
Because the Mongols were willing to deal with Westerners, one effect of their con-
quests was to open China to European travelers for the first time. Missionaries,
diplomats, and merchants went to China over land routes and via the Persian Gulf.
Some of these voyagers hoped to enlist the aid of the Mongols against the Muslims,
[ 1215–1340
THE 0 500 1,000 miles

Mongol Empire before 1259
EMPIRE 0 500 1,000 kilometers
Campaigns under Chingiz Khan
Venice POLAND
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MAP 12.2 The Mongol Invasions to 1259

The Mongols tied East Asia to the West. Their conquest of China, which took place at about the
same time as their invasions of Russia and Iran, created a Eurasian economy. Compare this
map with the Mapping the West map on page 375. Why were the Mongol invasions a threat to
the Muslim world?
others expected to make new converts to Christianity, and still others dreamed of
lucrative trade routes.
The most famous of these travelers was Marco Polo (1254–1324), who remained
in China for nearly two years. Others stayed even longer. In fact, evidence suggests
that an entire community of Venetian traders lived in the city of Yangzhou in the
mid-fourteenth century. Such merchants paved the way for missionaries. Friars, who
were preachers to the cities of Europe, became missionaries to new continents as well.
The long-term effect of the Mongols on the West was to open up new land routes
to the East that helped bind together the two halves of the known world. Travel stories
such as Marco Polo’s account of his journeys stimulated others to seek out the fabulous
riches — textiles, ginger, ceramics, copper — of China and other regions of the East. In
a sense, the Mongols initiated the search for exotic goods and missionary opportunities
that culminated in the European “discovery” of a new world, the Americas.
[ 1215–1340
]
The Great Famine
While the Mongols stimulated the European economy, natural disasters coupled with
human actions brought on a terrible period of famine in northern Europe. The Great
Famine (1315–1322) left many hungry, sick, and weak while it fueled social antago-
nisms. An anonymous chronicler looking back on the events of 1315 wrote:
The floods of rain have rotted almost all the seed, . . . and in many places
the hay lay so long under water that it could neither be mown nor gathered.
Sheep generally died and other animals were killed in a sudden plague. . . .
[In the next year, 1316,] the dearth of grain was much increased. Such a
scarcity has not been seen in our time in England, nor heard of for a hun-
dred years. For the measure of wheat sold in London and the neighboring
places for forty pence [a very high price], and in other less thickly populated
parts of the country thirty pence was a common price.
Thus did the writer chronicle the causes and effects of the famine: uncommonly
heavy rains, which washed up or drowned the crops; a disease that killed farm ani-
mals key to agricultural life not only for their meat and fleeces but also for their
labor; and, finally, the economic effects, as scarcity drove up the prices of ordinary
foods. All of these led to hunger, disease, and death.
Had the rains gone back to normal, Europeans might have recovered. But the
rains continued, and the crops kept failing. In many regions, the crisis lasted for a
full seven years. Hardest hit were the peasants and the poor. In rural areas, wealthy
lords, churches, monasteries, and well-to-do peasants manipulated the market to
profit from the newly high prices they could charge. In the cities, some merchants
and ecclesiastical institutions benefited as well. But on the whole, even the well-to-do
suffered: both rural and urban areas lost fully 5 to 10 percent of their population,
and loss of population meant erosion of manpower and falling productivity.
To cope with and contain these disasters, the clergy offered up prayers and urged
their congregations to do penance. In the countryside, charitable monasteries gave
out food, conscientious kings tried to control high interest rates on loans, and hungry
peasants migrated from west to east — to Poland, for example, where land was more
plentiful. In the cities, where starving refugees from rural areas flocked for food,
wealthy men and women sometimes opened their storehouses or distributed coins.
Other rich townspeople founded hospitals for the poor. Town councils sold munici-
pal bonds at high rates of interest, gaining some temporary solvency. These towns
became the primary charitable institutions of the era, importing grain and selling it
at or slightly below cost.
Contributing to the crop failure was population growth that challenged the pro-
ductive capabilities of the age. The exponential leap in population from the tenth
through most of the thirteenth century slowed to zero around the year 1300, but all
[1215–1340
A Famine in Florence
Starvation did not end with
the last year of the Great
Famine. This miniature from
a manuscript detailing grain
prices shows the effects, and
the artist’s interpretation, of
a famine in 1329. The scene
is the Orsanmichele, the
Florentine grain market. The
market was dominated by
an image of the Virgin Mary,
here depicted on the right-
hand side. Extending beyond
the margin on the far left,
a mother with two children
raises her hands and eyes
to heaven in prayer. In the
back, soldiers guard the
market’s entrance. The mar-
ket itself bustles with rich
buyers, who hand over their
money and pack their bags
with grain. Above flies an
angel with broken trumpets,
while a demon takes center
stage and says, among other
things, “I will make you ache
with hunger and high prices.”
(Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence,
Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
the land that could be cultivated had been settled by this time. No new technology
had been developed to increase crop yields. The swollen population demanded a lot
from the productive capacities of the land. Just a small shortfall could dislocate the
whole system of distribution.
The policies of rulers added to the problems of too many people and too little
food. Wars between England and Scotland destroyed crops. So did wars between the
kings of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. These wars also diverted manpower and
resources to arms and castles, and they disrupted normal markets and trade routes.
In order to wage wars, rulers imposed heavy taxes and, as the Great Famine became
worse, requisitioned grain to support their troops. The effects of the famine grew
worse, and in many regions people rose up in protest. In England, peasants resisted
tax collectors. In a more violent reaction, poor French shepherds, outcasts, clerics,
and artisans entered Paris to storm the prisons. They then marched southward,
[ 1215–1340
]
burning royal castles and attacking offi-
REVIEW QUESTION How did the search cials, Jews, and lepers. The king of France
for harmony result in cooperation — and pursued them and succeeded in putting
confrontation — between the secular rulers down the movement. But the limits of the
of the period 1215–1340 and other institu-
politics of control were made clear in this
tions, such as the church and the towns?
confrontation, which exacerbated the mis-
ery of the famine while doing nothing to
contain it.
Conclusion
The thirteenth century sought harmony and synthesis but discovered how elusive
these goals could be. Theoretically, the papacy and empire were supposed to work
together; instead they clashed in bitter warfare, leaving the government of Germany
to the princes and northern Italy to its communes and signori. Theoretically, faith
and reason were supposed to arrive at the same truths. They sometimes did so in
the hands of scholastics, but not always. Theoretically, all Christians practiced the
same rites and followed the teachings of the church. In practice, local enforcement
determined which church laws took effect — and to what extent. Moreover, the
search for order was never able to bring together all the diverse peoples, ideas, and
interests of thirteenth-century society. Heretics and Jews were set apart.
Synthesis was more achievable in the arts. Heaven, earth, and hell were melded
harmoniously together in stained glass and sculpture. Musicians wove disparate
melodic and poetic lines into motets. Writers melded heroic and romantic themes
with theological truths and mystical visions.
Political leaders also aimed at harmony. Via representative institutions, they har-
nessed the various social orders to their quest for greater order and control. They
asserted sovereignty over all the people who lived in their borders, asserting unity
while increasing their revenues, expanding their territories, and enhancing their pres-
tige. The kings of England and France and the governments of northern and central
Italian cities largely succeeded in these goals, while the king of Germany failed mis-
erably. Germany and Italy remained fragmented until the nineteenth century. Ironi-
cally, the Mongols, who began as invaders in the West, helped unify areas that were
far apart by opening trade routes.
Events at the end of the thirteenth century thwarted the search for harmony.
The mutual respect of church and state achieved under St. Louis in France disinte-
grated into irreconcilable claims to power under Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the
Fair. The carefully constructed tapestry of St. Thomas’s summae began to unravel in
the teachings of John Duns Scotus. An economy stretched to the breaking point
resulted in a terrible period of famine. Disorder and anxiety — but also extraordinary
creativity — would mark the next era.
[ 1215–1340
] Conclusion 405
NORWAY S W E D E N
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OF MOSCOW
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MAPPING THE WEST Europe, c. 1340

The Empire, which in the thirteenth century came to be called the Holy Roman Empire, still
dominated the map of Europe in 1340, but the emperor himself had less power than ever.
Each principality — often each city — was ruled separately and independently. To the east, the
Ottoman Turks were just beginning to make themselves felt. In the course of the next century,
they would disrupt the Mongol hegemony and become a great power.
Chapter 12 Review
Innocent III (p. 380) Frederick II (p. 392) Avignon papacy (p. 399)
Fourth Lateran Council Statute in Favor of the Princes popolo (p. 399)
(p. 380) (p. 392) Golden Horde (p. 400)
blood libel (p. 384) Louis IX (p. 393) Great Famine (p. 402)
leprosy (p. 384) cortes (p. 396)
scholasticism (p. 385) Boniface VIII (p. 397)
Review Questions
1. How did people respond to the teachings and laws of the church in the early thirteenth
century?
2. How did artists, musicians, and scholastics in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries
try to link the physical world with the divine?
3. How did the search for harmony result in cooperation — and confrontation — between the
secular rulers of the period 1215–1340 and other institutions, such as the church and
the towns?
Making Connections
1. Why was Innocent III more successful than Boniface VIII in carrying out his objectives?
2. How did the growth of lay piety help bolster the prestige and power of kings like Louis IX?
3. Comparing the goals and methods of Abelard’s scholarship with those of Thomas Aquinas,
explain the continuities and the differences between the twelfth-century schools and the
scholastic movement.
For the church’s mission, see both Bynum and Sayers. The Inquisition and other forms of per-
secution are the subjects of the books by Given, Jordan (on the Jews), and Nirenberg. Abulafia,
Jones, Maddicott, and O’Callaghan each helpfully cover the political developments of the period.
Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. 1988.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women. 1987.
*Fourth Lateran Council: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-select.asp
Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia. The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later
Middle Ages. 2008.
Given, James Buchanan. Inquisition and Medieval Society. 2001.
Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the West. 2005.
*Joinville, Jean de, and Geoffroy de Villehardouin. Chronicles of the Crusades. Trans. M. R. B.
Shaw. 1963.
Jones, Philip. The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. 1997.
Jordan, William Chester. The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last
Capetians. 1989.
*Primary source.
406
[1215–1340
Important Events
1188 King Alfonso IX summons townsmen to the cortes

1212–1250 Reign of Frederick II
1215 Fourth Lateran Council
1226–1270 Reign of Louis IX (St. Louis)
1232 Frederick II finalizes Statute in Favor of the Princes
1240 Mongols capture Kiev
1265 English commons are summoned to Parliament
1273 Thomas Aquinas publishes the Summa Theologiae
1302 First Meeting of the French Estates General
1309–1378 Avignon papacy
1313–1321 Dante writes Divine Comedy
1315–1322 Great Famine
Consider three events: Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Thomas Aquinas publishes the
Summa Theologiae (1273), and Dante writes Divine Comedy (1313–1321). How did the
papacy, scholastic philosophy, and vernacular literature represent different aspects of the
medieval search for order?
Maddicott, J. R. Simon de Montfort. 1994.

Nichols, Aidan. Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to His Life, Work and Influence. 2003.
Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. 1996.
O’Callaghan, Joseph F. The Cortes of Castille-León, 1188–1350. 1989.
Richardson, H. G., and G. O. Sayles. The English Parliament in the Middle Ages. 1981.
Sayers, Jane. Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216. 1994.
Strayer, Joseph R. The Reign of Philip the Fair. 1980.
*Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. http://www.newadvent.org/summa
Crisis and Renaissance
13
1340–1492
I
n 1453, the Ottoman Turks turned their cannons on Constantinople and
blasted the city’s walls. The fall of Constantinople, which spelled the end of the
Byzantine Empire, was an enormous shock to Europeans. Some, like the pope,
called for a crusade against the Ottomans; others, like the writer Lauro Quirini,
sneered, calling the Ottomans “a barbaric, uncultivated race, without established
customs, or laws, [who lived] a careless, vagrant, arbitrary life.”
But the Turks didn’t consider themselves uncultivated or arbitrary. They saw
themselves as the true heirs of the Roman Empire, and they shared many of the values
and tastes of the very Europeans who were so hostile to them. Sultan Mehmed II
employed European architects to construct his
new palace — the Topkapi Saray — in the city
Portrait of Mehmed II
once known as Constantinople and now popu-
The Ottoman ruler Mehmed II saw
himself as a Renaissance patron of larly called Istanbul. He commissioned the
the arts, and he called on the most Venetian artist Gentile Bellini to paint his por-
famous artists and architects of the trait, a genre invented in Burgundy to celebrate
day to work for him. The painter of the status and individuality of important and
this portrait, Gentile Bellini, was wealthy patrons.
from a well-known family of artists
in Venice and served at Mehmed’s
Mehmed’s actions sum up the dual features
court in 1479–1480. The revival of the period of crisis and Renaissance that
of portraiture, so characteristic of took place from the middle of the fourteenth
Renaissance tastes, was as impor- century to the late fifteenth century. What was
tant to the Turkish sultans as to a crisis from one point of view — the fall of the
European rulers. (National Gallery,
London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
Byzantine Empire — was at the same time stim-
ulus for what historians call the Renaissance.
Both to confront and to mask the crises of the
day, people discovered new value in ancient, classical culture; they created a new
vocabulary drawn from classical literature as well as astonishing new forms of art
and music based on ancient precedents. The classical revival provided the stimulus
for new styles of living, ruling, and thinking.
Along with the fall of the Byzantine Empire, other crises marked the period from
1340 to 1492. These were matched by equally significant gains. The plague, or Black
Death, tore at the fabric of communities and families; but the survivors and their
409
410 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
[ 1340–1492
]
children reaped the benefits of higher wages and better living standards. The Hundred
Years’ War, fought between France and England, involved many smaller states in its
slaughter and brought untold misery to the French countryside; but it also helped
create the glittering court of Burgundy. By the war’s end, both the French and the
English kings were more powerful than ever. Following their conquest of Constan-
tinople, the Ottoman Turks penetrated far into the Balkans; but this was a calamity
only from the European point of view. Well into the sixteenth century, the Ottomans
were part of the culture that nourished the artistic achievements of the Renaissance.
A crisis in the church overlapped with the crises of disease and war as a schism within
the papacy — pitting pope against pope — divided Europe into separate camps. But
a church council whose members included
Renaissance humanists eventually resolved
CHAPTER FOCUS Who suffered and who
benefited from the events of the period from
the papal schism by reestablishing the old
1340 to 1492? system: a single pope who presided over
the church from Rome.
Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism

In the mid-fourteenth century, a series of crises shook the West. The Black Death
swept through Europe and decimated the population, especially in the cities. Two
major wars redrew the map of Europe between 1340 and 1492. The first was the
Hundred Years’ War, fought from 1337 to 1453 (thus actually lasting 116 years). The
second was the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. As the wars raged and
attacks of the plague came and went, a crisis in the church also weighed on Europeans.
Attempts to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome resulted in the Great Schism
(1378–1417), when first two and then three rival popes asserted universal authority.
In the wake of these crises, many ordinary folk sought solace in new forms of piety,
some of them condemned by the church as heretical.
The Black Death, 1346–1353

The Black Death, so named by later historians, was a calamitous disease. It decimated
the population wherever it struck and wreaked havoc on social and economic struc-
tures. Yet in the wake of this plague, those fortunate enough to survive benefited from
an improved standard of living. Birthrates climbed, and new universities were estab-
lished to educate the post-plague generations.
Already in 1346, the Byzantine scholar Nicephorus Gregoras noted a new disease
and described its symptoms, including “tumorous outgrowths at the roots of thighs
and arms and simultaneously bleeding ulcerations.” Scientists now ascribe the Black
Death to the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the same organism responsible for outbreaks
of plague today.
Carried by fleas traveling on the backs of rats, the Black Death hitched boat rides
with spices, silks, and porcelain. It hit the Genoese colony in Caffa in 1347 and soon
[ 1340–1492
] Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism 411
1347 1350
N
Jan. 1348 1351 and later
June 1348 Few or no E
NORWAY W
plague deaths
1349
S
SWEDEN Novgorod
SCOTLAND
Sea
Nor th
tic
S ea DENMARK RUSSIAN
IRELAND
al
B S TAT E S
ENGLAND Lübeck
LITHUANIA
Hamburg
London Brunswick
Rhi
Calais Thuringia POLAND
El
AT L A NT IC
ne R
be
HOLY .
R
Cologne
O CE A N
.
Paris ROMA N
Strasbourg EMPIRE
FRANCE Alsace Zurich Vienna
Savoy Milan HUNGARY

Venice Caffa
Po R.
Eb
ro Genoa VENICE Danub e R. Black Sea
L
R
GA
. Florence
CASTILEARAGON Marseille PAPAL
STATES
RTU
Corsica
Barcelona Constantinople
Rome
Thessalonika
PO
Seville Sardinia Naples OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Sicily
Cyprus
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a Crete
0 200 400 miles
MAP 13.1 Advance of the Black Death, 1346–1353

Hitting the Mediterranean area first, the Black Death quickly worked its way northward, generally
following waterways and roads. With the exception of a few regions that were spared, it killed
between one-third and one-half of the population of western Europe. However, in eastern Europe
its impact was far less. The plague recurred — at first every ten to twelve years and then at
longer intervals.
arrived in Constantinople and southern Europe. It then crept northward to Germany,

England, Scandinavia, and the state that now was starting to be called Russia.* Mean-
while, it attacked the Islamic world as well (Map 13.1). Recurring every ten to twelve
years throughout the fourteenth century (though only the outbreak of 1346–1353 is
called the Black Death), the disease attacked, with decreasing frequency, until the
eighteenth century.
The effects of the Black Death were spread across Europe yet oddly localized.
At Florence, in Italy, nearly half of the population died, yet two hundred miles to
*The Russian Orthodox church had always used the term Russia. In the fourteenth century, the
princes who ruled the northern parts, called Muscovy, started to do so as well.
[ 1340–1492
]
the north, Milan suffered very little. Conservative estimates put the death toll in Europe
anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of the entire population, but some historians
put the mortality rate as high as 60 percent. Already weakened by the Great Famine
as well as by local food shortages and epidemic diseases like smallpox, Europeans
were devastated by the arrival of Yersinia.
Many localities sought remedies. The government of the Italian city of Pistoia, for
example, set up a quarantine and demanded better sanitation. Elsewhere reactions
were religious. In England, the archbishop of York tried to prevent the plague from
entering his diocese by ordering “devout processions.” Some people took more extreme
measures. Lamenting their sins — which they believed had brought on the plague —
and attempting to placate God, flagellants, men (with women praying), wandered from
city to city whipping themselves. Religious enthusiasm often culminated in violence
Dance of Death
This fresco, painted in 1474 on a wall of a cemetery church in Croatia, depicts figures meant
to represent all the “types” in medieval society. It should be read from right to left. Not pictured
here, but first in line, is the pope, followed by a cardinal and a bishop. The portion shown here
comes next: the king, who holds a scepter; the queen; and a landlord, carrying a small barrel.
At the far left is a child. Even farther to the left (but not shown here) come a beggar, a knight,
and a shopkeeper. All the figures are flanked by gleeful, dancing skeletons. The message is
clear: everyone, even the most exalted, ends up in the grave. (De Agostini Picture Library / Alfredo
Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
[
1340–1492
against the Jews, who were blamed for the Black Death. In Germany, thousands of
Jews were slaughtered. Many Jews fled to Poland, where the epidemic affected fewer
people and where the authorities welcomed Jews as productive taxpayers.
Preoccupation with death led to the popularity of a theme called the Dance of
Death as a subject of art, literature, and performance. It featured a procession of
people of every age, sex, and rank making their way to the grave. In works of art,
skeletal figures of Death, whirling about, laughed as they abducted their prey. Preach-
ers, poets, and playwrights relished the theme.
At the same time that it helped inspire this bleak view of the world, the Black
Death brought new opportunities for those who survived its murderous path. With
a smaller population to feed, less land was needed for cultivation. Landlords allowed
marginal land that had been cultivated to return to pasture, meadow, or forest, and
they diversified their products. Wheat had been the favored crop before the plague,
but barley — the key ingredient of beer — turned out to be more profitable afterward.
Animal products continued to fetch a high price, and some landlords switched from
raising crops to raising animals.
These changes in agriculture meant a better standard of living. The peasants and
urban workers who survived the plague were able to negotiate better conditions or
higher wages from their landlords or employers. With more money to spend, people
could afford a better and more varied diet that included beer and meat. Birthrates
jumped as people could afford to marry at younger ages.
The Black Death, which spared neither professors nor students, also affected
patterns of education. The survivors built new local colleges and universities, partly
to train a new generation for the priesthood and partly to satisfy local donors — many
of them princes — who, riding on a sea of wealth left behind by the dead, wanted to
be known as patrons of education. Thus, in 1348, in the midst of the Black Death,
Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV chartered a university at Prague. The king of Poland
founded Cracow University, and a Habsburg duke created a university at Vienna.
Rather than traveling to Paris or Bologna, young men living east of the Rhine River
now tended to study nearer home.
The Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453

Adding to people’s miseries during the Black Death were the ravages of war. One of
the most brutal was the Hundred Years’ War, which pitted England against France.
Since the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the king of England had held land
on the continent. The French kings continually chipped away at it, however, and by
the beginning of the fourteenth century England retained only the area around Bor-
deaux, called Guyenne. In 1337, after a series of challenges and skirmishes, King
Philip VI of France (whose dynasty, the Valois, took over when the Capetians had
no male heir) declared Guyenne to be his. In turn, King Edward III of England, son
of Philip the Fair’s daughter, declared himself king of France (Figure 13.1). The
Hundred Years’ War had begun.
[ 1340–1492
]
Capetians Valois
Louis IX (Saint Louis)

King of France (1226–1270)
Philip III
King of France (1270–1285)
Philip IV the Fair Charles of Valois

(1285–1314) (d. 1325)
Louis X Philip V Charles IV Edward II Philip VI

(1314–1316) (1316–1322) (1322–1328) Isabella King of England King of France
(1307–1327) (1328–1350)
John I (daughters) (daughters) Edward III John II

(1316) King of England King of France
(1327–1377) (1350–1364)
FIGURE 13.1 The Valois Succession

When the Capetian king Charles IV died in 1328, his daughter was next in line for the French
throne, but prejudice in France against female succession was so strong that the crown went
to the Valois branch of the family. Meanwhile the English king Edward III, as son of the French
princess Isabella, claimed to be the rightful king of France.
The war had two major phases. In the first, the English gained ground, and a
new political entity, the duchy of Burgundy, allied itself with England. This phase
culminated in 1415, when the English achieved a great victory at the battle of Agin-
court and took over northern France. In the second phase, however, fortunes reversed
entirely after a sixteen-year-old peasant girl inspired the dauphin (the yet-uncrowned
heir to the throne) and his troops. Prompted by visions in which God told her to
lead the war against the English, and calling herself “the Maid” (a virgin), Joan of
Arc (1412–1431) arrived at court in 1429 wearing armor, riding a horse, and leading
a small army. Full of charisma and confidence at a desperate hour, Joan convinced
the French that she had been sent by God when she fought courageously (and was
wounded) in the successful battle of Orléans. Soon, with Joan at his side, the dauphin
traveled deep into enemy territory to be anointed and crowned as King Charles VII
at the cathedral in Reims, following the tradition of French monarchs. Joan was
captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, and put to death by her purchasers
(Map 13.2).
As it unfolded, the Hundred Years’ War drew people from much of Europe into
its vortex. Both the English and the French hired mercenaries from Germany, Swit-
zerland, and the Netherlands; the best crossbowmen came from Genoa.
The duchy of Burgundy became involved in the war when the marriage of the
heiress to Flanders and the duke of Burgundy in 1369 created a powerful new state.
[ 1340–1492
1337–1360 L’Ecluse 1360–1429 1429–1453 North

1340
ENGLAND ENGLAND ENGLAND Sea
Calais Calais
1347
an n e l Crécy an n e l Agincourt
sh Ch 1346 sh Ch Calais
Eng l i Eng l i 1415
Reims ann el Arras
sh Ch
Eng l i Reims
Brittany Paris
Orléans Formigny
1450
FRANCE
Poitiers Chinon
1356
ATL A NTIC ATL AN TIC
O CEA N O CEAN FRANCE
Bordeaux
AT L A N TIC
OCEAN
English holdings in 1337 Territory under English rule
English holdings after the Loyal to France

Burgundy (reconciled
Battle of Poitiers (1360) Holdings of the Duke of Burgundy with France in 1435) Mediterranean
English victories Sea
Route taken by Joan of Arc French victory
MAP 13.2 The Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453

During the Hundred Years’ War, English kings — aided by the new state of Burgundy — contested
the French monarchy for the domination of France. For many decades, the English seemed to
be winning, but the French monarchy prevailed in the end.
Calculating shrewdly which side — England or France — to support and cannily enter-
ing the fray when it suited them, the dukes of Burgundy created a glittering court,
a center of art and culture. Had Burgundy maintained its alliance with England, the
map of Europe would be entirely different today. But, sensing France’s new strength,
the duke of Burgundy broke off with England in 1435. The duchy continued to pros-
per until its expansionist policies led to the formation of a coalition against it. The
last duke, Charles the Bold, died fighting in 1477. His daughter, his only heir, tried
to save Burgundy by marrying the Holy Roman Emperor, but the move was to little
avail. The duchy broke up, with France absorbing its western bits.
Flanders, too, got drawn into the war. Its cities depended on England for the
raw wool that they turned into cloth. This is why, at the beginning of the war, Flem-
ish townsmen allied with England against their count, who supported the French
king. But discord among the cities and within each town soon ended the rebellion.
Although revolts continued to flare up, the count thereafter allowed a measure of
self-government to the towns, maintained some distance from French influence, and
managed on the whole to keep the peace.
The nature of warfare changed during the Hundred Years’ War. At its start, the
chronicler Jean Froissart (d. c. 1405) considered it a chivalric adventure, expecting it
to display the gallantry and bravery of the medieval nobility. But even Froissart could
not help but notice that most of the men who went to battle were not wealthy nobles
and knights. They were not even ordinary foot soldiers, who previously had made
up a large portion of all medieval armies. The soldiers of the Hundred Years’ War
were primarily mercenaries: men who fought for pay and plunder, heedless of the
[ 1340–1492
]
king for whom they were supposed to be fighting. During lulls in the war, these so-
called Free Companies lived off the French countryside, terrorizing the peasants and
exacting “protection” money.
The ideal chivalric knight fought on horseback with other armed horsemen. But
in the Hundred Years’ War, foot soldiers and archers were far more important than
swordsmen. The French tended to use crossbows, whose heavy, deadly arrows were
released by a mechanism that even a townsman could master. The English employed
longbows, which could shoot five arrows for every one launched on the crossbow.
Meanwhile, gunpowder was slowly being introduced and cannons forged. Handguns
were beginning to be used, their effect about equal to that of crossbows.
By the end of the war, chivalry was only a dream — though one that continued
to inspire soldiers even up to the First World War. Heavy artillery and foot soldiers,
tightly massed together in formations of many thousands of men, were the face of
the new military. Moreover, the army was becoming more professional and central-
ized. In the 1440s, the French king created a permanent army of mounted soldiers.
He paid them a wage and subjected them to regular inspection.
In addition to changing the face of warfare, the Hundred Years’ War gave a new
voice — however temporary — to the lower classes in France and England. When the
English captured the French king John at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, Étienne
Marcel, provost of the Paris merchants, and other disillusioned members of the estates
of France (the representatives of the clergy, nobility, and commons) met to discuss
political reform, the incompetence of the French army, and the high taxes they paid
to finance the war. Under Marcel’s leadership, a crowd of Parisians killed some nobles
and for a short while took control of the city. But troops soon blockaded Paris and
cut off its food supply. Later that year, Marcel was assassinated and the Parisian revolt
came to an end.
In the same year, peasants weary of the Free Companies (who were ravaging the
countryside) and disgusted by the military incompetence of the nobility rose up in
protest. The French nobility called the peasant rebellion the Jacquerie, probably
taken from a derisive name for male peasants: Jacques Bonhomme (“Jack Goodfel-
low”). The peasants committed atrocities against local nobles, but the nobles soon
gave as good as they got, putting down the Jacquerie with exceptional brutality.
Similar revolts took place in England. The movement known as Wat Tyler’s
Rebellion started in much of southern and central England when royal agents tried
to collect poll taxes (a tax on each household) to finance the Hundred Years’ War.
Refusing to pay and refusing to be arrested, the commons — peasants and small
householders — rose up in rebellion in 1381. They massed in various groups, vowing
“to slay all lawyers, and all jurors, and all the servants of the King whom they could
find.” Marching to London to see the king, they began to make a more radical demand:
an end to serfdom. Although the rebellion was put down and its leaders executed,
peasants returned home to bargain with their lords for better terms. The death knell
of serfdom in England had been sounded.
[1340–1492
The Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople, 1453

The end of the Hundred Years’ War coincided with an event that was even more
decisive for all of Europe: the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.
The Ottomans, who were converts to Islam, were one of several tribal confederations
in central Asia. Starting as a small enclave between the Mongol Empire and Byzan-
tium, and taking their name from a potent early leader, Osman I (r. 1280–1324), the
Ottomans began to expand in the fourteenth century in a quest to wage holy war
against infidels, or unbelievers.
During the next two centuries, the Ottomans took over the Balkans and Anatolia
by both negotiations and arms (Map 13.3). They reduced the Byzantine Empire to the
city of Constantinople and treated it as a vassal state. Under the sultan Mehmed II
(r. 1451–1481), they besieged the city of Constantinople itself in 1453. Perhaps eighty
thousand men confronted some three thousand defenders (the entire population of
Constantinople was no more than fifty thousand) and a fleet from Genoa. The city
held out until the end of May but was forced to capitulate when the sultan’s cannons
breached the city’s land walls. Mehmed’s troops entered the city and plundered it
thoroughly, killing the emperor and displaying his head in triumph.
The conquest of Constantinople marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. But
that was not the way Mehmed saw the matter. He conquered Constantinople in part
to be a successor to the Roman emperors — a Muslim successor, to be sure. He
turned Hagia Sophia (the great church built by the emperor Justinian in 538) into a
mosque, as he did with most of the other Byzantine churches. He retained the city’s
name, the City of Constantine — Qustantiniyya in Turkish — though it was popu-
larly referred to as Istanbul, meaning, simply, “the city.”
Like the French and English kings after the Hundred Years’ War, the Otto-
man sultans were centralizing monarchs who guaranteed law and order. The core
of their army consisted of European Christian boys, who were requisitioned as trib-
ute every five years. Trained in
arms and converted to Islam, Ottoman Empire, 1359 Expansion, 1459–1463
these young fighters made up Ottoman Empire, 1451 Expansion, 1470–1488
the Janissaries — a highly disci- Venice
plined military force also used Kosovo .
BOSNIA 1389 D anub e R
Black Sea
Maritsa
SERBIA R
1364
.
Constantinople
MAP 13.3 Ottoman Expansion 1453
in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth ANATOLIA
Centuries
The Balkans were the major the-
ater of expansion for the Ottoman Med
iterr
anean Sea N
Empire. The Byzantine Empire was
reduced to the city of Constanti- W E
0 250 500 miles
nople and surrounded by the Otto-
0 250 500 kilometers S
mans before its final fall in 1453.
[ 1340–1492
]
to supervise local administrators throughout formerly Byzantine regions. Building a
system of roads that crisscrossed their empire, the sultans made long-distance trade
easy and profitable.
Once Constantinople was his, Mehmed embarked on an ambitious program of
expansion and conquest. By 1500, the Ottoman Empire was a new and powerful state
bridging Europe and the Middle East.
The Great Schism, 1378–1417

Even as war and disease threatened Europeans’ material and physical well-being, a
crisis in the church, precipitated by a scandal in the papacy, tore at their spiritual
life. The move of the papacy from Rome to Avignon in 1309 had caused an outcry,
and some critics, such as Marsilius of Padua, became disillusioned with the institu-
tion of the papacy itself. In The Defender of the Peace (1324), Marsilius argued that
the source of all power lay with the people: Christians themselves formed the church;
the pope should be elected by a general council representing all Christians.
William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349), an English Franciscan, was an even more
thoroughgoing critic of the papacy. Not only did he believe that church power derived
from the congregation of the faithful, but he rejected the confident synthesis of Chris-
tian doctrine and Aristotelian philosophy made by Thomas Aquinas. William argued
that universal concepts, such as “human being,” had no reality in nature but instead
existed only as representations, mere names in the mind — a philosophy that came to
be called nominalism. The principle that simple explanations were superior to complex
ones became known as Ockham’s razor (to suggest the idea of shaving away unneces-
sary hypotheses).
Stung by his critics, Pope Gregory XI (r. 1370–1378) left Avignon to return to
Rome in 1377. The scandal of the Avignon papacy seemed to be over. Glad to have
the papacy back, the Romans were determined never to lose it again. But when the
cardinals chose an Italian (who took the name Urban VI), he immediately exalted
the power of the pope and began to reduce the cardinals’ wealth and privileges. The
cardinals from France decided that they had made a big mistake. Many left Rome
for a meeting at Anagni, where they claimed that Urban’s election had been irregular
and called on him to resign. When he refused, they elected a Frenchman as pope;
he took the name Clement VII and soon moved his papal court to Avignon, but not
before he and Urban had excommunicated each other. The Great Schism (1378–
1417), which split the loyalties of all of Europe, had begun.
The king of France supported Clement; the king of England favored Urban.
Some European states lined up on the side of France, while others supported Urban.
Each pope declared that those who followed the other were to be deprived of the
rights of church membership; in effect, everyone in Europe was excommunicated by
one pope or the other. Church law said that only a pope could summon a general
council of the church. But given the state of confusion in Christendom, many intel-
lectuals argued that the crisis justified calling a general council to represent the body
[1340–1492
of the faithful, even against the wishes of an unwilling pope — or popes. They spear-
headed the conciliar movement — a movement to have the cardinals or the emperor
call a council.
In 1408, long after Urban and Clement had passed away and new popes had
followed, the conciliar movement succeeded when cardinals from both sides met and
declared their resolve “to pursue the union of the Church . . . by way of abdication of
both papal contenders.” With support from both England and France, the cardinals
called for a council to be held at Pisa in 1409. Both popes refused to attend, and the
council deposed them, electing a new pope.
But the “deposed” popes refused to budge, even though most of the European
powers abandoned them. There were now three popes. The successor of the newest
one, John XXIII, turned to the emperor to arrange for another council.
The Council of Constance (1414–1418) met to resolve the papal crisis as well as
to institute church reforms. The delegates deposed John XXIII and accepted the
resignation of the pope at Rome. After long negotiations with rulers still supporting
the Avignon pope, all allegiance to him was withdrawn and he was deposed. The
council then elected Martin V, whom every important ruler of Europe recognized
as pope. Finally, the Great Schism had come to an end.
Nevertheless, the schism had worked changes in the religious sensibilities of Euro-
peans. Worried about the salvation of their souls now that the church was fractured
by multiple popes, pious men and women eagerly sought new forms of religious
solace. The church offered the plenary indulgence — full forgiveness of sins, which
had been originally offered to crusaders who died while fighting for the cause —
to those who made a pilgrimage to Rome and other designated holy places during
declared Holy Years. People could wipe away their sins through confession and con-
trition, but they retained some guilt that they could remove only through good deeds
or in purgatory. The idea of purgatory — the place where sins were fully purged —
took precise form at this time, and with it indulgences became popular. These remis-
sions of sin were offered for good works to reduce the time in purgatory.
Both clergy and laity became more interested than ever in the education of young
people as a way to deepen their faith and spiritual life. The Brethren of the Common
Life — laypeople, mainly in the Low Countries (the region comprising today’s Bel-
gium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), who devoted themselves to pious works —
set up a model school at Deventer. In Italy, humanists (see “Renaissance Humanism,”
page 422) emphasized primary school education. Priests were expected to teach the
faithful the basics of the Christian religion.
Home was equally a place for devotion. Portable images of Mary, the mother of
God, and of the life and passion of Christ proliferated. Ordinary Christians contem-
plated them at convenient moments throughout the day. People purchased or com-
missioned copies of Books of Hours, which contained prayers to be said at the same
hours of the day that monks chanted their liturgy. Books of Hours included calen-
dars, sometimes splendidly illustrated with depictions of the seasons and labors of
the year. Other illustrations reminded their users of the life and suffering of Christ.
[ 1340–1492
]
Book of Hours
This illustration for June in a Book
of Hours made for the duke of
Berry was meant for the contem-
plation of a nobleman. In the back-
ground is a fairy-tale depiction of
the duke’s palace and the tower of
a Gothic church, while in the fore-
ground graceful women rake the
hay and well-muscled men swing
their scythes. (Musée Condé, Chantilly,
France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY.)
On the streets of towns,

priests marched in dignified
processions, carrying the sanc-
tified bread of the Mass — the
very body of Christ — in tall
and splendid monstrances that
trumpeted the importance and
dignity of the Eucharistic wafer.
The image of a bleeding, cruci-
fied Christ was repeated over
and over in depictions of the
day. Viewers were meant to
think about Christ’s pain and
feel it themselves, mentally par-
ticipating in his death on the
cross.
Religious anxieties, intellectual dissent, and social unrest combined to create new
heretical movements in England and Bohemia. In England were the Lollards, a term
that was derogatory in the hands of their opponents and yet a proud title when used
by the Lollards themselves. Inspired by the Oxford scholar John Wycliffe (c. 1330–
1384), who taught that the true church was the community of believers rather than
the clerical hierarchy, Lollards emphasized Bible reading in the vernacular. Although
suffering widespread hostility and persecution into the sixteenth century, the Lollards
were extremely active, setting up schools for children (girls as well as boys), translat-
ing the Bible from Latin into English, preaching numerous sermons, and inspiring
new recruits.
On the other side of Europe were the Bohemian Hussites — named after one of
their leaders, Jan Hus (1372?–1415), an admirer of Wycliffe. When priests celebrated
Mass, they had the privilege of drinking the wine (the blood of Christ); the faithful
received only the bread (the body). The Hussites, who were largely Czech laity,
[1340–1492
] The Renaissance: New Forms of Thought and Expression 421
wanted the privilege of drinking the wine as well and, with it, recognition of their
dignity and worth. Their demand brought together several passionately held desires
and beliefs: it reflected a focus on the redemptive power of Christ’s blood. Further-
more, the call for communion with both bread and wine signified a desire for equal-
ity. Bohemia was an exceptionally divided country, with an urban German-speaking
elite, including merchants, artisans, bishops, and scholars, and a Czech-speaking
nobility and peasantry that was beginning to seek better opportunities. (Hus himself
was a Czech of peasant stock who became a professor at the University of Prague.)
The Bohemian nobility protected Hus after the church condemned him as a
heretic, but the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund lured him to the Council of Con-
stance, promising him safe conduct. Nevertheless, Hus was arrested when he arrived.
When he refused to recant his views, the church leaders burned him at the stake.
Hus’s death caused an uproar, and his movement became a full-scale national
revolt of Czechs against Germans. Sigismund called crusades against the Hussites,
but all of his expeditions were soundly defeated. Radical groups of Hussites orga-
nized several new communities in southern Bohemia, attempting to live according
to the example of the first apostles. They recognized no lord, gave women some
political rights, and created a simple liturgy that was carried out in the Czech lan-
guage. Negotiations with Sigismund and his successor led to the Hussites’ incorpora-
tion into the Bohemian political system by 1450. Though the Hussites were largely
marginalized, they had won the right to
receive communion in “both kinds” (wine REVIEW QUESTION What crises did Europe-
and bread) and they had made Bohemia ans confront in the fourteenth and fifteenth
intensely aware of its Czech, rather than centuries, and how did they handle them?
German, identity.
The Renaissance: New Forms of Thought and Expression

Some Europeans confronted the crises they faced by creating the culture of the
Renaissance (French for “rebirth”). The period associated with the Renaissance,
about 1350 to 1600, revived elements of the classical past — the Greek philosophers
before Aristotle, Hellenistic artists, and Roman rhetoricians. Disillusioned with pres-
ent institutions, many people looked back to the ancient world; in Greece and Rome
they found models of thought, language, power, prestige, and the arts that they could
apply to their own circumstances. Humanists modeled their writing on the Latin of
Cicero, architects embraced ancient notions of public space, artists adopted classical
forms, and musicians used classical texts. In reality, Renaissance writers and artists
built much of their work on medieval precedents, but they rarely acknowledged this
fact. They found great satisfaction in believing that they were resuscitating the glories
of the ancient world — and that everything between them and the classical past was
a contemptible “Middle Age.”
[ 1340–1492
]
Renaissance Humanism
Three of the delegates at the Council of Constance — Cincius Romanus, Poggius
Bracciolinus, and Bartholomaeus Politianus — reveal the attitudes of the Renaissance.
Although busy with church work, they decided to take time off for a “rescue mis-
sion.” Cincius described the escapade to one of his Latin teachers back in Italy:
In Germany there are many monasteries with libraries full of Latin books.
This aroused the hope in me that some of the works of Cicero, Varro, Livy,
and other great men of learning, which seem to have completely vanished,
might come to light, if a careful search were instituted. A few days ago, [we]
went by agreement to the town of St. Gall. As soon as we went into the
library [of the monastery there], we found Jason’s Argonauticon, written by
C. Valerius Flaccus in verse that is both splendid and dignified and not far
removed from poetic majesty. Then we found some discussion in prose of
a number of Cicero’s orations.
Cicero, Varro, Livy, and Valerius Flaccus were pagan Latin writers. Even though
Cincius and his friends were working for Pope John XXIII, they loved the writ-
ings of the ancients, whose Latin was, in their view, “splendid and dignified,” unlike
the Latin used in their own time — the Latin of the scholastics and the university
masters — which they found debased and faulty. They saw themselves as the resuscita-
tors of ancient language, literature, and culture, and they congratulated themselves
on rescuing captive books from the “barbarian” monks of the monastery of St. Gall.
Humanism was a literary and linguistic movement — an attempt to revive clas-
sical Latin (and later Greek) as well as the values and sensibilities that came with the
language. It began among men and women who, like Cincius, lived in the Italian
city-states. The humanists saw parallels between their urban, independent lives and
the experiences of the city-states of the ancient world. Humanism was a way to
confront the crises — and praise the advances — of the fourteenth through sixteenth
centuries. Humanists wrote poetry, history, moral philosophy, and grammar books,
all patterned on classical models, especially the writings of Cicero.
That Cincius was employed by the pope yet considered the monks of St. Gall
barbarians was no oddity. Most humanists combined sincere Christian piety with a
new appreciation of the pagan past. Besides, they needed to work in order to live,
and they took employment where they found it. Some humanists worked for the
church, others were civil servants, and still others were notaries. A few were rich men
who had a taste for literary subjects.
The first humanist, most historians agree, was Francis Petrarch (1304–1374).
He was born in Arezzo, a town about fifty miles southeast of Florence. As a boy, he
moved around a lot (his father was exiled from Florence), ending up in the region of
Avignon, where he received his earliest schooling and fell in love with classical lit-
erature. He became a poet, writing in both Italian and Latin. When writing in Italian,
he drew on the traditions of the troubadours, dedicating poems of longing to an
[1340–1492
unattainable and idealized woman named Laura; who she really was, we do not
know. When writing in Latin, Petrarch was much influenced by classical poetry.
On the one hand, a boyhood in Avignon made Petrarch sensitive to the failings
of the church: he was the writer who coined the phrase “Babylonian captivity” to
liken the Avignon papacy to the Bible’s account of the Hebrews’ captivity in Babylo-
nia. On the other hand, he took minor religious orders there, which gave him a
modest living. Struggling between what he considered a life of dissipation (he
fathered two children out of wedlock) and a religious vocation, he resolved the con-
flict at last in his book On the Solitary Life, in which he claimed that the solitude
needed for reading the classics was akin to the solitude practiced by those who
devoted themselves to God. For Petrarch, humanism was a vocation, a calling.
Less famous, but for that reason perhaps more representative of humanists in
general, was Lauro Quirini (1420–1475?), the man who (as we saw at the start of this
chapter) wrote disparagingly about the Turks as barbarians. Educated at the University
of Padua, Quirini eventually got a law degree there. He wrote numerous letters and
essays, and corresponded with other humanists. He spent the last half of his life in
Crete, where he traded various commodities — alum, cloth, wine, and Greek books.
If Quirini represents the ordinary humanist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(1463–1494) was perhaps the most flamboyant. Born near Ferrara of a noble family,
Pico received a humanist education at home before going on to Bologna to study
law and to Padua to study philosophy. Soon he was picking up Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Arabic. A convinced eclectic (one who selects the best from various doctrines),
he thought that Jewish mystical writings supported Christian scriptures, and in 1486
he proposed that he publicly defend at Rome nine hundred theses drawn from
diverse sources. The church found some of the theses heretical, however, and banned
the whole affair. But Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, which he intended to
deliver before his defense, summed up the humanist view: the creative individual,
armed only with his (or her) “desires and judgment,” could choose to become a boor
or an angel. Humanity’s potential was unlimited.
Christine de Pisan (c. 1365–c. 1430) exemplifies a humanist who chose to fash-
ion herself into a writer and courtier. Born in Venice and educated in France, Chris-
tine was married and then soon widowed. Forced to support herself, her mother,
and her three young children, she began to write poems inspired by classical models,
depending on patrons to admire her work and pay her to write more. Many members
of the upper nobility supported her, including Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy,
Queen Isabelle of Bavaria, and the English earl of Salisbury.
The Arts
The lure of the classical past was as strong in the visual arts as in literature — and for
many of the same reasons. Architects and artists admired ancient Athens and Rome,
but they also modified these classical models, melding them with medieval artistic
traditions.
[ 1340–1492
]
The Renaissance Facade of Santa Maria Novella

When Italians wished to transform their churches into the Renaissance style, they did not tear
them down; they gave them a new facade. At Santa Maria Novella in Florence, the architect
Leon Battista Alberti designed a facade that was inspired by classical models — hence the
round-arched entranceway and columns. At the same time he paid tribute to the original Gothic
church by including a round window. (Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
The Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) looked at the unplanned
medieval city with dismay. He proposed that each building in a city be proportioned
to fit harmoniously with all the others and that city spaces allow for all necessary
public activities — there should be market squares, play areas, grounds for military
exercises. In Renaissance cities, the agora and the forum (the open, public spaces of
the classical world) appeared once again, but in a new guise: the piazza — a plaza or
open square. Architects carved out spaces around their new buildings, and they
rimmed them with porticoes — graceful covered walkways of columns and arches.
The Gothic cathedral of the Middle Ages was a cluster of graceful spikes and
soaring arches. While Renaissance architects appreciated its vigor and energy, they
tamed it with regular geometrical forms inspired by classical buildings. Classical
forms were applied to previously built structures as well as new ones. Florence’s Santa
Maria Novella, for example, had been a typical Gothic church when it was first built.
But when Alberti, the man who believed in public spaces and harmonious buildings,
was commissioned to replace its facade, he drew on Roman temple forms.
The classical world inspired artists as well. This explains the style Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378?–1455) chose when he competed to produce the doors of Florence’s baptistery
[1340–1492
in 1400. His entry showed the

sacrifice of Isaac from the Old
Testament: the young, nude Isaac
was modeled on the masculine
ideal of ancient Greek sculpture.
At the same time, Ghiberti drew
on medieval models for his depic-
tion of Abraham and for his qua-
trefoil frame. In this way, he
gracefully melded old and new
elements — and won the contest.
In addition to using the forms
of classical art, Renaissance artists
also mined the ancient world for
new subjects. Venus, the Roman
goddess of love and beauty, had
numerous stories attached to her
name. At first glance, The Birth Lorenzo Ghiberti, The Sacrifice of Isaac
of Venus by Sandro Botticelli This bronze relief, which was entered into the compe-
(c. 1445–1510) seems simply an tition to decorate the doors of the San Giovanni
illustration of the tale of Venus’s Baptistery in Florence, captures (on the right-hand
rise from the sea (see page 426). side) the dramatic moment when the angel intervenes
as Abraham prepares to kill Isaac, a story told in the
A closer look, however, shows that Hebrew Scriptures. (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence,
Botticelli borrowed from the Italy / Bridgeman Images.)
poetry of Angelo Poliziano (1454–
1494), who wrote of “fair Venus,
mother of the cupids”:
Zephyr bathes the meadow with dew
spreading a thousand lovely fragrances:
wherever he flies he clothes the countryside
in roses, lilies, violets, and other flowers.
In Botticelli’s painting, Zephyr — one of the winds — blows while Venus herself is
about to be clothed in a fine robe embroidered with leaves and flowers.
The Sacrifice of Isaac and The Birth of Venus show some of the ways in which
Renaissance artists used ancient models. Other Renaissance artists perfected
perspective — the illusion of three-dimensional space — to a degree that even classi-
cal antiquity had not anticipated. The development of the laws of perspective accom-
panied the introduction of long-range weaponry, such as cannons. In fact, some of
perspective’s practitioners — Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), for example — were
military engineers as well as artists. In Leonardo’s painting The Last Supper, sight lines
meet at a point somewhere beyond the back windows while opening wide at the
table. In this way the entire hall becomes a frame to accentuate the figure of Christ.
[ 1340–1492
]
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus

Other artists had depicted Venus, but Botticelli was the first since antiquity to portray her in the
nude. (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper (1494–1497)

Working with a traditional Christian theme — the Last Supper, at which Christ tells his disciples
that one of them will betray him — Leonardo portrays Christ as a model of calm serenity amid
the others, who react with guilt, shock, and horror. The use of perspective allowed Leonardo to
subordinate the background (a great hall ending in windows) to the main action. (Santa Maria della
Grazie, Milan, Italy / Bridgeman Images.)
[1340–1492
Ghiberti, Botticelli, and Leonardo were all Italian artists. While they were creating
their works, a northern Renaissance was taking place as well. At the court of Burgundy
during the Hundred Years’ War, the dukes commissioned portraits of themselves —
sometimes unflattering ones — just as Roman leaders had once commissioned their
own busts. Soon it was the fashion for those who could afford it to have a portrait
made, showing them as naturalistically as possible. Around 1433, the chancellor Nico-
las Rolin, for example, commissioned the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck to paint his
portrait. Though opposite the Virgin and the baby Jesus, Rolin, in a pious pose, is
the key figure in the picture. The grand view of a city behind the figures was meant
to underscore Rolin’s prominence in the community. In fact Rolin was an important
man: he worked for the duke of Burgundy and was also the founder of a hospital at
Beaune and a religious order of nurses to serve it. Van Eyck’s portrait emphasized
not only Rolin’s dignity and status but also his individuality. The artist took pains to
show even the wrinkles of his neck and the furrows on his brow.
In music, Renaissance composers incorporated classical texts and allusions into
songs that were based on the motet and other forms of polyphony. Working for
Jan van Eyck, The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin

Van Eyck portrays the Virgin and Chancellor Nicolas Rolin as if they were contemporaries
sharing a nice chat. Only the angel, who is placing a crown on the Virgin’s head, suggests that
something out of the ordinary is happening. (Louvre, Paris, France / Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
[ 1340–1492
]
patrons — whether churchmen, secular rulers, or republican governments — they
expressed the glory, religious piety, and prestige of their benefactors. In fact, Renais-
sance rulers spent as much as 6 percent of their annual revenue to support musicians
and composers.
Every proper court had its own musicians. Some served as chaplains, writing
music for the ruler’s private chapel — the place where his court and household heard
Mass. When Josquin Desprez (1440–1521) served as the duke of Ferrara’s chaplain,
he wrote a Mass that used the musical equivalents of the letters of the duke’s name
(the Italian version of do re mi) as its theme. Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), the daugh-
ter of the duke, employed her own musicians — singers, woodwind and string play-
ers, percussionists, and keyboard players — while her husband, the duke of Mantua,
had his own band. Humanism and music came together: because Isabella loved
Petrarch’s poems, she had the composer Bartolomeo Tromboncino set them to music.
The church, too, was a major sponsor of music. Every feast required music, and
the papal schism inadvertently encouraged more musical production than usual, as
rival popes tried to best one another in the realm of pageantry and sound. Churches
needed choirs of singers, and many choirboys went on to become composers, while
others sang well into adulthood: in the fourteenth century, the men who sang in the
choir at Reims received a yearly stipend and an extra fee every time they sang the
Mass and the liturgical offices of the day.
When the composer Johannes Ockeghem — chaplain for three French kings —
died in 1497, his fellow musicians vied in expressing their grief in song. Josquin
Desprez was among them, and his composition illustrates how the addition of clas-
sical elements to traditional musical forms enhanced music’s emotive power. Josquin’s
work combines personal grief with religious liturgy and the feelings expressed in
classical elegies. The piece uses five voices. Inspired by classical mythology, four
of the voices sing in the vernacular French about the “nymphs of the wood” coming
together to mourn. But the fifth voice intones the words of the liturgy: Requiescat
in pace (“May he rest in peace”). At the very moment in the song that the four ver-
nacular voices lament Ockeghem’s burial in the dark ground, the liturgical voice
sings of the heavenly light. The contrast
makes the song more moving. By drawing
REVIEW QUESTION How and why did Renais-
sance humanists, artists, and musicians revive on the classical past, Renaissance musi-
classical traditions? cians found new ways in which to express
emotion.
Consolidating Power
The shape of Europe changed between 1340 and 1492. In eastern Europe, the Otto-
man Empire took the place (though not the role) of Byzantium. The capital of the
Holy Roman Empire moved to Prague, bringing Bohemia to the fore. Meanwhile,
the duke of Lithuania married the queen of Poland, uniting those two states. In
western Europe, a few places organized and maintained themselves as republics; the
[1340–1492
] Consolidating Power 429
Swiss, for example, consolidated their informal alliances in the Swiss Confederation.
Italy, which at the beginning of the period was dotted with numerous small city-
states, was by the end dominated by five major powers: Milan, the papacy, Naples,
and the republics of Venice and Florence. Most western European states — England
and France, for example — became centralized monarchies. The union of Aragon and
Castile via the marriage of their respective rulers created Spain. Whether monarchies,
principalities, or republics, states throughout Europe used their new powers to
finance humanists, artists, and musicians — and to persecute heretics, Muslims, and
Jews with new vigor.
New Political Formations in Eastern Europe

In the eastern half of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia gained new status as the
seat of the Luxembourg imperial dynasty, whose last representative was Emperor
Sigismund. This development led to a religious and political crisis when the Hussites
clashed with Sigismund (see page 421). The chief beneficiaries of the violence were
the nobles, both Catholic and Hussite, but they quarreled among themselves, espe-
cially about who should be king. There was no Joan of Arc to galvanize the national
will, and most of Europe considered Bohemia a heretic state.
Farther north, the cities (rather than the landed nobility) held power. Allied cities,
known as Hanse, were common. The most successful alliance was the Hanseatic League,
a loose federation of mainly north German cities formed to protect their mutual
interests in defense and trade — and art. For example, the artist Bernt Notke, who
hailed from the Hanse town of Lübeck, painted a famous Dance of Death at Reval
(today Tallinn, Estonia), another Hanse town. The Hanseatic League linked the Baltic
coast with Russia, Norway, the British Isles, France, and even (via imperial cities like
Augsburg and Nuremberg) the cities of Italy. When threatened by rival powers in
Denmark and Norway in 1367 to 1370, the league waged war and usually won. But
in the fifteenth century it confronted new rivals and began a long, slow decline.
To the east of the Hanseatic cities, two new monarchies took shape in north-
eastern Europe: Poland and Lithuania. Poland had begun to form in the tenth cen-
tury. Powerful nobles soon dominated it, and Mongol invasions devastated the land.
But recovery was under way by 1300. Unlike almost every other part of Europe,
Poland expanded demographically and economically during the fourteenth century.
Jews migrated there to escape persecutions in western Europe, and both Jewish and
German settlers helped build thriving towns like Cracow. Monarchical consolidation
began thereafter.
On Poland’s eastern flank was Lithuania, the only major holdout from Chris-
tianity in eastern Europe. But as it expanded into southern Russia, its grand dukes
flirted with both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox varieties. Grand Duke Jogailo
(c. 1351–1434), taking advantage of a hiatus in the Polish ruling dynasty, united both
states in 1386 when he married Queen Jadwiga of Poland, received a Catholic bap-
tism, and was elected by the Polish nobility as King Wladyslaw II Jagiello. As part
[ 1340–1492
]
of the negotiations prior to these events, he promised to convert Lithuania, and after
his coronation he sent churchmen there to begin the long, slow process. The union
of Poland and Lithuania lasted, with some interruptions, until 1772. (See Mapping
the West, page 437.)
Powerful States in Western Europe

Four powerful states dominated western Europe during the fifteenth century: Spain,
the duchy of Burgundy, France, and England. By the end of the century, however,
Burgundy had disappeared, leaving three exceptionally powerful monarchies.
The kingdom of Spain was created by marriage. Decades of violence on the Ibe-
rian peninsula ended when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married in
1469 and restored law and order in the decades that followed. Castile was the pow-
erhouse, with Aragon its lesser neighbor and Navarre a pawn between the two. When
the king and queen joined forces, they ruled together over their separate dominions,
allowing each to retain its traditional laws and privileges. The union of Castile and
Aragon was the first step toward a united Spain and a centralized monarchy there.
Relying on a lucrative taxation system, pliant meetings of the cortes (the repre-
sentative institution that voted on taxes), and an ideology that glorified the monar-
chy, Ferdinand and Isabella consolidated their power. They had an extensive bureau-
cracy for financial matters and a well-staffed writing office. They sent their own
officials to rule over towns that had previously been self-governing, and they estab-
lished regional courts of law.
Created, like Spain, by marriage, the duchy of Burgundy was disunited lin-
guistically and geographically. Through purchases, inheritance, and conquests, the
dukes ruled over French-, Dutch-, and German-speaking subjects, creating a state
that resembled a patchwork of provinces and regions, each jealously guarding its laws
and traditions. The Low Countries, with their flourishing cities, constituted the state’s
economic heartland, while the region of Burgundy itself, which gave the state its
name, offered rich farmlands and vineyards. Unlike England, whose island geogra-
phy made it a natural political unit; or France, whose borders were forged in the
national experience of repelling English invaders; or Spain, whose national identity
came from centuries of warfare against Islam, Burgundy was an artificial creation
whose coherence depended entirely on the skillful exercise of statecraft.
At the heart of Burgundian politics was the personal cult of its dukes. Philip the
Good (r. 1418–1467) and his son Charles the Bold (r. 1467–1477) were very differ-
ent kinds of rulers, but both were devoted to enhancing the prestige of their dynasty
and the security of their dominion. Philip was a lavish patron of the arts who com-
missioned numerous illuminated manuscripts, chronicles, tapestries, paintings, and
music in his efforts to glorify himself as ruler of Burgundy.
The Burgundians’ success depended in large part on their personal relationship
with their subjects. Not only did the dukes travel constantly from one part of their
dominion to another, but they also staged elaborate ceremonies to enhance their power
[1340–1492
Philip the Good Receives a Book

The dukes of Burgundy surrounded themselves with splendor and cultivated all the arts. This
dedication miniature in a book translated by Jean Miélot, a writer at the Burgundian court, shows
Duke Philip the Good (d. 1467) in characteristic pose. The artist, probably Jan Tavernier, shows
him — splendidly clothed, surrounded by his courtiers, and with a dog at his feet — graciously
accepting the book from the hands of the writer. Note the gold-embroidered tapestry hanging on
the wall. (Miniature from the Chronicles of Haynaut, Flanders, 15th century / Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Bel-
gique (Royal Museums of Fines Arts of Belgium), Brussels, Belgium / De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.)
and promote their legitimacy. Their entries into cities and their presence at wed-
dings, births, and funerals became the centerpieces of a “theater state” in which the
dynasty provided the only link among diverse territories. New rituals became pro-
paganda tools. Philip’s revival of chivalry at court transformed the semi-independent
nobility into courtiers closely tied to the prince. But, as mentioned earlier in this
chapter (page 415), when Charles the Bold died in 1477, the duchy was parceled out
to France and the Holy Roman Empire.
It was its quick recovery from the Hundred Years’ War that allowed France to
take a large bite out of Burgundy. Under Louis XI (r. 1461–1483), the French mon-
archy both expanded its territory and consolidated its power. Soon after Burgundy
fell, Louis inherited most of southern France. When he inherited claims to the duchy
of Milan and the kingdom of Naples, he was ready to exploit other opportunities in
Italy. By the end of the century, France had doubled its territory, assuming boundar-
ies close to its modern ones, and was looking to expand even further.
[ 1340–1492
]
To strengthen royal power at home, Louis promoted industry and commerce,
imposed permanent salt and land taxes, maintained western Europe’s first standing
army (created by his predecessor), and dispensed with the meetings of the Estates
General, which included the clergy, the nobility, and representatives from the major
towns of France. The French kings had already increased their power with important
concessions from the papacy. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) asserted the
superiority of a general church council over the pope. Harking back to a long tradi-
tion of the high Middle Ages, the Pragmatic Sanction established what would come
to be known as Gallicanism (after Gaul, the ancient Roman name for France), in
which the French king would effectively control ecclesiastical revenues and the
appointment of French bishops.
England, too, recovered quickly from civil wars — called the Wars of the Roses —
spawned by the stresses of the Hundred Years’ War and concluded with the victory
of Henry Tudor, who took the title of Henry VII (r. 1485–1509). Despite the Wars
of the Roses, which affected mainly the English nobility, the English economy con-
tinued to grow during the fifteenth century. The cloth industry expanded consider-
ably, and the English used much of the raw wool that they had been exporting to the
Low Countries to manufacture goods at home. London merchants, taking a vigorous
role in trade, also assumed greater political prominence, not only in governing Lon-
don but also in serving as bankers to kings and members of Parliament. In the coun-
tryside the landed classes — the nobility, the gentry (the lesser nobility), and the yeo-
manry (free farmers) — benefited from rising farm and land-rent income as the
population increased slowly but steadily. The Tudor monarchs took advantage of the
general prosperity to bolster both their treasury and their power.
Power in the Republics

Within the fifteenth-century world of largely monarchical power were three impor-
tant exceptions: Switzerland, Venice, and Florence. Republics, they prided themselves
on traditions of self-rule. At the same time, however, they were in every case domi-
nated by elites — or, in the case of Florence, even by one family.
Of the three, the Swiss Confederation was the most egalitarian. The region’s cit-
ies had long had alliances with one another. In the fourteenth century, their union
became more binding, and they joined with equally well-organized communities in
rural and forested areas in the region. Their original purpose was to keep the peace,
but soon they also pledged to aid one another against the Holy Roman Emperor. By
the end of the fourteenth century, they had become an entity: the Swiss Confedera-
tion. While not united by a comprehensive constitution, they were nevertheless an
effective political force.
Wealthy merchants and tradesmen dominated the cities of the Swiss Confed-
eration, and in the fifteenth century they managed to supplant the landed nobility.
At the same time, the power of the rural communes gave some ordinary folk politi-
cal importance. No king, duke, or count ever became head of the confederation. In
[1340–1492
its fiercely independent stance against the Holy Roman Empire, it became a symbol
of republican freedom. On the other hand, poor Swiss foot soldiers made their living
by hiring themselves out as mercenaries, fueling the wars of kings in the rest of
Europe.
Far less open to the lower classes, Venice, a city built on a lagoon, ruled an
extensive empire by the fifteenth century. Its merchant ships plied the waters stretch-
ing from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and out to the Atlantic Ocean. Now,
for the first time in its career, it turned to conquer land in northern Italy. In the
early fifteenth century, Venice took over many surrounding cities, eventually coming
up against the equally powerful city-state of Milan
to its west. Between 1450 and 1454, two coalitions, HOLY ROMAN
EMPIRE
0 100 200 miles
one led by Milan, the other by Venice, fought for 0 200 kilometers
V
territorial control of the eastern half of northern MILAN E
N OTTOMAN
I EMPIRE
Italy. Financial exhaustion and fear of an invasion FLORENCE A d C E
r
PAPAL i a t i
by France or the Ottoman Turks led to the Peace STATES cS
ea
of Lodi in 1454. Italy was a collection no longer NAPLES
of small cities, each with its own contado (sur-

rounding countryside), but of large territorial
city-states.
It is no accident that the Peace of Lodi was Mediterranean Sea
signed one year after the Ottoman conquest of

Constantinople: Venice wanted to direct its might Italy at the Peace of Lodi, 1454
against the Turks. But the Venetians also knew that peace was good for business;
they traded with the Ottomans, and the two powers influenced each other’s art and
culture: Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Mehmed (see the chapter-opening illustration)
is a good example of the importance of the Renaissance at the Ottoman court.
Venice was ruled not by a signore (“lord”) but by the Great Council, which was
dominated by the most important families. Far from being a hereditary monarch,
the doge — the leading magistrate at Venice — was elected by the Great Council. A
major question is why the lower classes at Venice did not rebel and demand their
own political power, as happened in so many other Italian cities. The answer may
be that Venice’s foundation on water demanded so much central planning, so much
effort to maintain buildings and services, and such a large amount of public funds
to provide the population with necessities that it fostered a greater sense of com-
munity than could be found elsewhere.
While Venice was not itself a center of humanism, its conquest of Padua in 1405
transformed its culture. After studying rhetoric at the University of Padua, young
Venetian nobles returned home convinced of the values of a humanistic education
for administering their empire. Lauro Quirini was one such man; his time at Padua
was followed by a long period on Crete, which was under Venetian control.
Like humanism, Renaissance art also became part of the fabric of the city. Because
of its trading links with Byzantium, Venice had long been influenced by Byzan-
tine artistic styles. As it acquired a land-based empire in northern Italy, however, its
[ 1340–1492
]
Venetian Art
When he was commissioned in the 1490s
to depict the legend of Saint Ursula, Vittore
Carpaccio chose Venice as the backdrop.
Found in the very popular thirteenth-
century Golden Legend by Jacobus de
Voragine, the tale begins in England,
where a pagan king is so inspired by hear-
ing of the virtue of Ursula, daughter of the
Christian king of Brittany, that he sends
his ambassadors to ask for her hand for
his son. In this detail, Carpaccio shows
the English ambassadors arriving in a gon-
dola. Note the glass-like colors and the
evocation of atmosphere, both characteris-
tic of Venetian style. (Detail from the Ursula
Cycle, 1490–1496 [oil on canvas], Vittore Carpac-
cio, Galleria dell’ Accademia, Venice, Italy / photo:
Cameraphoto Arte Venezia / Bridgeman Images.)
artists adopted the Gothic styles prev-

alent elsewhere. In the fifteenth cen-
tury, Renaissance art forms began to
make inroads as well. Venice achieved
its own unique style, characterized by
strong colors, intense lighting, and sensuous use of paint — adapting the work of clas-
sical antiquity for its own purposes. Most Venetian artists worked on commission from
churches, but lay confraternities — lay religious organizations devoted to charity —
also sponsored paintings.
Florence, like Venice, was also a republic. But unlike Venice, its society and
political life were turbulent, as social classes and political factions competed for
power. The most important of these civil uprisings was the so-called Ciompi Revolt
of 1378. Named after the wool workers (ciompi), laborers so lowly that they had not
been allowed to form a guild, the revolt led to the creation of a guild for them, along
with a new distribution of power in the city. But by 1382, the upper classes were
once again monopolizing the government, and now with even less sympathy for the
commoners.
By 1434, the Medici family had become the dominant power in this unruly city.
The patriarch of the family, Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), founded his political
power on the wealth of the Medici bank, which handled papal finances and had
numerous branch offices in Italian and northern European cities. Backed by his
money, Cosimo took over Florentine politics. He determined who could take public
office, and he established new committees made up of men loyal to him to govern
the city. He kept the old forms of the Florentine constitution intact, governing behind
the scenes not by force but through a broad consensus among the ruling elite.
[1340–1492
Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo “the Magnificent” (1449–1492), who assumed power

in 1467, bolstered the regime’s legitimacy with his patronage of the humanities and
the arts. He himself was a poet and an avid collector of antiquities. Serving on vari-
ous Florentine committees in charge of building, renovating, and adorning the churches
of the city, Lorenzo employed important artists and architects to work on his own
palaces. He probably encouraged the young Michelangelo Buonarroti; he certainly
patronized the poet Angelo Poliziano, whose verses inspired Botticelli’s Venus. No
wonder humanists and poets sang his praises.
But the Medici family also had enemies. In 1478, Lorenzo narrowly escaped an
assassination attempt, and his successor was driven out of Florence in 1494. The
Medici returned to power in 1512, only to be driven out again in 1527. In 1530, the
republic fell for good as the Medici once again took power, this time declaring them-
selves dukes of Florence.
The Tools of Power

Whether monarchies, duchies, or republics, the newly consolidated states of the fif-
teenth century exercised their powers more thoroughly than ever before. Sometimes
they reached into the intimate lives of their subjects or citizens; at other times they
persecuted undesirables with new efficiency.
A good example of the ways in which governments peeked into the lives of their
citizens — and picked their pockets — is the Florentine catasto. This was an inventory
of households within the city and its outlying territory made for the purposes of
taxation in 1427. It inquired about names, types of houses, and animals. It asked
people to specify their trade, and their answers revealed the levels of Florentine soci-
ety, ranging from agricultural laborers with no land of their own to soldiers, cooks,
grave diggers, scribes, great merchants, doctors, wine dealers, innkeepers, and tan-
ners. The list went on and on. The catasto inquired about private and public invest-
ments, real estate holdings, and taxable assets. Finally, it turned to the sex of the head
of the family, his or her age and marital status, and the number of mouths to feed in
the household. An identification number was assigned to each household.
The catasto showed that in 1427 Florence and its outlying regions had a popu-
lation of more than 260,000. Although the city itself had only 38,000 inhabitants
(about 15 percent of the total population), it held 67 percent of the wealth. Some
60 percent of the Florentine households in the city belonged to the “little people”
(a literal translation from the Italian term that referred to artisans and small mer-
chants). The “fat people” (what we would call the upper middle class) made up 30
percent of the urban population and included wealthy merchants, leading artisans,
notaries, doctors, and other professionals. At the very bottom of the hierarchy were
slaves and servants, largely women from the surrounding countryside employed in
domestic service. At the top, a tiny elite of wealthy patricians, bankers, and wool
merchants controlled the state and owned more than one-quarter of its wealth. This
was the group that produced the Medici family.
[ 1340–1492
]
European kings had long fought Muslims and expelled Jews from their kingdoms,
but in the fifteenth century, their powers became concentrated and centralized.
Fifteenth-century kings in western Europe — England, France, Spain — commanded
what we may call modern states. They used the full force of their new powers against
their internal and external enemies.
Spain is a good example of this new trend. Once Ferdinand and Isabella estab-
lished their rule over Castile and Aragon, they sought to impose religious uniformity
and purity. They began systematically to persecute the conversos (converts), Jews who
converted to Christianity after vicious attacks at the end of the fourteenth century.
During the first half of the fifteenth century, they and their descendants (still called
conversos, even though their children were born and baptized in the Christian faith)
took advantage of the opportunities open to educated Christians, in many instances
rising to high positions in both the church and the state and marrying into so-called
Old Christian families. The conversos’ success bred resentment, and their commit-
ment to Christianity was questioned as well. Conversos were no longer Jews, so Chris-
tians justified their persecution by branding them as heretics who undermined the
monarchy. In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella set up the Inquisition in Spain.
Treating the conversos as heretics, the inquisitors imposed harsh sentences,
expelling or burning most of them. That was not enough (in the view of the mon-
archs) to purify the land. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella decreed that all Jews in
Spain must convert or leave the country. Some did indeed convert, but the experiences
of the former conversos soured most on the prospect, and a large number of Jews —
perhaps 150,000 — left Spain, scattering around the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand and Isabella determined to rid Spain of its last Muslim
stronghold, Granada. In 1492 — just a few
months before they expelled the Jews —
REVIEW QUESTION How did the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella made their trium-
and republics of the fifteenth century use (and
phal entry there. In 1502, they demanded
abuse) their powers?
that all Muslims adopt Christianity or leave
the kingdom.
Conclusion
The years from 1340 to 1492 marked a period of crisis in Europe. The Hundred Years’
War broke out in 1337, and ten years later, in 1347, the Black Death hit, taking a
heavy toll. In 1378, a crisis shook the church when first two and then three popes
claimed universal authority. Revolts and riots plagued the cities and countryside. The
Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453, changing the very shape of Europe and
the Middle East.
The revival of classical literature, art, architecture, and music helped men and
women cope with these crises and gave them new tools for dealing with them. The
Renaissance began mainly in the city-states of Italy, but it spread throughout much of
Europe via the education and training of humanists, artists, sculptors, architects, and
[ 1340–1492
] Conclusion 437
0 200 400 miles

Border of the
Holy Roman Empire
Important Hanseatic towns NORWAY
and trading partners SWEDEN MUSCOVY
Reval
N Novgorod
SCOTLAND
Sea
W Wisby
Nor th Riga Moscow
E IRELAND
tic
S
Sea DENMARK
al
B
Hamburg Lübeck Danzig
ENGLAND Bremen TEUTONIC
Brunswick KNIGHTS
London Magdeburg
POLAND-LITHUANIA
Rhi
Cologne MONGOL
ne
AT L AN TIC Prague Dn
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KHANATES
R
Frankfurt r R.
.
O C EAN Paris HOLY BOHEMIA

Dnieste
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.
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SWISS Vienna
FRANCE CONFEDERATION
HUNGARY
RE
.
MILAN
Rhône R
PU
NAVARRE BL WALLACHIA
GENOA IC Black Sea
O
FLORENCE PAPAL F V
.
L
Danube R
STATES Ad EN
GA
ria ICE
RTU
Lisbon Corsica t O
SPAIN ic TT Istanbul
Rome S
PO
e OM
NAPLES a AN
Sardinia EMP
Seville IR E
Cádiz Granada
Sicily
Crete
N O RT H A F RI C A Cyprus
Mediterranean Sea
MAPPING THE WEST Europe, c. 1492

By the end of the fifteenth century, the shape of early modern Europe was largely fixed as it
would remain until the eighteenth century. The chief exception was the disappearance of an
independent Hungarian kingdom after 1529.
musicians. At the courts of great kings and dukes — even of the sultan — Renaissance
music, art, and literature served as a way to celebrate the grandeur of rulers who
controlled more of the apparatuses of government (armies, artillery, courts, and taxes)
than ever before.
Consolidation was the principle underlying the new states of the Renaissance.
Venice absorbed nearby northern Italian cities, and the Peace of Lodi confirmed its
new status as a power on land as well as the sea. In eastern Europe, marriage joined
together the states of Lithuania and Poland. A similar union took place in Spain when
Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married. The Swiss Confederation became
a permanent entity. The king of France came to rule over all of the area that we today
call France. The consolidated modern states of the fifteenth century would soon look
to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond for new lands to explore and conquer.
Chapter 13 Review
Black Death (p. 410) Mehmed II (p. 417) Francis Petrarch (p. 422)
Hundred Years’ War (p. 413) Great Schism (p. 418) Hanseatic League (p. 429)
Joan of Arc (p. 414) indulgences (p. 419) Medici (p. 434)
Jacquerie (p. 416) humanism (p. 422)
Review Questions
1. What crises did Europeans confront in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and how
did they handle them?
2. How and why did Renaissance humanists, artists, and musicians revive classical
traditions?
3. How did the monarchs and republics of the fifteenth century use (and abuse) their powers?
Making Connections
1. How did the rulers of the fourteenth century make use of the forms and styles of the
Renaissance?
2. On what values did Renaissance humanists and artists agree?
3. What tied the crises of the period (disease, war, schism) to the Renaissance (the flowering
of literature, art, architecture, and music)?
Important Events
1337–1453 Hundred Years’ War

1346–1353 Black Death in Europe
1358 Jacquerie uprising in France
1378–1417 Great Schism divides papacy
1378 Ciompi Revolt in Florence
1381 Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in England
1386 Union of Lithuania and Poland
1414–1418 Council of Constance ends Great Schism; Jan Hus burned at the stake
1453 Conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Turks; end of Hundred Years’ War
1454 Peace of Lodi
1477 Dismantling of duchy of Burgundy
1478 Inquisition begins in Spain
1492 Spain conquers Muslim stronghold of Granada; expels Jews
Consider two events: Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) and the Black Death in Europe
(1347–1352). How did these events represent both major crises and new opportunities?
How was the Renaissance both a crisis itself and a response to the crises of this period?
438
[1340–1492
Aberth provides a good overview of the crises. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bynum each explore
various aspects of late medieval piety. Nauert treats the many ramifications of Renaissance
humanism, and Hale gives a useful overview of political developments.
Aberth, John. From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in
the Later Middle Ages. 2001.
*The Black Death. Ed. and trans. Rosemary Horrox. 1994.
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate. Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417. 2006.
Bynum, Caroline. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and
Beyond. 2006.
Cohn, Samuel K., Jr. Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425.
2006.
Grendler, Paul F. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. 2002.
Hale, J. R. Renaissance Europe, 1480–1520. 2nd ed. 2000.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. 2002.
*Joan of Arc: La Pucelle. Trans. and ed. Craig Taylor. 2006.
Kent, F. W. Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence. 2004.
Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the
Reformation. 3rd ed. 2002.
Nauert, Charles G. Humanism and the Culture of the Renaissance Europe. 2nd ed. 2006.
*The Renaissance in Europe: An Anthology. Eds. Peter Elmer, Nick Webb, and Roberta Wood.
2000.
Rollo-Koster, Joëlle, and Thomas M. Izbicki, eds. A Companion to the Great Western Schism
(1378–1417). 2009.
*Selections from English Wycliffite Writings. Ed. and trans. Anne Hudson. 1978.
*Primary source.
Global Encounters and the
14
Shock of the Reformation
1492–1560
I
n 1539 in Tlaxcala, New Spain (present-day Mexico), Indians newly converted
to Christianity performed a pageant organized by Catholic missionaries. It fea-
tured a combined Spanish and Indian army fighting to protect the pope, defeat
the Muslims, and win control of the holy city of Jerusalem. In the play, after a miracle
saves the Christian soldiers, the Mus-
Cortés lims give up and convert to Christianity.
In this Spanish depiction of the landing Although it is hard to imagine what the
of Hernán Cortés in Mexico in 1519, Indians made of this celebration of places
the ships and arms of the Spanish are a and people far away, the event reveals a
commanding presence, especially in com- great deal about the Europeans: the Cath-
parison to the nakedness of the Indians
and the kneeling stance of their leader.
olic missionaries hoped that their success
A Spanish artist painted this miniature, in converting Indians in the New World
which measures only 6 ⁄8 inches by
1 signaled God’s favor for Catholicism the
4¼ inches. It probably accompanied an world over.
account of the Spanish conquest of Mex- Led first by the Portuguese and then
ico. On the back of the picture is a small
Spanish explorers, Europeans sailed into
map of the west coast of Europe and Africa
and the east coast of Central America. contact with peoples and cultures previ-
Europeans relied on such images, and ously unknown to them. European voy-
especially on maps, to help them make agers subjugated native peoples, declared
sense of all the new information flooding their control over vast new lands, and
into Europe from faraway places. Many established a new system of slavery link-
Spaniards viewed Cortés’s conquests as
a sign of divine favor toward Catholicism
ing Africa and the New World. Millions
in a time of religious division. Some even of Indians died of diseases unknowingly
believed that Cortés was born the same imported by the Europeans. The dis-
day, or at least the same year, as Martin covery of new crops — corn, potatoes,
Luther, the German monk who had initiated tobacco, and cocoa — and of gold and
the Protestant Reformation just two years
silver mines brought new patterns of
before Cortés’s landing (in fact, Luther
was born two years before Cortés). consumption, and new objects of con-
(Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.) flict, to Europe. Historians now call this
momentous spiral of changes in ecology,
441
442 Chapter 14 Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation
[ 1492–1560
]
agriculture, and social patterns the Columbian exchange, after Christopher Colum-
bus, who started the process.
While the Spanish were converting Indians in the New World, a different kind
of challenge confronted the Catholic church in central and western Europe. Religious
reformers attacked the leadership of the pope in Rome and formed competing groups
of Protestants (so-called because they protested against some beliefs of the Catho-
lic church). The movement began when the German Catholic monk Martin Luther
criticized the sale of indulgences in 1517. Other reformers raised their voices, too,
but did not agree with the Lutherans. Before long, religious division engulfed the
German states and reached into Switzerland, France, and England. In response, Cath-
olics undertook their own renewal, which strengthened the Catholic church. Catho-
lic missionaries continued to dominate efforts to convert indigenous peoples for a
century or more.
These two new factors — the develop-
ment of overseas colonies and divisions
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the conquest of between Catholics and Protestants within
the New World and the Protestant Reformation Europe — reshaped the long-standing
transform European governments and societies rivalries between princes and determined
in this era?
the course of European history for several
generations.
The Discovery of New Worlds

Portugal’s and Spain’s maritime explorations brought Europe to the attention of the
rest of the world. Inspired by a crusading spirit against Islam and by riches to be
won through trade in spices and gold, the Portuguese and Spanish sailed across the
Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. The English, French, and Dutch followed later
in the sixteenth century, creating a new global exchange of people, crops, and dis-
eases. As a result of these European expeditions, the people of the Americas for the
first time confronted forces that threatened to destroy not only their culture but even
their existence.
Portuguese Explorations
The first phase of European overseas expansion began in 1434 with Portuguese
exploration of the West African coast. The Portuguese hoped to find a sea route to
the spice-producing lands of South and Southeast Asia in order to bypass the Otto-
man Turks, who controlled the traditional land routes between Europe and Asia.
Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394–1460) personally financed many voy-
ages with revenues from a noble crusading order. The first triumphs of the Portu-
guese attracted a host of Christian, Jewish, and even Arab sailors, astronomers, and
cartographers to the service of Prince Henry and King John II (r. 1481–1495). They
compiled better tide calendars and books of sailing directions for pilots that enabled
[ 1492–1560
] The Discovery of New Worlds 443
sailors to venture farther into the oceans and reduced — though did not eliminate —
the dangers of sea travel. Success in the voyages of exploration depended on the devel-
opment in the late 1400s of the caravel, a 65-foot, easily maneuvered three-masted
ship that used triangular lateen sails adapted from the Arabs. (The sails permitted a
ship to tack against headwinds and therefore rely less on currents.)
Searching for gold and then slaves, the Portuguese gradually established forts
down the West African coast. In 1487–1488, they reached the Cape of Good Hope
at the tip of Africa; ten years later, Vasco da Gama led a Portuguese fleet around the
cape and reached as far as Calicut, India, the center of the spice trade. His return
to Lisbon with twelve pieces of Chinese porcelain for the Portuguese king set off
two centuries of porcelain mania. Until the early eighteenth century, only the Chi-
nese knew how to produce porcelain. Over the next two hundred years, Western
merchants would import no fewer than seventy million pieces of porcelain, still
known today as “china.” By 1517, a chain of Portuguese forts dotted the Indian Ocean
(Map 14.1). In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in Spanish service, led
the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
Hudson
Bay ENGLAND N
EUROPE
Genoa
W E
NORTH PORTUGAL SPAIN ASIA
AMERICA Lisbon Seville
Cadiz S
AZORES
Ceuta CHINA
BAHAMAS Madeira Hormuz
CANARY IS.
Hispaniola CAPE INDIA PACIFIC OCEAN

Cuba
VERDE
IS. AFRICA Goa
Calicut
GUINEA
Colombo Malacca
Equator
São Tomé
SOUTH Luanda INDIAN
PACIFIC OCEAN AMERICA OCEAN
Mozambique
AUSTRALIA
Cape of
Good Hope
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Area known to Europeans before 1450 John Cabot, 1497
Cape Horn Portuguese strongholds by c. 1500 Vasco da Gama, 1497–1499
Demarcation line,
Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 Portuguese expeditions 1430s–1480s Amerigo Vespucci, 1499–1502
0 1,000 2,000 miles
0 1,000 2,000 kilometers Spanish Portuguese Bartholomeu Dias, 1487–1488 Ferdinand Magellan, 1519–1522
Columbus’s first voyage, 1492
MAP 14.1 Early Voyages of World Exploration

Over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, European shipping dominated the
Atlantic Ocean after the pioneering voyages of the Portuguese, who also first sailed around the
Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean and Cape Horn to the Pacific. The search for spices
and the need to circumnavigate the Ottoman Empire inspired these voyages.
[ 1492–1560
]
The Voyages of Columbus
One of many sailors inspired by the Portuguese explorations, Christopher Columbus
(1451–1506) opened an entirely new direction for discovery. Most likely born in
Genoa of Italian parents, Columbus sailed the West African coast in Portuguese
service between 1476 and 1485. Fifteenth-century Europeans already knew that the
world was round. Columbus wanted to sail west to reach “the lands of the Great
Khan” because he hoped to find a new route to the East’s gold and spices. After the
Portuguese refused to fund his plan, Columbus turned to the Spanish monarchs
Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, who agreed to finance his venture.
On August 3, 1492, with ninety men on board two caravels and one larger mer-
chant ship for carrying supplies, Columbus set sail westward. His contract stipulated
that he would claim Castilian sovereignty over any new land and inhabitants, and
share any profits with the crown. Reaching what is today the Bahamas on October
12, Columbus mistook the islands to be part of the East Indies, not far from Japan.
As the Spaniards explored the Caribbean islands, they encountered communities of
peaceful Indians, the Arawaks, who were awed by the Europeans’ military technol-
ogy, not to mention their appearance. Although many positive entries in the ship’s
log testified to Columbus’s personal goodwill toward the Indians, the Europeans’
objectives were clear: find gold, subjugate the Indians, and propagate Christianity.
Excited by the prospect of easy riches, many flocked to join Columbus’s second voy-
age. When Columbus departed the Spanish port of Cádiz in September 1493, he
commanded a fleet of seventeen ships carrying some fifteen hundred men. Failing
to find the imagined gold mines and spices, Columbus and his crew began capturing
Caribs, enemies of the Arawaks, with the intention of bringing them back as slaves.
The Spaniards exported enslaved Indians to Spain, and slave traders sold them in
Seville. When the Spanish monarchs realized the vast potential for material gain
from their new dominions, they asserted direct royal authority by sending officials
and priests to the Americas, which were named after the Italian navigator Amerigo
Vespucci, who led a voyage across the Atlantic in 1499 to 1502.
To head off looming conflicts between the Spanish and the Portuguese, Pope
Alexander VI helped negotiate the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. It divided the Atlantic
world between the two maritime powers, reserving for Portugal the West African coast
and the route to India, and giving Spain the oceans and lands to the west (see Map
14.1, page 443). The agreement allowed Portugal to claim Brazil in 1500, when it was
accidentally “discovered” by Pedro Alvares Cabral (1467–1520) on a voyage to India.
A New Era in Slavery

The European voyages of discovery initiated a new era in slavery. Slavery had existed
since antiquity and flourished in many parts of the world. Some slaves were captured
in war or by piracy; others — Africans — were sold by other Africans and Bedouin
traders to Christian buyers; in western Asia, parents sold their children out of pov-
erty into servitude; and many in the Balkans became slaves when their land was
[
1492–1560
] The Discovery of New Worlds 445
devastated by Ottoman invasions. Slaves could be Greek, Slav, European, African, or

Turkish. Many served as domestics in European cities of the Mediterranean such as
Barcelona or Venice. Others sweated as galley slaves in Ottoman and Christian fleets.
In the Ottoman army, slaves even formed an important elite contingent.
From the fifteenth century onward, Africans increasingly filled the ranks of
slaves. Exploiting warfare between groups within West Africa, the Portuguese traded
in gold and “pieces,” as African slaves were called, a practice condemned at home by
some conscientious clergy. Critical voices, however, could not deny the potential for
profits that the slave trade brought to Portugal. Most slaves toiled in the sugar plan-
tations that the Portuguese established on the Atlantic islands and in Brazil. African
freedmen and slaves — some thirty-five thousand in the early sixteenth century —
constituted almost 3 percent of the population of Portugal, a percentage that was
much higher than in other European countries.
In the Americas, slavery would expand enormously in the following centuries.
Even outspoken critics of colonial brutality toward indigenous peoples defended
the development of African slavery. The Spanish Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas
(1474–1566), for example, argued that Africans were constitutionally more suitable
for labor than native Americans and should therefore be imported to the plantations
in the Americas to relieve the indigenous peoples, who were being worked to death.
Conquering the New World

The native peoples of the Americas lived in a great diversity of social and political
arrangements. Some were nomads roaming large, sparsely inhabited territories; oth-
ers practiced agriculture in complexly organized states. Among the settled peoples,
the largest groupings could be found in the Mexican and Peruvian highlands. Com-
bining an elaborate religious culture with a strict social and political hierarchy, the
Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru ruled over subjugated Indian populations in
their respective empires. From their large urban capitals, the Aztecs and Incas con-
trolled large swaths of land and could be ruthless as conquerors.
The Spanish explorers organized their expeditions to the mainland of the Amer-
icas from a base in the Caribbean. Two prominent commanders, Hernán Cortés
(1485–1547) and Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475–1541), gathered men and arms and set
off in search of gold. With them came Catholic priests intending to bring Christianity
to supposedly uncivilized peoples. When Cortés first landed on the Mexican coast
in 1519, the natives greeted him with gifts, thinking that he might be an ancient god
returning to reclaim his kingdom. Some natives who resented their subjugation by
the Aztecs joined Cortés and his soldiers. With a band of fewer than three hundred
Spanish soldiers and a few thousand native allies, Cortés captured the Aztec capital,
Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City), in 1519. With 200,000 inhabitants, Tenoch-
titlán was bigger than any European capital. Two years later, Mexico, then named
New Spain, was added to the empire of the new ruler of Spain, Charles V, grandson
of Ferdinand and Isabella. To the south, Pizarro conquered the Peruvian highlands
[ 1492–1560
]
in 1532 to 1533. The Spanish Empire was now the largest in the world, stretching
from Mexico to Chile.
The gold and silver mines in Mexico proved a treasure trove for the Spanish
crown, but the real prize was the discovery of vast silver deposits in Potosí (today
in Bolivia). When the Spaniards began importing the gold and silver they found in
the New World, inflation soared in a fashion never before witnessed in Europe.
Not to be outdone by the Spaniards, other European powers joined the scramble
for gold in the New World. In North America, the French went in search of a “north-
west passage” to China. The French wanted to establish settlements in what became
Canada, but permanent European settlements in Canada and the present-day United
States would succeed only in the seventeenth century. By then the English and Dutch
had also entered the contest for world mastery.
The Columbian Exchange

The movement of peoples, animals, plants, manufactured goods, precious metals, and
diseases between Europe, the New World, and Africa — the Columbian exchange —
was one of the most dramatic transformations of ecology, agriculture, and ways of
life in all of human history. Columbus started the process when he brought with him
firearms, unknown in the Americas, and on his second voyage, horses, which had
become extinct in the Americas, as well as pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, cattle, and
various plants including wheat, melons, and sugarcane. Enslaved Africans, first
brought to the Caribbean in 1503 to 1505, worked on sugarcane plantations, fore-
shadowing the development of a massive slave economy in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries (see Chapter 17).
The Europeans also brought with them diseases. Amerindians died in catastrophic
numbers because they lacked natural immunity from previous exposure. Smallpox
first appeared in the New World in 1518; it and other epidemic diseases killed as
many as 90 percent of natives in some places (though the precise numbers are
unknown). Syphilis, or a genetic predecessor to it, came back with the explorers to
Europe.
The Spanish also brought back tobacco, cacao (chocolate), sweet potatoes, maize,
and tomato seeds, changing consumption patterns in Europe. (Their native Ameri-
can wives, concubines, and domestics taught them to drink chocolate in the native
fashion: frothy, red in color, and flavored with peppers.) At the same time, Spanish
and Portuguese slave traders brought these crops and others — such as manioc, cap-
sicum peppers, pineapples, cashew nuts, and peanuts — from the Americas to West
Africa, where their cultivation altered local agriculture and diets. The slavers bought
African yams, sorghum, millet, and espe-
cially rice to feed the slaves in transit, and
REVIEW QUESTION Which European coun-
tries led the way in maritime exploration, and the slaves then grew those crops in the
what were their motives? Americas. Thus the exchange went in
every conceivable direction.
[1492–1560
] The Protestant Reformation 447
The Protestant Reformation

When Columbus’s patrons Ferdinand and Isabella expelled all Jews from Spain in
1492 and chased the last Muslims from Granada in 1502, it appeared as if the tri-
umph of the Catholic church had been assured. Only fifteen years later, however,
Martin Luther started a movement for religious reform that would fracture the unity
of Western Christianity. Instead of one Catholic church, there would be many dif-
ferent kinds of Christians. The invention of printing with movable type helped
spread the Protestant message, which grew in part out of waves of popular piety that
washed over Europe in the closing decades of the 1400s. Reformers had also been
influenced by Christian humanists who focused attention on clerical abuses.
The Invention of Printing

Printing with movable type, first developed in Europe in the 1440s by Johannes
Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, marked a revolutionary departure from the old
practice of copying works by hand or stamping pages with individually carved wood-
blocks. The Chinese invented movable type in the eleventh century, but they pre-
ferred woodblock printing because it was more suitable to the Chinese language,
with its thousands of different characters. In Europe, with only twenty-six letters to
Printing Press
This illustration from a French
manuscript of 1537 depicts
typical printing equipment of
the sixteenth century. An arti-
san is using the screw press
to apply the inked type to the
paper. Also shown are the com-
posed type secured in a chase,
the printed sheet (four pages
of text printed on one sheet)
held by the seated proofreader,
and the bound volume. When
two pages of text were printed
on one standard-sized sheet,
the bound book was called a
folio. A bound book with four
pages of text on one sheet
was called a quarto (“in four”),
and a book with eight pages
of text on one sheet was called
an octavo (“in eight”). The
octavo was a pocket-size book,
smaller than today’s paper-
back. (The Granger Collection,
NYC — All rights reserved.)
[ 1492–1560
]
the alphabet, movable type allowed entire manuscripts to be printed more quickly
than ever before. Single letters, made in metal molds, could be emptied out of a
frame and new ones inserted to print each new page.
In 1467, two German printers established the first press in Rome; within five
years, they had produced twelve thousand volumes, a feat that in the past would
have required a thousand scribes working full-time. Printing also depended on the
large-scale production of paper. Papermaking came to Europe from China via Arab
intermediaries. By the fourteenth century, paper mills in Italy were producing paper
that was more fragile but also much cheaper than parchment or vellum, the animal
skins that Europeans had previously used for writing. Early printed books attracted
an elite audience. Their expense made them inaccessible to most literate people, who
comprised a minority of the population in any case. Gutenberg’s famous two-volume
Latin Bible was a luxury item, and only 185 copies were printed. Gutenberg Bibles
remain today a treasure that only the greatest libraries possess.
The invention of mechanical printing dramatically increased the speed at which
people could transmit knowledge, and it freed individuals from having to memorize
everything they learned. Printed books and pamphlets, even one-page flyers, would
create a wide community of scholars no longer dependent on personal patronage or
church sponsorship for texts. Printing thus encouraged the free expression and
exchange of ideas, and its disruptive potential did not go unnoticed by political and
religious authorities. Rulers and bishops in the German states, the birthplace of the
printing industry, moved quickly to issue censorship regulations, but their efforts
could not prevent the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation.
Popular Piety and Christian Humanism

The Christianizing of Europe had taken many centuries to complete, but by 1500 most
people in Europe believed devoutly. However, the vast majority of them had little
knowledge of Catholic doctrine. More popular forms of piety — such as processions,
festivals, and marvelous tales of saints’ miracles — captivated ordinary believers.
Urban merchants and artisans, more likely than the general population to be
literate and critical of their local priests, yearned for a faith more meaningful to their
daily lives and for a clergy more responsive to their needs. They generously donated
money to establish new preaching positions for university-trained clerics. The mer-
chants resented the funneling of the Catholic church’s rich endowments to the
younger children of the nobility who took up religious callings to protect the wealth
of their families. The young, educated clerics funded by the merchants often came
from cities themselves. They formed the backbone of Christian humanism and
sometimes became reformers, too.
Humanism had originated during the Renaissance in Italy among highly edu-
cated individuals attached to the personal households of prominent rulers. North of
the Alps, however, humanists focused more on religious revival and the inculcation
of Christian piety, especially through the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life.
[1492–1560
The Brethren preached religious self-discipline, specialized in the copying of manu-

scripts, and were among the first to print the ancient classics. Their most influen-
tial pupil was the Dutch Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536). The
illegitimate son of a man who became a priest, Erasmus joined the Augustinian Order
of monks, but the pope allowed him to leave the monastery and pursue the life of
an independent scholar. An intimate friend of kings and popes, he became known
across Europe. He devoted years to preparing a critical edition of the New Testament
in Greek with a translation into Latin, which was finally published in 1516.
Erasmus strove for a unified, peaceful Christendom in which charity and good
works, not empty ceremonies, would mark true religion and in which learning and
piety would dispel the darkness of ignorance. He elaborated many of these ideas in
his Handbook of the Militant Christian (1503), an eloquent plea for a simple religion
devoid of greed and the lust for power. In The Praise of Folly (1509), Erasmus used
satire to show that modesty, humility, and poverty represented the true Christian
virtues in a world that worshipped pomposity, power, and wealth. The wise appeared
foolish, he concluded, for their wisdom and values were not of this world.
Erasmus instructed the young future emperor Charles V to rule as a just Chris-
tian prince. A man of peace and moderation, Erasmus soon found himself challenged
Albrecht Dürer, The Knight,

Death, and the Devil
Dürer’s 1513 engraving of the
knight depicts a grim and deter-
mined warrior advancing past
death (wearing a crown entwined
with a serpent and holding out an
hourglass) and the devil (the pig-
snouted horned figure wielding a
menacing pike). An illustration for
Erasmus’s The Handbook of the
Militant Christian, this scene is
often interpreted as portraying
a Christian clad in the armor of
righteousness on a path through
life beset by death and demonic
temptations. Yet the knight in
early-sixteenth-century Germany
had become a mercenary, selling
his martial skills to princes. Some
knights waylaid merchants, robbed
rich clerics, and held citizens for
ransom. The most notorious of
these robber-knights, Franz von
Sickingen, was declared an out-
law by the emperor and murdered
in 1522. (Hungarian National Gallery,
Budapest, Hungary / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1492–1560
]
by angry younger men and radical ideas once the Reformation took hold; he eventu-
ally chose Christian unity over reform and schism. His dream of Christian pacifism
crushed, he lived to see dissenters executed — by Catholics and Protestants alike —
for speaking their conscience. Erasmus spent his last years in Freiburg and Basel,
isolated from the Protestant community, his writings condemned by many in the
Catholic church. After the Protestant Reformation had been secured, the saying arose
that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.” Some blamed the humanists for the
emergence of Luther and Protestantism, despite the humanists’ decision to remain
in the Catholic church.
Martin Luther’s Challenge

The crisis of faith of one man, Martin Luther (1483–1546), started the international
movement known as the Protestant Reformation. The son of a miner and a deeply
pious mother, Luther abandoned his studies in the law and, like Erasmus, entered
the Augustinian Order. There he experienced his religious crisis: despite fervent
prayers, fasting, intense reading of the Bible, a personal pilgrimage to Rome (on
foot), and study that led to a doctorate in theology, Luther did not feel saved.
Luther found peace inside himself when he became convinced that sinners were
saved only through faith and that faith was a gift freely given by God. Shortly before
his death, Luther recalled his crisis:
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before
God with an extremely disturbed conscience. Secretly . . . I was angry with
God. . . . At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed
to the context of the words, namely, “In [the gospel] the righteousness of
God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall
live.’ ” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by
which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith.
No amount of good works, Luther believed, could produce the faith on which salva-
tion depended.
Just as Luther was working out his own personal search for salvation, a priest
named Johann Tetzel arrived in Wittenberg, where Luther was a university profes-
sor, to sell indulgences. In the sacrament of penance, according to Catholic church
doctrine, the sinner confessed his or her sin to a priest, who offered absolution and
imposed a penance. Penance normally consisted of spiritual duties (prayers, pilgrim-
ages), but the church also sold the monetary substitutions known as indulgences. A
person could even buy indulgences for a deceased relative to reduce that person’s
time in purgatory and release his or her soul for heaven.
In ninety-five theses that he proposed for academic debate in 1517, Luther
denounced the sale of indulgences as a corrupt practice. Printed, the theses became
public and unleashed a torrent of pent-up resentment and frustration among the
[1492–1560
laypeople. What began as a theological debate in a provincial university soon engulfed

the Holy Roman Empire. Luther’s earliest supporters included younger Christian
humanists and clerics who shared his critical attitude toward the church establish-
ment. None of these Evangelicals, as they called themselves, came from the upper
echelons of the church; many were from urban middle-class backgrounds, and
most were university trained. But illiterate artisans and peasants also rallied to
Luther, sometimes with an almost fanatical zeal. They and he believed they were
living in the last days of the world, and that Luther and his cause might be a sign
of the approaching Last Judgment. In 1520, Luther burned his bridges with the
publication of three fiery treatises. In Freedom of a Christian, Luther argued that
faith, not good works, saved sinners from damnation, and he sharply distin-
guished between true Gospel teachings and invented church doctrines. Luther advo-
cated “the priesthood of all believers,” insisting that the Bible provided all the teach-
ings necessary for Christian living and that a professional caste of clerics should
not hold sway over laypeople. These principles — “by faith alone,” “by Scripture
alone,” and “the priesthood of all believers” — became central features of the reform
movement.
In his second treatise, To the Nobility of the German Nation, Luther denounced
the corrupt Italians in Rome and called on the German princes to defend their nation
and reform the church. Luther’s third treatise, On the Babylonian Captivity of the
Church, condemned the papacy as the embodiment of the Antichrist.
From Rome’s perspective, the Luther Affair, as church officials called it, con-
cerned only one unruly monk. When the pope ordered him to obey his superiors
and keep quiet, Luther tore up the decree. Spread by the printing press, Luther’s ideas
circulated widely, letting loose forces that neither the church nor Luther could con-
trol. Social, nationalist, and religious protests fused with lower-class resentments,
much as in the Czech movement that the priest and professor Jan Hus had inspired
a century earlier. Like Hus, Luther appeared before an emperor: in 1521, he defended
his faith at the Imperial Diet of Worms before Charles V (r. 1519–1556), the newly
elected Holy Roman Emperor who, at the age of nineteen, ruled over the Low Coun-
tries, Spain, Spain’s Italian and New World dominions, and the Austrian Habsburg
lands. Luther shocked Germans by declaring his admiration for the Czech here-
tic. But unlike Hus, Luther enjoyed the protection of his lord, Frederick the Wise,
the elector of Saxony (called an elector because he was one of seven princes charged
with electing the Holy Roman Emperor). To become Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V
had bribed Frederick and therefore had to treat him with respect.
Lutheran propaganda flooded German towns and villages. Sometimes only a few
pages in length, these broadsheets were often illustrated with crude satirical cartoons.
Magistrates began to curtail clerical privileges and subordinate the clergy to munici-
pal authority. From Wittenberg, the reform movement quickly swelled and threat-
ened to swamp all before it. Lutheranism spread northward to Scandinavia when
reformers who studied in Germany brought back the faith and converted the kings
from Catholic to Protestant beliefs.
[ 1492–1560
]
Protestantism Spreads and Divides
Other Protestant reformers soon challenged Luther’s doctrines even while applaud-
ing his break from the Catholic church. In 1520, just three years after Luther’s initial
rupture with Rome, the chief preacher of Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531),
openly declared himself a reformer. Like Luther, Zwingli attacked corruption in the
Catholic church hierarchy, and he also questioned fasting and clerical celibacy.
Zwingli disagreed with Luther on the question of the Eucharist, the central Christian
sacrament that Christians partook of in communion. The Catholic doctrine of tran-
substantiation held that when the priest consecrated them, the bread and wine of
communion actually turned into the body and blood of Christ. Luther insisted that
the bread and wine did not change their nature: they were simultaneously bread and
wine and the body and blood of Christ. Zwingli, however, viewed the Eucharistic
bread and wine as symbols of Christ’s union with believers, not the real blood and
body of Christ. This issue aroused such strong feelings because it concerned the role
of the priest and the church in shaping the relationship between God and the believer.
In 1529, troubled by these differences and other disagreements, Protestant
princes and magistrates assembled the major reformers in the Colloquy of Marburg,
in central Germany. After several days of intense discussions, the reformers managed
to resolve some differences over doctrine, but Luther and Zwingli failed to agree on
the meaning of the Eucharist. The issue of the Eucharist would soon divide Luther-
ans and Calvinists as well.
The Progress of the Reformation
Under the leadership of John Calvin
1517 Martin Luther disseminates (1509–1564), another wave of reform chal-
ninety-five theses attacking sale lenged Catholic authority. Born in Picardy,
of indulgences and other church
in northern France, Calvin studied in Paris
practices
and Orléans, where he took a law degree.
1520 Reformer Huldrych Zwingli breaks
with Rome Experiencing a crisis of faith, like Luther,
1525 Peasants’ War in German states
Calvin sought salvation through intense
divides reform movement theological study. Gradually, he, too, came to
1529 Lutheran German princes protest question fundamental Catholic teachings.
condemnation of religious reform On Sunday, October 18, 1534, Pari-
by Charles V sians found church doors posted with crude
1534 The Act of Supremacy establishes broadsheets denouncing the Catholic Mass.
King Henry VIII as head of the
Church of England, severing ties
Smuggled into France from the Protestant
to Rome and French-speaking parts of Switzerland,
1534–1535 Anabaptists take over German the broadsheets provoked a wave of royal
city of Münster in failed experi- repression in the capital. In response to
ment to create a holy community this so-called Affair of the Placards, the
1541 John Calvin establishes himself government arrested hundreds of French
permanently in Geneva, making
that city a model of Christian
Protestants, executed some of them, and
reform and discipline forced many more, including Calvin, to
flee abroad.
[
1492–1560
Calvin made his way to Geneva, the French-speaking Swiss city-state where
he would find his life’s work. Genevans had renounced their allegiance to the Catho-
lic bishop, and local supporters of reform begged Calvin to stay and labor there.
Although it took some time for Calvin to solidify his position in the city, his sup-
porters eventually triumphed and he remained in Geneva until his death in 1564.
Under Calvin’s leadership, Geneva became a Christian republic on the model set
out in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536. No reformer
prior to Calvin had expounded on the doctrines, organization, history, and practices
of Christianity in such a systematic, logical, and coherent manner. Calvin followed
Luther’s doctrine of salvation to its ultimate logical conclusion: if God is almighty
and humans cannot earn their salvation by good works, then no Christian can be
certain of salvation. Developing the doctrine of predestination, Calvin argued that
God had ordained every man, woman, and child to salvation or damnation — even
before the creation of the world. Thus, in Calvin’s theology, God saved only the “elect”
(a small group).
Predestination could terrify, but it could also embolden. For Calvinists, a righ-
teous life might be a sign that a person had been chosen for salvation. Thus, Calvinist
doctrine demanded rigorous discipline. Fusing church and society into what follow-
ers named the Reformed church, Geneva became a theocratic city-state dominated
by Calvin and the elders of the Reformed church. Its people were rigorously moni-
tored; detractors said that they were bullied. From its base in Geneva, the Calvinist
movement spread to France, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, the German
states, Poland, Hungary, and eventually New England.
In Geneva, Calvin tolerated no dissent. While passing through the city in 1553,
the Spanish physician Michael Servetus was arrested because he had published books
attacking Calvin and questioning the doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that there are
three persons in one God — the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. Upon
Calvin’s advice, the authorities executed Servetus. Calvin was not alone in perse-
cuting dissenters. Each religious group believed that its doctrine was absolutely true
and grounded in the Bible and that therefore violence in its defense was not only
justified but required. Catholic and Protestant polemicists alike castigated their crit-
ics in the harshest terms, but they often saved their cruelest words for the Jews.
Calvin, for example, called the Jews “profane, unholy, sacrilegious dogs,” but Luther
went even further and advocated burning down their houses and their synagogues.
Religious toleration was still far in the future.
The Contested Church of England

England followed yet another path, with reform led by the king rather than by men
trained as Catholic clergy. Despite a tradition of religious dissent that went back to
the fourteenth-century theologian John Wycliffe, Protestantism gained few English
adherents in the 1520s. King Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) changed that when he
broke with the Roman Catholic church. The resulting Church of England retained
[ 1492–1560
]
many aspects of Catholic worship but nonetheless aligned itself in the Protestant
camp.
At first, Henry opposed the Protestant Reformation, even receiving the title
Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X for a treatise he wrote against Luther. With
the aid of his chancellors Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, Henry vigor-
ously suppressed Protestantism and executed its leaders. More had made a reputation
as a Christian humanist, publishing a controversial novel about an imaginary island
called Utopia (1516), the source of the modern word for an ideal community. Unlike
his friend Erasmus, More chose to serve the state directly and became personal secre-
tary to Henry VIII, Speaker of the House of Commons, and finally Lord Chancellor.
By 1527, the king wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536),
the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and the aunt of Charles V. The
eighteen-year marriage had produced a daughter, Mary (known as Mary Tudor), but
Henry desperately needed a male heir to consolidate the rule of the still-new Tudor
dynasty. Moreover, he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a lady at court and a
supporter of the Reformation. Henry claimed that his marriage to Catherine had
never been valid because she was the widow of his older brother, Arthur. Arthur and
Catherine’s marriage, which apparently was never consummated, had been annulled
by Pope Julius II to allow the marriage between Henry and Catherine to take place.
Now Henry asked the reigning pope, Clement VII, to declare his marriage to Cath-
erine invalid.
Around “the king’s great matter” unfolded a struggle for political and religious
control. When Cardinal Wolsey failed to secure papal approval of the annulment,
Henry dismissed him and had him arrested. Wolsey died before he could be tried,
and More took his place as Lord Chancellor. However, More resigned in 1532 because
he opposed Henry’s new direction; Henry then had him executed as a traitor in 1535.
Henry now turned to two Protestants, Thomas Cromwell (1485–1540) as chancellor
and Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) as archbishop of Canterbury. Under their leader-
ship, the English Parliament passed a number of acts that severed ties between the
English church and Rome. The most important of these, the Act of Supremacy of
1534, made Henry the head of the Church of England. Other legislation invalidated
the claims of Mary Tudor to the throne, recognized Henry’s marriage to Anne
Boleyn, and allowed the English crown to embark on the dissolution of the monaster-
ies. In an effort to consolidate support behind his version of the Reformation, Henry
sold off monastic lands to the local gentry and aristocracy. His actions prompted
an uprising in 1536 in the north of the country called the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Though suppressed, it revealed that many people remained deeply Catholic in their
sympathies.
Henry grew tired of Anne Boleyn, who had given birth to a daughter, the future
Queen Elizabeth I, but had produced no sons. He ordered Anne beheaded in 1536
on the charge of adultery. The king would go on to marry four other wives but father
only one son, Edward. When Henry died in 1547, much would now depend on who
held the crown. Henry himself held ambiguous views on religion: he considered
[1492–1560
] Reshaping Society through Religion 455
himself Catholic but would not accept the

supremacy of the pope; he closed the mon- REVIEW QUESTION How did Luther, Zwingli,
asteries and removed shrines but kept the Calvin, and Henry VIII each challenge the
Mass and believed in clerical celibacy. Roman Catholic church?
Reshaping Society through Religion

The religious reformers and their followers challenged political authority and the
social order, yet in reaction to any extreme manifestation of disorder, they under-
lined the need for discipline in worship and social behavior. Some Protestants took
the phrase “priesthood of all believers” quite literally and sided with the poor and
the downtrodden. Like Catholics, Protestant authorities then became alarmed by the
subversive potential of religious reforms. They viewed the Reformation as a way of
instilling greater discipline in individual worship and church organization. At the
same time, the Roman Catholic church undertook reforms of its own and launched
an offensive against the Protestant Reformation that is sometimes called the Counter-
Reformation.
Protestant Challenges to the Social Order

When Luther described the freedom of the Christian, he meant an entirely spiritual
freedom. But others interpreted his call for freedom in social and political terms. In
the spring of 1525, peasants in southern and central Germany rose in a rebellion
known as the Peasants’ War and attacked nobles’ castles, convents, and monasteries
(Map 14.2). Urban workers joined them, and together they looted church properties
in the towns. In Thuringia (central/eastern Germany), the rebels followed an ex-priest,
Thomas Müntzer (1468?–1525), who promised to chastise the wicked and thus clear
the way for the Last Judgment.
The Peasants’ War split the reform movement. Princes and city officials, ulti-
mately supported by Luther, turned against the rebels. Catholic and Protestant princes
joined forces to crush Müntzer and his supporters. All over the empire, princes
trounced peasant armies and hunted down their leaders. By the end of the year, more
than 100,000 rebels had been killed. Initially, Luther had tried to mediate the conflict,
but he believed that God ordained rulers, who must therefore be obeyed even if they
were tyrants. Luther considered Müntzer’s mixing of religion and politics the greatest
danger to the Reformation, nothing less than “the devil’s work.” Fundamentally con-
servative in its political philosophy, the Lutheran church henceforth depended on
established political authority for its protection.
Some followers of Zwingli also wanted to pursue their own path to reform. They
believed that true faith came only to those with reason and free will. How could a
baby knowingly choose Christ? Only adults could believe and accept baptism; hence,
the Anabaptists (“rebaptizers”) rejected the validity of infant baptism and called for
adult rebaptism. Many were pacifists who also refused to acknowledge the authority
[ 1492–1560
]
0 100 200 miles
General area of conflict
Areas of severe conflict
Urban violence DEN M A RK
Boundary of the
Holy Roman Empire
N Nor th Holstein
Sea Pomerania
W
E
S Brandenburg
POLAND
S
ND
Wittenberg
LA
Cologne Allstedt
Saxony
ER
Silesia
Hesse
Rh
H
Thuringia
ET
ine
Frankfurt
N
R
Friedburg
.
Bohemia Prague
Mainz Würzburg
Worms
Luxembourg Württemberg
Weidenburg
Moravia
Palatinate
Da
nub
Memmingen e R.
Lorraine Bavaria
Salzburg
Freiburg Salzburg Styria

Radstadt
Burgundy
FRANCE SWISS
CONFEDERATION Tyrol Carinthia
Trent
Geneva
HUNGARY
Savoy REPUBLIC
OF VENICE
MAP 14.2 The Peasants’ War of 1525

The centers of uprisings clustered in southern and central Germany, where the density of cities
encouraged the spread of discontent and allowed for alliances between urban masses and rural
rebels. The proximity to the Swiss Confederation, a stronghold of the Reformation movement,
also inspired antiestablishment uprisings.
of law courts. The Anabaptist movement drew its leadership primarily from the
artisan class and its members from the middle and lower classes — men and women
attracted by a simple but radical message of peace and salvation.
Zwingli immediately attacked the Anabaptists for their refusal to bear arms and
swear oaths of allegiance, sensing accurately that they were repudiating his theocratic
(church-directed) order. When persuasion failed to convince the Anabaptists, Zwingli
urged Zurich magistrates to impose the death sentence. Thus, the Evangelical reform-
ers themselves created the Reformation’s first martyrs of conscience.
Despite the Holy Roman Emperor’s condemnation of the movement in 1529,
Anabaptism spread rapidly from Zurich to many cities in southern Germany. In
[1492–1560
1534, one Anabaptist group, believing the end of the world was imminent, seized
control of the city of Münster. Proclaiming themselves a community of saints, the
Münster Anabaptists abolished private property in imitation of the early Christians
and dissolved traditional marriages, allowing men, like Old Testament patriarchs, to
have multiple wives, to the consternation of many women. Besieged by a combined
Protestant and Catholic army, the city fell in June 1535. The Anabaptist leaders died
in battle or were executed, their bodies hung in cages affixed to the church tower.
Their punishment was intended as a warning to all who might want to take the Ref-
ormation away from the Protestant authorities and hand it to the people. The Ana-
baptist movement in northwestern Europe nonetheless survived under the determined
pacifist leadership of the Dutch reformer Menno Simons (1469–1561), whose fol-
lowers were eventually named Mennonites.
New Forms of Discipline

Faced with the social firestorms ignited by religious reform, the middle-class urban-
ites who supported the Protestant Reformation urged greater religious conformity
and stricter moral behavior. Protestants did not have monasteries or convents or
saints’ lives to set examples; they sought moral examples in their own homes, in the
Torture and Execution of an

Anabaptist Leader
Not long after their capture in 1535, the
Anabaptist leaders of Münster were tor-
tured with hot tongs before being killed.
Their bodies were placed in cages and
hung from a church steeple. This print
shows the cage with the body of John of
Leiden. He was a tailor’s apprentice from
the Dutch town of Leiden. (16th-century
Dutch engraving / Private Collection / Roger-Viollet,
Paris, France / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1492–1560
]
Luther’s Bible
This opening page from the
Gospel of St. Matthew is taken
from Luther’s 1522 translation
into German of the New Testa-
ment. The woodcut illustrations
by Lucas Cranach, and Luther’s
decision to use a style of
German that could be widely
understood, made the book
accessible to a wide audience.
Bible reading became a central
family activity for Protestants.
(Bible Society, London, UK / Bridge-
man Images.)
sermons of their preachers, and in their own reading of the Bible. Some of these
attitudes had medieval roots, yet the Protestant Reformation fostered their spread
and Catholics soon began to embrace them.
Although the Bible had been translated into German before, Luther’s transla-
tions (of the New Testament in 1522 and of the Old Testament in 1534) quickly
became authoritative. A new Bible-centered culture began to take root, as more than
200,000 copies of Luther’s New Testament were printed over twelve years, an immense
number for the time. Peppered with witty phrases and colloquial expressions, Luther’s
Bible not only made the sacred writings more accessible to ordinary people but also
helped standardize the German language. Bible reading became a common pastime
undertaken in solitude or at family and church gatherings. To counter Protestant
success, Catholic German Bibles soon appeared, thus sanctioning Bible reading by
the Catholic laity, a sharp departure from medieval church practice.
The new emphasis on self-discipline led to growing impatience with the poor.
Between 1500 and 1560, rapid economic and population growth created prosperity
[
1492–1560
for some and stress — heightened by increased inflation — for many. Wanderers and
urban beggars were by no means novel, but now moralists, both Catholic and Prot-
estant, denounced vagabonds as lazy and potentially criminal.
The Reformation provided an opportunity to restructure relief for the poor.
Instead of decentralized, private initiatives often overseen by religious orders, Prot-
estant magistrates appointed officials to head urban agencies that would certify the
genuine poor and distribute welfare funds to them. Catholic authorities did the same.
In 1531, Henry VIII asked justices of the peace (unpaid local magistrates) to license
the poor in England and to differentiate between those who could work and those
who could not. In 1540, Charles V imposed a welfare tax in Spain to augment that
country’s inadequate system of private charity.
In their effort to establish order and discipline, Protestant reformers denounced
sexual immorality and glorified the family. The early Protestant reformers like Luther
championed the end of clerical celibacy and embraced marriage. Luther, once a celi-
bate priest himself, married a former nun. Protestant magistrates closed brothels
and established marriage courts to handle disputes over marriage promises, child
support, and divorce (allowed by Protestants in some rare situations). The magis-
trates also levied fines or ordered imprisonment for violent behavior, fornication,
and adultery.
Prior to the Reformation, despite the legislation of church councils, marriages
had largely been private affairs between families; some couples never even registered
with the church. The Catholic church recognized any promise made between two
consenting adults (with the legal age of twelve for females, fourteen for males) in the
presence of two witnesses as a valid marriage. As the Reformation took hold, Prot-
estants asserted government control over marriage, and Catholic governments fol-
lowed suit. A marriage was legitimate only if registered by both a government official
and a member of the clergy.
Catholic Renewal
The Catholic church decided in the 1540s to undertake drastic action to fend off
the Protestant threat. Pope Paul III convened a general council of the church in 1545
at Trent, a town on the border between the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. Meeting
sporadically over eighteen years (1545–1563), the Council of Trent effectively set
the course of Catholicism until the 1960s. Catholic leaders sought renewal of reli-
gious devotion and reform of clerical morality (some priests had had sexual relation-
ships and fathered children) as well as clarification of church doctrine. New religious
orders set out to win converts overseas or to reconvert Catholics who had turned to
Protestantism. At the same time, the church did not hesitate to root out dissent by
giving greater powers to the Inquisition, including the power to censor books. The
papal Index, or list of prohibited books, was established in 1557 and not abolished
until 1966.
[ 1492–1560
]
Italian and Spanish clergy predominated among the 255 bishops, archbishops,
and cardinals attending the Council of Trent, which condemned all the central doc-
trines of Protestantism. According to the council, salvation depended on faith and
good works, not faith alone. On the sacrament of the Eucharist, the council reaf-
firmed that the bread of communion “really, truly” becomes Christ’s body. It reas-
serted the supremacy of clerical authority over the laity; the church’s interpretation
of the Bible could not be challenged, and the Latin Vulgate was the only authoritative
version. The council rejected divorce and reaffirmed the legitimacy of indulgences.
It also called for reform from within, however, insisting that bishops henceforth
reside in their dioceses and decreeing that seminaries for the training of priests be
established in every diocese. Henceforth, the schism between Protestant and Catholic
remained permanent, and all hopes of reconciliation faded.
The renewed energy of Catholicism expressed itself most vigorously in the
founding of new religious orders such as the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, founded by
a Spanish nobleman, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). In 1521, while recovering from
an injury suffered as a soldier in the Spanish army, Ignatius read lives (biographies)
of the saints; once he recovered, he abandoned his quest for military glory in favor
of serving the church. In 1540, the pope recognized his small band of followers.
With Ignatius as its first general, the Jesuits became the most vigorous defend-
ers of papal authority. The society quickly expanded; by the time of Ignatius’s death
in 1556, Europe had one thousand Jesuits. They established hundreds of colleges
throughout the Catholic world, educating future generations of Catholic leaders.
Jesuit missionaries played a key role in the Spanish and Portuguese empires and
brought Roman Catholicism to Africans, Asians, and native Americans. They saw
their effort as proof of the truth of Roman Catholicism and the success of their mis-
sions as a sign of divine favor, both particularly important in the face of Protestant
challenge.
Catholic missionary zeal brought conflicting messages to indigenous peoples: for
some, the message of a repressive and coercive alien religion; for others, a sweet sign
of reason and faith. Frustrated in his efforts to convert Brazilian Indians, a Jesuit
missionary wrote to his superior in Rome in 1563, “For this kind of people it is better
to be preaching with the sword and rod of iron.”
Catholic missionaries focused initially on winning over local elites. They learned
the local languages and set up schools for the sons of conquered nobles. After an
initial period of relatively little racial discrimination, the Catholic church in the
Americas and Africa adopted strict rules based on color. For example, the first Mexi-
can Ecclesiastical Provincial Council in 1555 declared that holy orders were not to
be conferred on Indians, mestizos (people of mixed European-Indian parentage), or
mulattoes (people of mixed European-African heritage); along with descendants of
Muslims, Jews, and persons who had been sentenced by the Spanish Inquisition,
these groups were deemed “inherently unworthy of the sacerdotal [priestly] office.”
European missionaries in Asia greatly admired Chinese and Japanese civiliza-
tion, and thus used the sermon rather than the sword to win converts. The Jesuit
[1492–1560
] Striving for Mastery 461
Francis Xavier preached in India and Japan, his work greatly assisted by a network
of Portuguese trading stations. Overall the efforts of the Catholic missionaries
seemed highly successful: vast multitudes of native Americans had become nominal
Christians by the second half of the six-
teenth century, and thirty years after Fran- REVIEW QUESTION How did the forces for
cis Xavier’s 1549 landing in Japan, the Jesu- radical change unleashed by the Protestant
its could claim more than 100,000 Japanese Reformation interact with the urge for social
converts. order and stability?
Striving for Mastery

Although the riches of the New World and the conflicts generated by the Reforma-
tion raised the stakes of international politics, life at court did not change all at once.
Princes and popes continued to sponsor the arts and literature of the Renaissance.
Henry VIII, for example, hired the German artist Hans Holbein as king’s painter.
While Protestantism was taking root, Catholic monarchs still fought one another and
battled the powerful Ottoman Empire. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V dominated
the political scene with his central position in Europe and his rising supply of gold
and silver from the New World. Yet even his wealth proved insufficient to subdue
all his challengers. Religious difference led to violence in every country, even Spain,
where there were almost no Protestants but many Muslims who were forced to con-
vert by Charles V in 1526. For the most part, violence failed to settle religious dif-
ferences. By 1560, an exhausted Europe had achieved a provisional peace, but one
sowed with the seeds of future conflict.
Courtiers and Princes

Kings, princes, and popes alike used their courts to keep an eye on their leading
courtiers (cardinals in the case of popes) and impress their other subjects. Briefly
defined, the court was the ruler’s household. Around the prince gathered a commu-
nity of household servants, noble attendants, councilors, officials, artists, and sol-
diers. Renaissance culture had been promoted by this political elite, and that culture
now entered its “high,” or most sophisticated, phase. Its acclaimed representative was
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), an immensely talented Italian artist who
sculpted the gigantic nude David for officials in Florence and then painted the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel for the recently elected Pope Julius II.
Italian artists also flocked to the French court of Francis I (r. 1515–1547), which
swelled to the largest in Europe. In addition to royal officials and guards, physicians,
librarians, musicians, dwarfs, animal trainers, and a multitude of hangers-on bloated
its size to more than sixteen hundred members. Although Francis built a magnificent
Renaissance palace at Fontainebleau, where he hired Italian artists to produce paint-
ings and sculpture, the French court often moved from palace to palace. It took no
fewer than eighteen thousand horses to transport the people, furniture, documents,
[ 1492–1560
]
King Francis I and His Court
In this illustration from a 1534
manuscript, the king of France
is shown with his three sons lis-
tening to the reading of a trans-
lated ancient text. The translator,
Antoine Macault, was the king’s
secretary and is shown wearing
the black of officials. Renaissance
kings took pride in sponsoring
revivals of classical texts (in this
case Diodorus of Sicily, a Greek
historian from the first century
B.C.E.). (Musée Condé, Chantilly, France /
Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
dogs, and falcons for the royal hunt. Hunting represented a form of mock combat,
essential in the training of a military elite. Francis almost lost his own life when,
storming a house during one mock battle, he was hit on the head by a burning log.
Two Italian writers helped define the new culture of courtesy, or proper court
behavior: Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), in service at the Este court in Ferrara, and
Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), a servant of the duke of Urbino and the pope.
Ariosto composed an epic poem, Orlando Furioso, which represented court culture
as the highest synthesis of Christian and classical values. The poem’s captivating tales
of combat, valor, love, and magic ranged across Europe, Africa, Asia, and even the
moon. In The Courtier, Castiglione’s characters debate the qualities of an ideal court-
ier in a series of eloquent dialogues. The true courtier, Castiglione asserts, is a gentle-
man who carries himself with nobility and dignity in the service of his prince and
his lady.
Courtesy was recommended to courtiers, but not always to princes. The Italian
politician and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) helped found modern politi-
cal science by treating the maintenance of power as an end in itself. In his provoca-
tive essay The Prince, he underlined the need for pragmatic, even cold calculation.
[1492–1560
Was it better, he asked, for a prince to be feared by his people or loved? “It may be
answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them
in one person, [it] is much safer to be feared than loved.” Machiavelli insisted that
princes could benefit their subjects only by keeping a firm grip on power, if neces-
sary through deceit and manipulation. Machiavellian has remained ever since a term
for using cunning and duplicity to achieve one’s ends.
Dynastic Wars
Even as the Renaissance developed in the princely courts and the Reformation began
in the German states, the Habsburgs (the ruling family in Spain and then the Holy
Roman Empire) and the Valois (the ruling family in France) fought each other for
domination of Europe. French claims provoked the Italian Wars in 1494, which soon
escalated into a general conflict that involved the major Christian monarchs and the
Muslim Ottoman sultan as well. From 1494 to 1559, the Valois and Habsburg dynas-
ties, both Catholic, remained implacable enemies. The fighting raged in Italy and the
Charles V and Francis I Make Peace

This fresco from the Palazzo Farnese in the town of Caprarola, north of Rome, shows French king
Francis I and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (shown pointing his finger) agreeing to the Truce of
Nice in 1538, one of many peace agreements made and then broken during the wars between
the Habsburgs and the Valois. Pope Paul III, who negotiated the truce, stands behind and
between them. Charles is on the right pointing to Francis. The truce is the one celebrated in the
Tlaxcala pageant described at the start of this chapter. (From the fresco Sala del Consiglio Trento, by
Taddeo Zuccaro [1529–1566] and Federico Zuccaro [1542–1609] / Palazzo Farnese, Rome, Italy / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1492–1560
]
Low Countries. In 1525, the troops of Charles V crushed the French army at Pavia,
Italy, counting among their captives the French king himself, Francis I. Forced to
renounce all claims to Italian territory to gain his freedom, Francis furiously repudi-
ated the treaty the moment he reached France, reigniting the conflict.
In 1527, Charles’s troops captured and sacked Rome because the pope had allied
with the French. Many of the imperial troops were German Protestant mercenaries,
who pillaged Catholic churches and brutalized the Catholic clergy. Protestants and
Catholics alike interpreted the sack of Rome by imperial forces as a punishment of
God; even the Catholic church read it as a sign that reform was necessary. Finally,
in 1559, the French gave up their claims in Italy and signed the Treaty of Cateau-
Cambrésis, ending the conflict. To seal the peace the French king Henry II married
his sister to the duke of Savoy, an ally of the Habsburgs, and his daughter to the
Habsburg king of Spain, Philip II, who had succeeded his father Charles V in 1556.
The dynastic struggle (Valois versus Habsburg) had drawn in many other bel-
ligerents, who fought on one side or the other for their own benefit. Some acted
purely out of power considerations, such as England, first siding with the Valois and
then with the Habsburgs. Others fought for their independence, such as the papacy
and the Italian states, which did not want any one power to dominate Italy. Still others
chose sides for religious reasons, such as the Protestant princes in Germany, who
The Siege of Vienna, 1529

This illustration from an Otto-
man manuscript of 1588
depicts the Turkish siege of
Vienna (the siege guns can be
seen toward the top of the pic-
ture). Sultan Suleiman I
(Suleiman the Magnificent) led
an army of more than
100,000 men against Vienna,
capital of the Austrian
Habsburg lands. Several
attacks on the city failed, and
the Ottomans withdrew in
October 1529. They main-
tained control over Hungary,
but the logistics of moving so
many men and horses kept
them from advancing farther
westward into Europe. (From the
Hunername by Lokman, 1588 / Top-
kapi Palace Museum, Istanbul,
Turkey / Giraudon / Bridgeman
Images.)
[
1492–1560
exploited the Valois-Habsburg conflict to extract religious concessions from the

emperor in 1555. The Ottoman Turks saw in this fight an opportunity to expand their
territory.
The Ottoman Empire reached its height of power under Sultan Suleiman I,
known as Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566). In 1526, a Turkish expedition
destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohács. Three years later, the Ottomans laid siege
to Vienna; though unsuccessful, the attack sent shock waves throughout Christian
Europe. (See the illustration on page 464.) In 1535, Charles V led a campaign to
capture Tunis, the lair of North African pirates loyal to the Ottomans. Desperate to
overcome Charles’s superior Habsburg forces, the French king Francis I forged an
alliance with the Turkish sultan. The Turkish fleet besieged the Habsburg troops
holding Nice, on the southern coast of France. Francis even ordered all inhabitants
of nearby Toulon to vacate the town so that he could turn it into a Muslim colony
for eight months, complete with a mosque and a slave market.
The French alliance with the Turks reflected the spirit of the times: the age-old
idea of the Christian crusade against Islam now had to compete with a new political
strategy that considered religion only one factor among many in power politics. Reli-
gion could be sacrificed, if need be, on the altar of state building. Constantly dis-
tracted by the challenges of the Ottomans to the east and the German Protestants at
home, Charles V could not crush the French with one swift blow.
Financing War
The sixteenth century marked the beginning of superior Western military technol-
ogy. All armies grew in size and their firepower became ever more deadly, increasing
the cost of war. Heavier artillery pieces meant that the rectangular walls of medieval
cities had to be transformed into fortresses with jutting ramparts and gun emplace-
ments. Royal revenues could not keep up with war expenditures. To pay their bills,
governments routinely devalued their coinage (the sixteenth-century equivalent of
printing more paper money), causing prices to rise rapidly.
Charles V boasted the largest army in Europe, supported by the gold and silver
coming in from the New World. Immediately after conquest, the Spanish looted gold
and silver objects, melted them down, and sent the precious metals to Spain. Mining
began with forced Indian labor in the 1520s, and the amount of silver extracted in
Mexico and sent to Spain increased twentyfold in the 1530s and 1540s. Neverthe-
less, Charles could never make ends meet because of his extravagant war costs: the
debt of 37 million ducats accumulated during his forty years in power exceeded by
2 million ducats all the gold and silver brought from the Americas. His opponents
fared even worse. On his death in 1547, Francis I owed the bankers of Lyon almost
7 million French pounds — approximately the entire royal income for that year. Fore-
most among the financiers of war debts was the Fugger bank, based in the southern
German imperial city of Augsburg. The enterprise began with Jakob Fugger (1459–
1525), who became personal banker to Charles V’s grandfather Maximilian I. By the
[ 1492–1560
]
end of his life, Maximilian was so deeply in debt to Jakob Fugger that he had to
pawn the royal jewels. In 1519, Fugger assembled a consortium of German and Ital-
ian bankers to secure the election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor. For the next
three decades, the alliance between Europe’s biggest international bank and its largest
empire remained very close. Charles stayed barely one step ahead of his creditors;
in 1531, for example, he had to grant to the Fuggers eight years of mining rights in
Spanish lands south of Peru (present-day Bolivia and Chile).
Divided Realms
European rulers viewed religious division as a dangerous challenge to the unity and
stability of their rule. Subjects who considered their rulers heretics or blasphemers
could only cause trouble, and religious differences encouraged the formation of com-
peting noble factions, which easily led to violence when weak monarchs or children
ruled.
In France, King Francis I tolerated Protestants until the Affair of the Placards in
1534. Even then, the government could not stop many French noble families —
including some of the most powerful — from converting to Calvinism, especially in
southern and western France. Francis and his successor, Henry II (r. 1547–1559),
succeeded in maintaining a balance of power between Catholics and Calvinists, but
after Henry’s death the weakened monarchy could no longer hold together the fragile
realm. The real drama of the Reformation in France took place after 1560, when the
country plunged into four decades of religious wars, whose savagery was unparal-
leled elsewhere in Europe (see Chapter 15).
In England and Scotland religious divisions at the very top threatened the con-
trol of the rulers. Before his death in 1547, Henry VIII had succeeded in making
himself head of the Church of England, but the nature of that church remained
ambiguous. The advisers of the boy king Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) furthered the
Protestant cause by welcoming prominent religious refugees who had been deeply
influenced by Calvinism and wanted to see England move in that austere direction.
But Edward died at age fifteen, opening the way to his Catholic half sister, Mary
Tudor, who had been restored to the line of succession by an act of Parliament under
Henry VIII in 1544.
When Mary (r. 1553–1558) came to the throne, she restored Catholicism and
persecuted Protestants. Nearly three hundred Protestants perished at the stake, and
more than eight hundred fled to the Protestant German states and Switzerland.
Finally, when Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth, succeeded her half sister Mary,
becoming Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), the English Protestant cause gained
lasting momentum. Under Elizabeth’s leadership, Protestantism came to define the
character of the English nation, though the influence of Calvinism within it was still
a cause for dispute. Catholics were tolerated only if they kept their opinions on
religion and politics to themselves. A tentative but nonetheless real peace returned
to England.
[
1492–1560
Still another pattern of religious politics unfolded in Scotland, where Protes-

tants formed a small minority until the 1550s. At the center of Scotland’s conflict
over religion stood Mary of Guise, a French native and Catholic married to the king
of Scotland, James V. After James died in 1542, Mary surrounded herself and her
daughter Mary Stuart, also a Catholic and heir to the throne, with French advisers.
When, in 1558, Mary Stuart married Francis, the son of Henry II and the heir to
the French throne, many Scottish noblemen, alienated by this pro-French atmo-
sphere, joined the pro-English, anti-French Protestant cause. They gained control of
the Scottish Parliament in 1560 and dethroned the regent, Mary of Guise. Eventually
they forced her daughter — by then known as Mary, queen of Scots — to flee to
England, and installed Mary’s infant son, James, as king. Scotland would turn toward
the Calvinist version of the Reformation and thus establish the potential for conflict
with England.
In the German states, the Protestant princes and cities formed the Schmalkaldic
League in 1531. Opposing the league were Emperor Charles V, the bishops, and the
few remaining Catholic princes. Although Charles had to concentrate on fighting
the French and the Turks during the 1530s, he eventually secured the western Medi-
terranean and then turned his attention back home to central Europe to try to resolve
the growing religious differences in his lands.
After efforts to mediate between Protestants and Catholics broke down, Charles
prepared to fight the Protestant Schmalkaldic League. War broke out in 1547, the
year after Martin Luther’s death. Using seasoned Spanish veterans and German allies,
Charles occupied the German imperial cities in the south, restoring Catholic elites
and suppressing the Reformation. When Protestant commanders could not agree on
a joint strategy, Charles crushed the Schmalkaldic League’s armies at Mühlberg in
Saxony and captured the leading Lutheran princes. Jubilant, Charles restored Catho-
lics’ right to worship in Protestant lands while permitting Lutherans to keep their
own rites. Protestant resistance to the declaration was deep and widespread: many
pastors went into exile, and riots broke out in many cities. Charles’s success did not
last long. The Protestant princes regrouped, declared war in 1552, and chased a
surprised, unprepared, and practically bankrupt emperor back to Italy.
Forced to compromise, Charles V agreed to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The
settlement recognized the Lutheran church in the empire; accepted the secularization
of church lands but “reserved” the remaining ecclesiastical territories for Catholics;
and, most important, established the principle that all princes, whether Catholic or
Lutheran, enjoyed the sole right to determine the religion of their lands and subjects.
Calvinist, Anabaptist, and other dissenting groups were excluded from the settlement.
Ironically, the religious revolt of the common people had culminated in a princes’
reformation. The Augsburg settlement preserved a fragile peace in central Europe
until 1618, but the exclusion of Calvinists would prompt future conflict.
Exhausted by decades of war and dismayed by the disunity in Christian Europe,
Emperor Charles V resigned his many thrones in 1555 and 1556, leaving his
Netherlandish-Burgundian and Spanish dominions to his son, Philip II, and his
[ 1492–1560
]
Austrian lands to his brother, Ferdinand
REVIEW QUESTION How did religious divi- (who was also elected Holy Roman Emperor
sions complicate the efforts of rulers to to succeed Charles). Retiring to a monas-
maintain political stability and build stronger tery in southern Spain, the most powerful
states?
of the Christian monarchs spent his last
years quietly seeking salvation.
Conclusion
Charles V’s decision to divide his empire reflected the tensions pulling Europe in
different directions. Even as Charles’s kingdom of Spain joined Portugal as a global
power with new conquests overseas, Luther, Calvin, and a host of others sought
converts to competing branches of Protestantism within the Holy Roman Empire.
The reformers disagreed on many points of doctrine and church organization, but
they all broke definitively from the Roman Catholic church. The pieces were never
put together again. Portugal and Spain, the leaders in global exploration and con-
quest, remained resolutely Catholic, but as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, where
the Reformation began, Charles could not stifle the growing religious ferment. In the
decades to come, Protestantism would spread, religious conflict would turn even more
deadly, and emerging Protestant powers would begin to contest the global reach of
Spain and Portugal.
[ 1492–1560
] Conclusion 469
Lutheran
Church of England
Calvinist
NORWAY
Calvinist influenced SWEDEN
Roman Catholic
Mixed Protestant-Catholic
TS
SCOTLAND
IGH
Anabaptist minorities
Nor th
ea
KN
N
Sea
cS
W
IC
ti
IRELAND DENMARK
al
N
E B
O
S
T
ENGLAND U
TE
Mühlberg
London LITHUANIA
Münster
NETHERLANDS POLAND
Antwerp HOLY Wittenberg
Brussels Thuringia
AT L A N T IC Noyon Marburg ROMA N Saxony
OCEAN Paris Worms EMPIRE Bohemia
Orléans Regensburg
Strasbourg Bavaria Da
nub Vienna
e R.
Zurich
FRANCE SWISS AUSTRIA
Geneva CONFED.
Trent HUNGARY
Venice
Approximate
eastern limit
AL
of Western
ITALIAN Christianity
TUG
SPAIN Corsica STATES

OT TOM AN
POR
Rome EMPIRE
Sardinia
Sicily
Mediterranean Sea
0 200 400 miles
MAPPING THE WEST Reformation Europe, c. 1560

The fortunes of Roman Catholicism were at their lowest point around 1560. Northern Germany
and Scandinavia owed allegiance to the Lutheran church; England broke away under a national
church headed by its monarchs; and the Calvinist Reformation extended across large areas of
western, central, and eastern Europe. Southern Europe remained solidly Catholic.
Chapter 14 Review
Christopher Columbus (p. 444) John Calvin (p. 452) Jesuits (p. 460)
Hernán Cortés (p. 445) predestination (p. 453) Suleiman the Magnificent
Christian humanism (p. 448) Henry VIII (p. 453) (p. 465)
Martin Luther (p. 450) Anabaptists (p. 455) Peace of Augsburg (p. 467)
Charles V (p. 451) Council of Trent (p. 459)
Review Questions
1. Which European countries led the way in maritime exploration, and what were their motives?
2. How did Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Henry VIII each challenge the Roman Catholic church?
3. How did the forces for radical change unleashed by the Protestant Reformation interact
with the urge for social order and stability?
4. How did religious divisions complicate the efforts of rulers to maintain political stability
and build stronger states?
Making Connections
1. In what ways did the discovery of the Americas affect Europe?
2. Why was Charles V ultimately unable to prevent religious division in his lands?
3. How did the different religious groups respond to the opportunity presented by the printing
press?
4. What motives besides religious differences caused war in this period?
A more global historical perspective is reshaping the study of both the European voyages of
exploration and conquest and the Reformation, especially the Catholic renewal, which included
a global missionary effort.
Christopher Columbus: http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/Intro.html
Edwards, Mark U., Jr. Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. 2004.
Gritsch, Eric W. Thomas Müntzer: A Tragedy of Errors. 2006.
Holder, R. Ward. Crisis and Renewal: The Era of the Reformations. 2009.
Knecht, Robert Jean. The French Renaissance Court, 1483–1589. 2008.
Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. 2013.
Marshall, Peter. Religious Identities in Henry VIII’s England. 2006.
O’Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. 2013.
Reston, James. Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for
Europe, 1520–1536. 2009.
*Schwartz, Stuart B. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico.
2000.
Stjerna, Kirsi. Women and the Reformation. 2011.
*Symcox, Geoffrey, and Blair Sullivan. Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies:
A Brief History with Documents. 2005.
*Primary source.
470
[
1492–1560
] Chaper 14 Review 471
Important Events
1492 Columbus reaches the Americas

1494 Italian Wars begin; Treaty of Tordesillas divides Atlantic world between
Portugal and Spain
1516 Erasmus publishes Greek edition of the New Testament
1517 Luther composes ninety-five theses to challenge Catholic church
1519 Cortés captures Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán
1520 Luther publishes three treatises; Zwingli breaks from Rome
1525 German Peasants’ War
1527 Charles V’s imperial troops sack Rome
1529 Colloquy of Marburg addresses disagreements between German and
Swiss church reformers
1534 Henry VIII breaks with Rome; Affair of the Placards in France
1536 Calvin publishes Institutes of the Christian Religion
1540 Jesuits established as new Catholic order
1545–1563 Catholic Council of Trent condemns Protestant beliefs, confirms Catholic
doctrine
1547 Charles V defeats Protestants at Mühlberg
1555 Peace of Augsburg ends religious wars and recognizes Lutheran church in
German states
1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis ends wars between Habsburg and Valois
rulers
Consider three events: Luther publishes three treatises (1520), German Peasants’ War
(1525), and Catholic Council of Trent condemns Protestant beliefs, confirms Catholic
doctrine (1545–1563). How did Luther’s treatises inspire the uprising of peasants and
urban artisans? How did the changes wrought by the first two events prompt the Council
of Trent, its goals, and its decisions?
Wars of Religion and the
15
Clash of Worldviews
1560–1648
I
n November 1576, Spain’s soldiers sacked Antwerp, Europe’s wealthiest city. In
eleven days of horror known as the Spanish Fury, the troops slaughtered seven to
eight thousand people and burned down a thousand buildings, including the city
hall. The king of Spain had sent an army of ten thousand men in 1566 to occupy his
rebellious northern domains and punish Calvinists, who had smashed stained-glass
windows and statues in Catholic churches. By 1575, however, the king had run out
of funds, and his men rioted after being unpaid for months. The Spanish Fury was far
from an isolated incident in this time of reli-
gious upheaval. It showed, moreover, that vio-
Atrocities in Antwerp lence often exploded from a dangerous mixture
The sixteenth-century Netherlandish
artist Franz Hogenberg produced
of religious, political, and economic motives.
this engraving of the Spanish Fury The first two generations of battles over
in Antwerp not long after the events the Protestant Reformation had ended with
took place. It shows the kinds of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. That agree-
atrocities — rape, murder, pillage, ment helped maintain a relative calm in the
and burning of houses — that would
lands of the Holy Roman Empire, but in west-
be committed repeatedly on both
sides of the conflict between Catho- ern Europe religious strife multiplied after
lics and Protestants. (akg-images.) 1560 as Calvinists made inroads in France, the
Netherlands, and England. In 1618, fighting
broke out again in the Holy Roman Empire —
and before it ended in 1648, the Thirty Years’ War involved most of the European
powers and desolated lands and peoples across central Europe. All in all, nearly con-
stant warfare marked the century between 1560 and 1648. Like the Spanish Fury, these
struggles began as religious disputes but soon revealed other motives: political ambi-
tions, long-standing rivalries between the leading powers, and greed — all of which
raised the stakes of conflict.
Suffering only increased when a major economic downturn in the early seven-
teenth century led to food shortages, famine, and disease in much of Europe. These
catastrophes hit especially hard in the central European lands devastated by the
fighting of the Thirty Years’ War. In intellectual life a new understanding of the
473
474 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
[ 1560–1648
]
motion of the planets in the heavens and of mechanics on earth developed among
experimenters in “natural philosophy,” that is, what came to be called science. This
scientific revolution ultimately reshaped
Western attitudes in virtually every field
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the long-term
political, economic, and intellectual conse-
of knowledge, but at its beginnings it still
quences of the conflicts over religious belief had to compete with traditional religious
in this era? views and popular beliefs in magic and
witchcraft.
Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618

The Peace of Augsburg made Lutheranism a legal religion in the predominantly Cath-
olic Holy Roman Empire, but it did not extend recognition to Calvinists. The rapid
expansion of Calvinism after 1560 threatened to alter the religious balance of power
as Calvinists challenged Catholic dominance in France, the Spanish-ruled Netherlands,
Scotland, and Poland-Lithuania. In England, they sought to influence the new Protes-
tant monarch, Elizabeth I. Calvinists were not the only source of religious contention,
however. Philip II of Spain fought the Muslim Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean
and expelled the remnants of the Muslim population in Spain. To the east, the Russian
tsar Ivan IV fought to establish an empire based on Russian Orthodox Christianity.
French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598

Calvinism spread in France after 1555, when the Genevan Company of Pastors sent
missionaries supplied with false passports and often disguised as merchants. By the
end of the 1560s, nearly one-third of the nobles had joined the Huguenots (French
Calvinists), and they raised their own armies. Conversion to Calvinism in French
noble families often began with the noblewomen, who protected pastors, provided
money and advice, and helped found schools and establish relief for the poor.
A series of family tragedies prevented the French kings from acting decisively
to prevent the spread of Calvinism. King Henry II was accidentally killed during a
jousting tournament in 1559, and his fifteen-year-old son, Francis, died soon after.
Ten-year-old Charles IX (r. 1560–1574) became king, with his mother, Catherine de
Médicis, as regent, or acting ruler. The Huguenots followed the lead of the Bourbon
family, who stood first in line to inherit the throne if the Valois kings failed to pro-
duce a male heir. The most militantly Catholic nobles took their cues from the Guise
family. Catherine tried to play the Bourbon and Guise factions against each other,
but civil war erupted in 1562. Both sides committed terrible atrocities. Priests and
pastors were murdered, and massacres of whole congregations became frighteningly
commonplace.
Although a Catholic herself, Catherine feared the rise of Guise influence, so she
arranged the marriage of the king’s Catholic sister, Marguerite de Valois, to Henry
of Navarre, a Huguenot and Bourbon. Just four days after the wedding, in August
[1560–1648
] Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 475
1572, an assassin tried but failed to kill one of the Huguenot leaders. Violence against
Calvinists spiraled out of control. On St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, a bloodbath
began, fueled by years of growing animosity between Catholics and Protestants. In
three days, Catholic mobs murdered some two thousand Huguenots in Paris. Three
thousand Huguenots died in the provinces over the next six weeks. The pope joyfully
ordered the church bells rung throughout Catholic Europe.
Huguenot pamphleteers now proclaimed their right to resist a tyrant who wor-
shipped idols (a practice that Calvinists equated with Catholicism). This right of
resistance was linked to a political notion of contract; upholding the true religion
was part of the contract binding the ruler to his subjects. Both the right of resistance
and the idea of a contract fed into the larger doctrine of constitutionalism — that a
government’s legitimacy rested on its upholding a constitution, or contract between
ruler and ruled. The religious division in France grew even more dangerous when
Charles IX died and his brother Henry III (r. 1574–1589) became king. Like his
brothers before him, Henry III failed to produce an heir. Convinced that Henry III
lacked the will to root out Protestantism, the Guises formed the Catholic League,
which requested help from Spanish king Philip II. Henry III responded in 1588 by
having his men kill two Guise leaders. A few months later, a fanatical Catholic monk
stabbed Henry III to death, and Henry of Navarre became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610),
despite Philip II’s military intervention.
With the Catholic League threatening to declare his succession invalid, Henry IV
publicly embraced Catholicism, reputedly explaining, “Paris is worth a Mass.” Within
a few years he defeated the ultra-Catholic opposition and drove out the Spanish. In
1598, he issued the Edict of Nantes, in which he granted the Huguenots a large
measure of religious toleration. The approximately 1.25 million Huguenots became
a legally protected minority within an officially Catholic kingdom of some 20 million
people. Protestants were free to worship in specified towns and were allowed their
own troops, fortresses, and even courts.
Few believed in religious toleration as an ideal, but Henry IV followed the advice
of those moderate Catholics and Calvinists — together called politiques — who urged
him to give priority to the development of a durable state. The politiques believed
that religious disputes could be resolved only in the peace provided by strong gov-
ernment. The French Catholic writer Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) went even
further than this pragmatic position and revived the ancient doctrine of skepticism,
which held that total certainty is never attainable. On the beams of his study he
painted the statement “All that is certain is that nothing is certain.” Like toleration
of religious differences, such skepticism was repugnant to Protestants and Catholics
alike, both of whom were certain that their religion was the right one.
The Edict of Nantes ended the French Wars of Religion, but Henry still needed
to reestablish monarchical authority and hold the fractious nobles in check. He
allowed rich merchants and lawyers to buy offices and, in exchange for an annual
payment, pass their positions on to their heirs or sell them to someone else. This
new social elite was known as the “nobility of the robe” (named after the robes that
[ 1560–1648
]
magistrates wore, much like the ones judges wear today). Income raised by the
increased sale of offices reduced the state debt and also helped Henry strengthen the
monarchy. His efforts did not, however, prevent his enemies from assassinating him
in 1610 after nineteen unsuccessful attempts.
Dutch Revolt against Spain

Although he failed to prevent Henry IV from taking the French throne in 1589,
Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598) was the most powerful ruler in Europe (Map 15.1).
In addition to the western Habsburg lands in Spain and the Netherlands, Philip had
The Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Empires, c. 1580 Spanish Habsburg possessions under Philip II
Austrian Habsburg possessions
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
NORTH ASIA
Battle
AMERICA AZORES
SPAIN
Florida
INDIA Macao PHILIPPINES
WEST INDIES
AFRICA Goa
NEW
CAS
SPAIN BRAZIL
UC
Ceylon
OL
Zanzibar
PE
M
RU
Java
SOUTH
AMERICA Nor th
a
Se
S ea c
Maritime trade routes lti
Ba
POLAND-
Vi LITHUANIA
Amsterdam
London stu
la R .
Rhin
El
Armada
be
1588 Antwerp
H O L Y
R
e R.
Paris
AT L A N T I C R. R O M A N
Loire R . Vienna
OCEAN Dan
ube
F R A NC E E M P I R E
N Venice Dan
ube
R .
W E
PAPAL
br
E STATES
PORTUGAL
oR
Ad OTTOMAN
.
S
(1580) SPAI N r ia
Corsica tic EMPIRE
Tagus Se
Lisbon R. Rome a
Naples
BALEARIC IS. Sardinia
M e d i t e r r
a n e
0 200 400 miles a n Sicily Lepanto
S e 1571
NORTH AFRICA a
MAP 15.1 The Empire of Philip II, r. 1556–1598

Spanish king Philip II drew revenues from a truly worldwide empire. In 1580, he was the richest
European ruler, but the demands of governing and defending his control of such far-flung territo-
ries eventually drained his resources.
[1560–1648
inherited from his father, Charles V, all the Spanish colonies recently settled in the
New World of the Americas. Gold and silver funneled from the colonies supported
his campaigns against the Ottoman Turks and the French and the English Protes-
tants. But all the money of the New World could not prevent Philip’s eventual defeat
in the Netherlands, where Calvinist rebels established the independent Dutch Repub-
lic, which soon vied with Spain, France, and England for commercial supremacy.
A deeply devout Catholic, Philip II came to the Spanish throne at age twenty-
eight determined to restore Catholic unity in Europe and lead the Christian defense
against the Muslims. His brief marriage to Mary Tudor (Mary I of England) did not
produce an heir, but it and his subsequent marriage to Elisabeth de Valois, the sister
of Charles IX and Henry III of France, gave him reason enough for involvement in
English and French affairs. In 1578, the king of Portugal died fighting Muslims in
Morocco, and two years later Philip took over this neighboring realm with its rich
empire in Africa, India, and the Americas.
Philip insisted on Catholic unity in the lands under his control and worked to
forge an international Catholic alliance against the Ottoman Turks. In 1571, he achieved
the single greatest military victory of his reign when he joined with Venice and the
papacy to defeat the Turks in a great sea battle off the Greek coast at Lepanto. Seventy
The Battle of Lepanto

The Greek artist Antonio Vassilacchi painted this mural in 1600 to celebrate the Christian vic-
tory at the battle of Lepanto. Vassilacchi was working in Venice, which was one of the main
Christian allies in the campaign against the Turks. The victory was considered so important that
it was celebrated in writings, medals, paintings, and sculptures. The mural captures the vio-
lence and confusion of the battle. (Villa Barbarigo, Noventa Vicentina, Italy / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1560–1648
]
Philip II of Spain
The king of Spain is shown here
(kneeling in black) with his allies at the
battle of Lepanto, the doge of Venice
on his left and Pope Pius V on his right.
El Greco (see page 498) painted this
canvas, sometimes called The Dream
of Philip II, in 1578 or 1579. The paint-
ing is typically mannerist in the way
it crowds figures into every available
space, uses larger-than-life or elon-
gated bodies, and creates new and
often bizarre visual effects. What can
we conclude about Philip II’s character
from the way he is depicted here?
(El Escorial Monasterio, Spain / De Agostini
Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.)
thousand sailors and soldiers

fought on the allied side, and eight
thousand died. The Turks lost
twenty thousand men.
Spain now controlled the west-
ern Mediterranean but could not
pursue its advantage because of
threats elsewhere. Between 1568
and 1570, the Moriscos — Muslim
converts to Christianity who remained secretly faithful to Islam — had revolted in the
south of Spain, killing ninety priests and fifteen hundred Christians. Philip retaliated
by forcing fifty thousand Moriscos to leave their villages and resettle in other regions.
In 1609, his successor, Philip III, ordered their expulsion from Spanish territory, and
by 1614 some 300,000 Moriscos had been forced to relocate to North Africa.
The Calvinists of the Netherlands were less easily intimidated: they were far from
Spain and accustomed to being left alone. After the Spanish Fury of 1576 outraged
Calvinists and Catholics alike, Prince William of Orange (whose name came from
the lands he owned in southern France) led the Netherlands’ seven predominantly
Protestant northern provinces into a military alliance with the ten mostly Catholic
southern provinces and drove out the Spaniards. The Catholic southern provinces
returned to the Spanish fold in 1579. Despite the assassination in 1584 of William
of Orange, Spanish troops never regained control in the north. Spain would not
formally recognize Dutch independence until 1648, but by the end of the sixteenth
century the Dutch Republic (sometimes called Holland after the most populous of
its seven provinces) was a self-governing state sheltering a variety of religious groups.
Religious toleration in the Dutch Republic developed for pragmatic reasons: the
central government did not have the power to enforce religious orthodoxy. Each
province governed itself and sent delegates to the one common institution, the States
[1560–1648
General. Although the princes of Orange resembled a ruling family, their powers
paled next to those of local elites, known as regents. One-third of the Dutch popula-
tion remained Catholic, and local authorities allowed them to worship as they chose
in private. The Dutch Republic also had a relatively large Jewish population because
many Jews had settled there after being driven out of Spain and Portugal. From 1597,
Jews could worship openly in their synagogues. This openness to various religions
would help make the Dutch Republic one of Europe’s chief intellectual and scientific
centers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Well situated for maritime commerce, the Dutch Republic developed a thriving
economy based on shipping and shipbuilding. Dutch merchants favored free trade
in Europe because they could compete at an advantage. After the Dutch gained
independence, Amsterdam became the main European money market for two cen-
turies. The Dutch controlled many overseas markets thanks to their preeminence in
seaborne commerce: by 1670, the Dutch commercial fleet was larger than the English,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Austrian fleets combined.
Elizabeth I’s Defense of English Protestantism

As the Dutch revolt unfolded, Philip II became increasingly infuriated with Eliza-
beth I (r. 1558–1603), who had succeeded her half sister Mary Tudor as queen of
England. Philip had been married to Mary and had enthusiastically seconded Mary’s
efforts to return England to Catholicism. When Mary died in 1558, Elizabeth rejected
Philip’s proposal of marriage and promptly brought Protestantism back to England.
She had to squash uprisings by Catholics in the north and at least two serious plots
against her life. In the long run, however, her greatest
challenges came from the Calvinist Puritans and
Philip II.
The Puritans were strict Calvinists who
opposed all vestiges of Catholic ritual in the
Church of England. After Elizabeth became
queen, many Puritans returned from
exile abroad, but Elizabeth resisted their
demands for drastic changes in church
ritual and governance. The Church of
Queen Elizabeth I Playing the Lute

The watercolor miniature by Nicholas Hilliard
shows Queen Elizabeth (c. 1580) playing the
most popular instrument of the time. Hilliard
did many miniatures of members of Elizabeth’s
court. Elizabeth used cosmetics and wigs to
cover up the scars of smallpox and the loss of
much of her hair. (By Nicholas Hilliard [1547–1619] /
Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1560–1648
]
England’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, issued under her authority in 1563, incor-
porated elements of Catholic ritual along with Calvinist doctrines. Puritans tried
to undercut the crown-appointed bishops’ authority by placing control of church
administration in the hands of a local presbytery, that is, a group made up of the
minister and the elders of the congregation. Elizabeth rejected this Calvinist
presbyterianism.
The Puritans nonetheless steadily gained influence. Known for their emphasis
on strict moral lives, the Puritans tried to close England’s theaters and Sunday fairs.
Every Puritan father — with the help of his wife — was to “make his house a little
church” by teaching the children to read the Bible. Believing themselves God’s
elect — those whom God has chosen for mercy and salvation — and England an “elect
nation,” the Puritans also pushed Elizabeth to help Protestants on the continent.
After Philip II annexed Portugal and began to interfere in French affairs, Elizabeth
dispatched seven thousand soldiers in 1585 to help the Dutch rebels.
Philip II bided his time as long as Elizabeth remained unmarried and her Cath-
olic cousin Mary Stuart, better known as Mary, queen of Scots, stood next in line
to inherit the English throne. In 1568, Scottish Calvinists forced Mary to abdicate
the throne of Scotland in favor of her one-year-old son James (eventually James I of
England), who was then raised as a Protestant. After her abdication, Mary spent
nearly twenty years under house arrest in England. In 1587, when a letter from Mary
offering her succession rights to Philip was discovered, Elizabeth overcame her reluc-
tance to execute a fellow monarch and ordered Mary’s beheading.
Now determined to act, Philip II sent his
0 200 400 miles armada (Spanish for “fleet”) of 130 ships from Lis-
0 200 400 kilometers Retreat of Arm
a bon toward the English Channel in May 1588. The
da
English scattered the Spanish Armada by sending

SCOTLAND blazing fire ships into its midst. A great gale then
North
Ireland Sea forced the Spanish to flee around Scotland. When
the armada limped home in September, half the
ENGLAND
s ships had been lost and thousands of sailors were
nd
dead or starving. Protestants throughout Europe

la
Battle with Armada

er
th
Ne
rejoiced.
ATLANTIC By the time Philip II died in 1598, the costs of
OCEAN FRANCE
fighting the Ottomans, Dutch, English, and French
had finally bankrupted the treasury. In his novel
Don Quixote (1605), the Spanish writer Miguel de
Portugal
Cervantes captured the disappointment of thwarted
SPAIN
Lisbon Spanish ambitions. Cervantes himself had been
wounded at Lepanto. His novel’s hero, a minor
Mediterranean Sea
nobleman, reads so many romances and books of
chivalry that he loses his sense of proportion and
Retreat of the Spanish Armada, wanders the countryside futilely trying to mimic the
1588 heroic deeds he has come across in his reading.
[1560–1648
Elizabeth made the most of her limited means and consolidated England’s posi-
tion as a Protestant power. In her early years, she held out the prospect of marriage to
many political suitors; but in order to maintain her — and England’s — independence,
she never married. Her successor, James I (r. 1603–1625), came to the throne as king
of both Scotland and England. Shakespeare’s tragedies Hamlet (1601), King Lear
(1605), and Macbeth (1606), written around the time of James’s succession, might
all be read as commentaries on the uncertainties faced by Elizabeth and James. But
Elizabeth’s story, unlike Shakespeare’s tragedies, had a happy ending: she left James
secure in a kingdom of growing weight in world politics.
The Clash of Faiths and Empires in Eastern Europe

In the east, the most contentious border divided Christian Europe from the Islamic
realm of the Ottoman Turks. Recovering quickly from their defeat at Lepanto in
1571, the Ottomans continued their attacks, seizing Venetian-held Cyprus in 1573.
In the Balkans, rather than forcibly converting
0 250 500 miles
their Christian subjects to Islam, the Turks allowed
them to cling to the Greek Orthodox faith. They SWEDEN
welcomed Jews expelled from Spain, and Jews RUSSIA

TEUTONIC
soon made up 10 percent of the population of KNIGHTS Volga R .
Novgorod
Istanbul. Moscow
ea
cS
The Muscovite tsars officially protected the

lt i
Ba
Russian Orthodox church, which faced no compe- POLAND-
LITHUANIA
tition within Russian lands. Building on the base
Danube R.
laid by his grandfather Ivan III, Tsar Ivan IV Ivan IV’s campaign
(r. 1533–1584) stopped at nothing in his endeavor
to make Muscovy (the grand duchy centered on Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and
Moscow) the heart of a mighty Russian empire. Sweden in the Late 1500s
Given to unpredictable fits of rage, Ivan murdered his own son with an iron rod dur-
ing a quarrel. His epithet “the Terrible” reflects not only the terror he unleashed but
also the awesome impression he evoked. Cunning and cruel, Ivan came to embody
barbarism in the eyes of Westerners.
Ivan initiated Russian expansion eastward into Siberia, but two formidable foes
blocked his plans for expansion westward: Sweden (which then included much of
present-day Finland) and Poland-Lithuania. Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania
united into a single commonwealth in 1569 and controlled an extensive territory.
After Ivan IV died in 1584, a terrible period of chaos known as the Time of Troubles
ensued, during which the king of Poland-Lithuania tried to put his son on the Russian
throne. In 1613, an army of nobles, towns-
people, and peasants finally expelled the
REVIEW QUESTION How did state power
intruders and put on the throne a noble- depend on religious unity at the end of the six-
man, Michael Romanov (r. 1613–1645), teenth century and start of the seventeenth?
who established an enduring new dynasty.
[ 1560–1648
]
The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648
Although the eastern states managed to avoid civil wars over religion in the early
seventeenth century, the rest of Europe was drawn into the final and most deadly of
the wars of religion, the Thirty Years’ War. It began in 1618 with conflicts between
Catholics and Protestants within the Holy Roman Empire and eventually involved
most European states. By its end in 1648, many central European lands lay in ruins
and the balance of power had shifted away from the Habsburg powers — Spain and
Austria — toward France, England, and the Dutch Republic. Prolonged warfare cre-
ated turmoil and suffering, but it also fostered the growth of armies and bureaucra-
cies; out of the carnage would emerge centralized and powerful states that made
increasing demands on ordinary people.
Origins and Course of the War

The fighting that devastated central Europe had its origins in a combination of reli-
gious disputes, ethnic competition, and political weakness. The Austrian Habsburgs
officially ruled over the huge Holy Roman Empire, which comprised eight major
ethnic groups. The emperor and four of the seven electors who chose him were
Catholic; the other three electors were Protestants. The Peace of Augsburg of 1555
(see page 467) maintained the balance between Catholics and Lutherans, but it had
no mechanism for resolving conflicts; tensions rose as Calvinism, unrecognized under
the peace, made inroads into Lutheran areas. By 1613, two of the three Protestant
electors had become Calvinists.
These conflicts came to a head when the Catholic Habsburg heir Archduke Fer-
dinand was crowned king of Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) in 1617. The
Austrian Habsburgs held not only the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire but
also a collection of separately administered royal crowns, of which Bohemia was one.
Once crowned, Ferdinand began to curtail the religious freedom previously granted to
Czech Protestants. When Ferdinand was elected emperor (as Ferdinand II, r. 1619–
1637), the rebellious Czechs deposed him and chose in his place the young Calvinist
Frederick V of the Palatinate (r. 1616–1623). A quick series of clashes ended in 1620
when the imperial armies defeated the outmanned Czechs at the battle of White Moun-
tain, near Prague. The Czechs would not gain their independence until 1918.
The battle of White Mountain did not end the war, which soon spread to the
German lands of the empire. Private mercenary armies (armies for hire) began to
form during the fighting, and the emperor had little control over them. Albrecht von
Wallenstein (1583–1634), a Czech Protestant by birth, offered in 1625 to raise an
army for Ferdinand II and soon had in his employ 125,000 soldiers, who plundered
much of Protestant Germany with the emperor’s approval. The Lutheran king of
Denmark, Christian IV (r. 1596–1648), responded by invading northern Germany.
General Wallenstein’s forces defeated him. Emboldened by his general’s victories,
Emperor Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution in 1629, which outlawed Cal-
[
1560–1648
] The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 483
vinism in the empire and reclaimed Catholic church properties confiscated by the
Lutherans.
With Protestant interests in serious jeopardy, Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1611–1632)
of Sweden marched into Germany in 1630 with a highly trained army of 100,000
soldiers. Hoping to block Spanish intervention in the war, the French monarchy’s chief
minister, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), offered to subsidize the Lutheran Gusta-
vus. This agreement between the Swedish Lutheran and French Catholic powers to
fight the Catholic Habsburgs showed that state interests could outweigh religious
considerations.
Gustavus defeated the imperial army and occupied the Catholic parts of southern
Germany before he was killed at the battle of Lützen in 1632. Once again the tide
turned, but this time it swept Wallenstein with it. Because Wallenstein was rumored
to be negotiating with Protestant powers, Ferdinand had him assassinated.
France openly joined the fray in 1635 by declaring war on Spain. The two Catho-
lic powers pummeled each other. The French king Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643) hoped
to profit from the troubles of Spain in the Netherlands and from the conflicts between
the Austrian emperor and his Protestant subjects. A series of internal revolts shook
the perennially cash-strapped Spanish crown. In 1640, peasants in the rich north-
eastern province of Catalonia rebelled, overrunning Barcelona and killing the viceroy
of the province. The Portuguese also revolted in 1640 and proclaimed independence
like the Dutch. In 1643, the Spanish suffered their first major defeat at French hands.
Although the Spanish were forced to concede independence to Portugal (annexed to
Spain only since 1580), they eventually suppressed the Catalan revolt.
France, too, faced exhaustion after years of rising taxes and recurrent revolts.
Richelieu died in 1642. Louis XIII followed him a few months later and was suc-
ceeded by his five-year-old son, Louis XIV. With yet another foreign queen mother —
she was the daughter of the Spanish king — serving as regent and an Italian cardinal,
Mazarin, providing advice, French politics once again moved into a period of insta-
bility, rumor, and crisis. All sides were ready for peace.
The Effects of Constant Fighting

When peace negotiations began in the 1640s, they did not come a moment too soon.
Some towns had faced several prolonged sieges during the decades of fighting. Even
worse suffering took place in the countryside. Peasants fled their villages, which were
often burned down. At times, desperate peasants revolted and attacked nearby castles
and monasteries. War and intermittent outbreaks of plague cost some German towns
one-third or more of their population. One-third of the inhabitants of Bohemia also
perished.
Soldiers did not fare all that much better. An Englishman who fought for the
Dutch army in 1633 described how he slept on the wet ground, got his boots full of
water, and “at peep of day looked like a drowned ratt.” Governments increasingly short
of funds often failed to pay the troops, and frequent mutinies, looting, and pillaging
[ 1560–1648
]
The Violence of the Thirty Years’ War

Toward the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the German artist Hans Ulrich Franck began producing
a series of twenty-five etchings aimed at capturing the horrors of the conflict. This wood engrav-
ing based on one such etching shows how violence was directed at women in particular. Unlike
the print that opens this chapter, which shows a whole panorama of atrocities committed in a
city, Franck’s etchings focused on crimes committed by soldiers against civilians in small rural
villages. (akg-images.)
resulted. Armies attracted all sorts of displaced people desperately in need of pro-
visions. In the last year of the Thirty Years’ War, the Imperial-Bavarian Army had
40,000 men entitled to draw rations — and more than 100,000 wives, prostitutes,
servants, children, and other camp followers forced to scrounge for their own food.
The Peace of Westphalia, 1648

The comprehensive settlement provided by the Peace of Westphalia — named after
the German province where negotiations took place — would serve as a model for
resolving future conflicts among warring European states. For the first time, a dip-
lomatic congress convened to address international disputes, and those signing the
treaties guaranteed the resulting settlement. A method still in use, the congress was
the first to bring all parties together, rather than two or three at a time.
France and Sweden gained most from the Peace of Westphalia. France acquired
parts of Alsace and replaced Spain as the prevailing power on the continent. Sweden
took several northern territories from the Holy Roman Empire (Map 15.2). The
[ 1560–1648
] The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 485
Austrian Habsburg lands NORWAY

SWEDEN
Spanish Habsburg lands RUSSIA
Prussian lands
German states SCOTLAND
a
Swedish lands Nor th
Se
Boundary of the Sea
ic
Holy Roman Empire DENMARK lt
Ba
0
Battle
163
DUTCH POL AND-LI THUANIA
Danish invasion REPUBLIC
BRANDENBURG-
16
Swedish invasion ENGLAND
25
Amsterdam PRUSSIA
Spanish Habsburg invasion Warsaw
Austrian Habsburg invasion Antwerp Westphalia
Lützen
French invasion SPANISH 64
3
162
(1632)
Wal
Saxony
NETH. 1 1 lenst
ein
White Mountain
(1620)
1625
0 150 300 miles Paris Palatinate Prague
Bohemia
RY
1635
GA
Alsace
0 150 300 kilometers TR MOLDAVIA
Franche- UN AN
AugsburgVienna H
9
Comté 61 SY
AT L A N T I C
1 LVA
1645
1633
AUSTRIA NIA
OCEAN FRANCE
(Spain)
N WALLACHIA Bl ack
MILAN
W SWISS Sea
CONFED. Ad O
E T
PAPAL ri
at T O
S STATES ic M
Catalonia Se A N Constantinople
a E M
PORTUGAL Madrid
Barcelona
Corsica Rome P I R
NAPLES E
Lisbon SPAIN Naples
Sardinia Aegean
Sea
BALEARIC IS. Athens
Mediterranean Sea
Sicily
Crete
MAP 15.2 The Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia, 1648
The Thirty Years’ War involved many of the major continental European powers. The arrows
marking invasion routes show that most of the fighting took place in central Europe in the lands
of the Holy Roman Empire. The German states and Bohemia sustained the greatest damage
during the fighting. None of the combatants emerged unscathed because even ultimate winners
such as Sweden and France depleted their resources of men and money.
Habsburgs lost the most. The Spanish Habsburgs recognized Dutch independence
after eighty years of war. Each German prince in the Holy Roman Empire gained the
right to establish Lutheranism, Catholicism, or Calvinism in his state, a right denied
to Calvinist rulers by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The independence ceded to
German princes sustained political divisions that prepared the way for the emergence
of a new power, the Hohenzollern Elector of Brandenburg, who increased his ter-
ritories and developed a small but effective standing army. After losing considerable
territory in the west, the Austrian Habsburgs turned eastward to concentrate on
restoring Catholicism to Bohemia and wresting Hungary from the Turks.
The Peace of Westphalia settled the distribution of the main religions in the Holy
Roman Empire: Lutheranism would dominate in the north, Calvinism in the area of
the Rhine River, and Catholicism in the south. Most of the territorial changes in
Europe remained intact until the nineteenth century. In the future, international
warfare would be undertaken for reasons of national security, commercial ambition,
[ 1560–1648
]
or dynastic pride rather than to enforce religious uniformity. As the politiques of the
late sixteenth century had hoped, state interests now outweighed motivations of faith
in political affairs.
The nearly constant warfare that preceded the peace had one surprising result:
despite the death and destruction, warfare had increased state authority. As armies
grew to bolster the war effort, governments needed more money and more supervi-
sory officials. The rate of land tax paid by French peasants doubled in the eight years
after France joined the war. In addition to raising taxes, governments deliberately
depreciated the value of the currency, which often resulted in soaring prices. When
all else failed, rulers declared bankruptcy. The Spanish government, for example, did
so three times in the first half of the seventeenth century. From Portugal to Muscovy,
ordinary people resisted new taxes by forming makeshift armies and battling royal
forces. With their colorful banners, unlikely leaders, strange names (the Nu-Pieds,
The Arts and State Power

In this enigmatic painting from 1656 called Las Meninas (“Maids of Honor”), the Spanish artist
Diego Velázquez depicts the Spanish king Philip IV’s five-year-old daughter, Margarita, with her
maids of honor, chaperone, bodyguard, two dwarves, and a large dog. The painter himself is
working at a large canvas on the viewer’s left side of the room. In the background on the left, a
mirror reflects the upper bodies of the king and queen, who are presumably watching the scene.
Which of these many figures is the real center of the painting? Like most monarchs of the time,
Philip employed court painters like Velázquez to paint their portraits and contribute to their pres-
tige. Ten years later Margarita would marry Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who was her uncle.
(Detail, Las Meninas, by Diego Velazquez [1599–1660]. Prado, Madrid, Spain / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
[1560–1648
] Economic Crisis and Realignment 487
or “Barefooted,” in France, for instance), and crude weapons, the rebels usually
proved no match for state armies, but they did keep troops occupied.
To meet these new demands, monarchs relied on advisers who took on the role
of modern prime ministers. Louis XIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, pro-
claimed the priority of raison d’état (“reason of state”), that is, the state’s interest
above all else. He silenced Protestants within France because they had become too
independent, and he crushed noble and popular resistance to Louis’s policies. He set
up intendants — delegates from the king’s council dispatched to the provinces — to
oversee police, army, and financial affairs.
To justify the growth of state authority and the expansion of government bureau-
cracies, rulers carefully cultivated their royal images. James I of England argued that
he ruled by divine right and was accountable only to God: “The state of monarchy
is the supremest thing on earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenant on earth, but
even by God himself they are called gods.” He advised his son to maintain a manly
appearance even as some courtiers complained of his behavior toward certain male
favorites. Appearance counted for so much
that most rulers regulated who could wear
REVIEW QUESTION Why did a war fought over
which kinds of cloth and decoration, reserv-
religious differences result in stronger states?
ing the richest and rarest, such as ermine
and gold, for themselves.
Economic Crisis and Realignment

The devastation caused by the Thirty Years’ War deepened an economic crisis that was
already under way. After a century of rising prices, caused partly by massive transfers
of gold and silver from the New World and partly by population growth, in the early
1600s prices began to level off and even to drop, and in most places population growth
slowed. International trade fell into recession. Agricultural yields also declined, and
peasants and townspeople alike were less able to pay the escalating taxes needed to
finance the wars. Famine and disease trailed grimly behind economic crisis and war,
in some areas causing large-scale uprisings and revolts. Behind the scenes, the eco-
nomic balance of power gradually shifted as northwestern Europe began to dominate
international trade and broke the stranglehold of Spain and Portugal in the New World.
From Growth to Recession

Population grew and prices rose in the second half of the sixteenth century. England’s
population grew by 70 percent and in parts of Spain the population grew by 100 per-
cent (that is, it doubled). The supply of precious metals from the New World reached
its height in the 1590s. This flood of precious metals combined with population growth
to fuel an astounding inflation in food prices in western Europe — 400 percent in the
sixteenth century — and a more moderate rise in the cost of manufactured goods.
Wages rose much more slowly, at about half the rate of the increase in food prices.
[ 1560–1648
]
Recession did not strike everywhere at the same time, but the warning signs
were unmistakable. Foreign trade slumped as war and an uncertain money supply
made business riskier. Imports of gold and silver declined, in part because so many
of the native Americans who worked in Spanish colonial mines died from disease.
Textile production fell in many countries, largely because of decreased demand and
a shrinking labor force. The trade in African slaves grew steadily between 1580 and
1630 and then it, too, declined by a third, though its growth would resume after
1650 and skyrocket after 1700. African slaves were first transported to the new col-
ony of Virginia in 1619, foreshadowing a major transformation of economic life in
the New World colonies.
Demographic slowdown also signaled economic trouble. In the Mediterranean,
growth had already stopped in the 1570s. The most sudden reversal occurred in central
Europe as a result of the Thirty Years’ War: one-fourth of the inhabitants of the Holy
Roman Empire perished in the 1630s and 1640s. Population growth continued only in
England, the Dutch Republic, the Spanish Netherlands, and Scandinavia.
Where the population stagnated or declined, agricultural prices dropped because
of less demand, and farmers who produced for the market suffered. The price of
grain fell most precipitously, causing many farmers to convert grain-growing land to
pasture or vineyards. The only country that emerged unscathed from this downturn
was the Dutch Republic, thanks to a growing population and a tradition of agricul-
tural innovation. Inhabiting Europe’s most densely populated area, the Dutch devel-
oped systems of field drainage, crop rotation, and animal husbandry that provided
high yields of grain for both people and animals. Their foreign trade, textile industry,
crop production, and population all grew. After the Dutch, the English fared best;
unlike the Spanish, the English never depended on infusions of New World gold and
silver to shore up their economy, and unlike most continental European countries,
England escaped the direct impact of the Thirty Years’ War.
Historians have long disagreed about the causes of the early-seventeenth-century
recession. Some cite the inability of agriculture to support a growing population by
the end of the sixteenth century; others blame the Thirty Years’ War, the states’
demands for more taxes, or the waste caused by middle-class expenditures in the
desire to emulate the nobility. To this list of causes, recent researchers have added
climatic changes. Cold winters and wet summers meant bad harvests, and these
natural disasters ushered in a host of social catastrophes. When the harvest was bad,
prices shot back up and many could not afford to feed themselves.
Consequences for Daily Life

The recession of the early 1600s had both short-term and long-term effects. In the
short term, it aggravated the threat of food shortages, increased the outbreaks of
famine and disease, and caused people to leave their families and homes. In the long
term, it deepened the division between prosperous and poor peasants and fostered
the development of a new pattern of late marriages and smaller families.
[1560–1648
The Life of the Poor

This mid-seventeenth-century painting by
the Dutch artist Adriaen Pietersz van de
Venne depicts the poor peasant weighed
down by his wife and child. An empty food
bowl signifies their hunger. In reality, many
poor men abandoned their homes in search
of work, leaving their wives behind to cope
with hungry children and what remained of
the family farm. What did the artist intend
to convey about women? (Allegory of Poverty,
1630s [oil on panel] by Adriaen Pietersz van Jenne
[1589–1662] / Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin
College, Ohio, USA / Mrs. F. F. Prentiss Fund, Bridge-
man Images.)
When grain harvests fell short,

peasants immediately suffered because,
outside of England and the Dutch
Republic, grain had replaced more
expensive meat as the essential staple
of most Europeans’ diets. By the end of
the sixteenth century, the average adult
European ate more than four hundred
pounds of grain per year. Peasants
lived on bread, soup with a little fat or oil, peas or lentils, garden vegetables in season,
and only occasionally a piece of meat or fish.
When faced with famine, most people simply left their huts and hovels and took
to the road in search of food and charity. Men left their families to search for better
conditions elsewhere. Those left behind might be reduced to eating chestnuts, roots,
bark, and grass. In eastern France in 1637, a witness reported, “The roads were paved
with people. . . . Finally it came to cannibalism.” Compassion sometimes gave way to
fear when hungry vagabonds became more aggressive, occasionally threatening to
burn a barn if they were not given food.
Successive bad harvests led to malnutrition, which weakened people and made
them more susceptible to such epidemic diseases as the plague, typhoid fever, typhus,
dysentery, smallpox, and influenza. The plague was feared most: in one year it could
cause the death of up to half of a town’s or village’s population, and it struck with
no discernible pattern. Nearly 5 percent of France’s entire population died just in the
plague of 1628–1632.
Economic crisis widened the gap between rich and poor. Peasants paid rent to
their landlords as well as fees for inheriting or selling land and tolls for using mills,
wine presses, or ovens. States collected direct taxes on land and sales taxes on con-
sumer goods such as salt, an essential preservative. Protestant and Catholic churches
alike exacted a tithe (a tax equivalent to one-tenth of the parishioner’s annual income);
often the clergy took their tithe in the form of crops and collected it directly during
[ 1560–1648
]
the harvest. Any reversal of fortune could force peasants into the homeless world of
vagrants and beggars, who numbered as much as 2 percent of the total population.
In England, the Dutch Republic, northern France, and northwestern Germany,
improvements gave some peasants the means to become farmers who rented sub-
stantial holdings, produced for the market, and in good times enjoyed relative com-
fort and higher status. Those who could not afford to plant new crops such as maize
(American corn) or to use techniques that ensured higher yields became simple
laborers with little or no land of their own. One-half to four-fifths of the peasants
did not have enough land to support a family. They descended deeper into debt dur-
ing difficult times and often lost their land to wealthier farmers or to city officials
intent on developing rural estates.
As the recession deepened, women lost some of their economic opportunities.
Widows who had been able to take over their late husbands’ trade now found them-
selves excluded by the urban guilds or limited to short tenures. Many women went
into domestic service until they married, some for their entire lives. Town govern-
ments carefully regulated the work of female servants, requiring women to stay in
their positions unless they could prove mistreatment by a master.
European families reacted to economic downturn by postponing marriage and
having fewer children. When hard times passed, more people married and had more
children. But even in the best of times, one-fifth to one-quarter of all children died
in their first year, and half died before age twenty. Childbirth still carried great risks
for women, about 10 percent of whom died in the process. Midwives delivered most
babies; physicians were scarce, and even those who did attend births were generally
less helpful than midwives. The Englishwoman Alice Thornton described in her
diary how a doctor bled her to prevent a miscarriage after a fall (bloodletting, often
by the application of leeches, was a common medical treatment); her son died any-
way in a breech birth that almost killed her, too.
Beginning in the early seventeenth century and continuing until the end of the
eighteenth, families in all ranks of society started to limit the number of children.
Because methods of contraception were not widely known, they did this for the most
part by marrying later; the average age at marriage during the seventeenth century
rose from the early twenties to the late twenties. The average family had about four
children. Poorer families seem to have had fewer children, wealthier ones more.
Because Protestant and Catholic clergy alike stressed sexual fidelity and abstinence
before marriage, the number of births out of wedlock was relatively small (2–5 per-
cent of births); premarital intercourse was generally tolerated only after a couple had
announced their engagement.
The Economic Balance of Power

Just as the recession of the early seventeenth century produced winners and losers
among ordinary people, it also created winners and losers among the competing states
of Europe. The economies of southern Europe declined during this period, whereas
[
1560–1648
those of the northwest emerged stronger. Competition in the New World reflected
and reinforced this shift as the English, Dutch, and French rushed to establish trading
outposts and permanent settlements to compete with the Spanish and Portuguese.
The new powers of northwestern Europe, with their growing Atlantic trade, grad-
ually displaced the Mediterranean economies, which had dominated European com-
merce since the time of the Greeks and Romans. England and the Dutch Republic
vied with France to become the leading mercantile and slave-trading powers. North-
ern Italian industries were eclipsed; Spanish commerce with the New World dropped.
Even the plague contributed to the new disparity in trading power. Whereas central
Europe and the Mediterranean countries took generations to recover from its rav-
ages, northwestern Europe quickly replaced its lost population, no doubt because
this area’s people had suffered less from the effects of the Thirty Years’ War and from
the malnutrition related to the economic crisis.
All but the remnants of serfdom had disappeared in western Europe, yet in
eastern Europe nobles reinforced their dominance over peasants, and the burden of
serfdom increased. The rise in the cost of grain in the sixteenth century prompted
Polish and eastern German nobles to increase their holdings and step up their pro-
duction of grain for western markets. In the economic downturn of the first half
of the seventeenth century, peasants who were already dependent became serfs —
completely tied to the land. Although enserfment produced short-term profits for
landlords, in the long run it retarded economic development in eastern Europe and
kept most of the population in a stranglehold of illiteracy and hardship.
Economic realignment also took place across the Atlantic Ocean. Because Spain
and Portugal had divided between themselves the rich spoils of South America, other
prospective colonizers had to carve niches in seemingly less hospitable places, espe-
cially North America and the Caribbean (Map 15.3). Eventually, the English, French,
and Dutch would dominate commerce with these colonies. Many European states,
including Sweden and Denmark, chartered private joint-stock companies to enrich
investors by importing fish, furs, tobacco, and precious metals (if they could be
found), and to develop new markets for European products. British, French, Dutch,
and Danish companies also began trading slaves.
In establishing permanent colonies, the Europeans created whole new communi-
ties across the Atlantic. Careful plans could not always surmount the hazards of
transatlantic shipping, however. In 1620 the Mayflower, which had sailed for Virginia
with Pilgrim emigrants, landed off-course far to the north in Massachusetts, where
the settlers founded New Plymouth Colony. By the 1640s, the British North Ameri-
can colonies had more than fifty thousand people, of whom perhaps a thousand were
Africans. The Indians native to the area had been decimated in epidemics and wars.
In contrast, French Canada had only about three thousand European inhabitants
by 1640. Though thin in numbers, the French rapidly moved into the Great Lakes
region. Fur traders sought beaver pelts to make the hats that had taken Paris fashion
by storm. Jesuit missionaries lived with native American groups, learning their lan-
guages and describing their ways of life.
[ 1560–1648
]
MAP 15.3 European Colonization
Trois Tadoussac
Rivières Québec Massachusetts Bay Company of the Americas, c. 1640
Sault Ste. Marie
Montréal Boston Europeans coming to the Americas
New Netherlands New Plymouth Colony established themselves first in
Rhode Island
Santa Fé Connecticut coastal areas. The English, French,
New Sweden
Maryland and Dutch set up most of their colo-
Virginia ATLANTIC nies in the Caribbean and North
Monterrey Gulf of Florida
WE OCEAN
Mexico ST America because the Spanish and
NE INDI
ES N Portuguese had already colonized the
W
SP easily accessible regions in South
AI C ar ibbe an Se a E
N W America. Vast inland areas still
S remained unexplored and uncolo-
nized in 1640.
PACIFIC BR AZIL
PE
Both England and France

R
OCEAN
U
turned some attention as well to

the Caribbean in the 1620s and
1630s when they occupied the
Dutch islands of the West Indies after
English
driving off the native Caribs.
French
Portuguese These islands would prove ideal
Spanish 0 500 1,000 miles for a plantation economy of Afri-
Swedish can slaves tending sugarcane and
0 500 1,000 kilometers
tobacco crops under the supervi-
sion of European settlers.
Even as the British and French moved into North America and the Caribbean,
Spanish explorers traveled the Pacific coast up to what is now northern California
and pushed into New Mexico. On the other side of the world, in the Philippines, the
Spanish competed with local Muslim rulers and indigenous tribal leaders to extend
their control. Spanish officials worked
REVIEW QUESTION What were the conse-
closely with Catholic missionaries to
quences of economic recession in the early rule over a colony composed of indige-
1600s? nous peoples, Spaniards, and some Chi-
nese merchants.
The Rise of Science and a Scientific Worldview

The countries that moved ahead economically in the first half of the seventeenth
century — England, the Dutch Republic, and to some extent France — turned out to
be the most receptive to the rise of science and a scientific worldview. In the long-
term process known as secularization, religion gradually became a matter of private
conscience rather than public policy. Secularization did not entail a loss of religious
faith, but it did prompt a search for nonreligious explanations for political authority
[1560–1648
] The Rise of Science and a Scientific Worldview 493
and natural phenomena. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
science, political theory, and even art began to break their long-standing bonds with
religion. Scientists and scholars sought laws in nature to explain politics as well as
movements in the heavens and on earth. The visual arts more frequently depicted
secular subjects. A scientific revolution was in the making. Yet traditional attitudes did
not disappear. Belief in magic and witchcraft pervaded every level of society. People
of all classes believed that the laws of nature reflected a divine plan for the universe.
They accepted supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, a view only gradu-
ally and partially undermined by new ideas.
The Scientific Revolution

Although the Catholic and Protestant churches encouraged the study of science and
many prominent scientists were themselves clerics, the search for a secular, scientific
method of determining the laws of nature undermined traditional accounts of natu-
ral phenomena. Christian doctrine had incorporated the scientific teachings of ancient
philosophers, especially Ptolemy and Aristotle; now these came into question. A
revolution in astronomy contested the Ptolemaic view, endorsed by the Catholic
church, which held that the sun revolved around the earth. Startling breakthroughs
took place in medicine, too. Supporters of these new developments argued for the
scientific method, which combined experimental observation and mathematical
deduction. The use of the scientific method culminated in the astounding break-
throughs of Isaac Newton at the end of the seventeenth century. Newton’s ability to
explain the motion of the planets, as well as everyday objects on earth, gave science
enormous new prestige.
The traditional account of the movement of the heavens derived from the
second-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who put the earth at the center of the
cosmos. Above the earth were fixed the moon, the stars, and the planets in concen-
tric crystalline spheres; beyond these fixed spheres dwelt God and the angels. In this
view, the sun revolved around the earth, the heavens were perfect and unchanging,
and the earth was “corrupted.” Ptolemy insisted that the planets revolved in circular
orbits (because circles were more “perfect” than other figures). To account for the
actual elliptical paths that could be observed and calculated, he posited orbits within
orbits, or epicycles.
In 1543, the Polish clergyman Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) began the revo-
lution in astronomy by publishing his treatise On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres.
Copernicus attacked the Ptolemaic account, arguing that the earth and other planets
revolved around the sun, a view known as heliocentrism (a sun-centered universe).
He discovered that by placing the sun instead of the earth at the center of the system
of spheres, he could eliminate many epicycles from the calculations and thus simplify
the mathematics. Copernicus died soon after publishing his theories, but when the
Italian monk Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) taught heliocentrism, the Catholic Inqui-
sition (set up to seek out heretics) arrested him and burned him at the stake.
[ 1560–1648
]
Copernicus’s views began to attract widespread attention in the early 1600s.
When the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) observed a new star in 1572
and a comet in 1577, the traditional view that the universe was unchanging came
into question. Brahe still rejected heliocentrism, but the assistant he employed when
he moved to Prague in 1599, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), was won over to the
Copernican view. Kepler developed three laws of planetary motion, published
between 1609 and 1619, that provided mathematical backing for heliocentrism and
directly challenged the claim long held, even by Copernicus, that planetary motion
was circular. Kepler’s first law stated that the orbits of the planets are ellipses, with
the sun always at one focus of the ellipse.
The Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) provided more evidence to
support the heliocentric view and also challenged the doctrine that the heavens were
perfect and unchanging. After learning in 1609 that two Dutch astronomers had
built a telescope, Galileo built a better one and observed the earth’s moon, four satel-
lites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus (a cycle of changing physical appearances), and
sunspots. The moon, the planets, and the sun were no more perfect than the earth,
he insisted, and the shadows he could see on the moon could only be the product
The Trial of Galileo

In this anonymous painting of the trial held in 1633, Galileo appears seated on a chair in the
center facing the church officials who accused him of heresy for insisting that the sun, not the
earth, was the center of the universe (heliocentrism). Catholic officials forced him to recant
or suffer the death penalty. Undated, the painting probably comes from a later time because
contemporary paintings rarely included so many different figures each occupied in their own
fashion. (Private Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
[
1560–1648
of hills and valleys like those on earth. Galileo portrayed the earth as a moving part
of a larger system, only one of many planets revolving around the sun, not as the
fixed center of a single, closed universe.
In 1616, the Catholic church forbade Galileo to teach that the earth moves; then,
in 1633, it accused him of not obeying the earlier order. Forced to appear before the
Inquisition, he agreed to publicly recant his assertion about the movement of the
earth to save himself from torture and death. Afterward, Galileo lived under house
arrest and could publish his work only in the Dutch Republic, which had become a
haven for scientists and thinkers who challenged conventional ideas.
In the same year that Copernicus challenged the traditional account in astronomy
(1543), the Flemish scientist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) did the same for anatomy.
Until then, medical knowledge in Europe was based on the writings of the second-
century Greek physician Galen, Ptolemy’s contemporary. Drawing on public dissec-
tions (which had been condemned by the Catholic church since 1300) he performed
himself, Vesalius refuted Galen’s work in his illustrated anatomical text, On the Con-
struction of the Human Body. The English physician William Harvey (1578–1657) used
dissection to examine the circulation of blood within the body, demonstrating how the
heart worked as a pump. The heart and its valves were “a piece of machinery,” Harvey
insisted, and they obeyed mechanical laws. Nature, he said, could be understood by
experiment and rational deduction, not by following traditional authorities.
In the 1630s, the European intellectual elite began to accept the new scientific
views. Ancient learning, the churches and their theologians, and long-standing pop-
ular beliefs all seemed to be undercut by the scientific method. Two men were chiefly
responsible for spreading the reputation of the scientific method in the first half of
the seventeenth century: the English Protestant politician Sir Francis Bacon (1561–
1626) and the French Catholic mathematician and philosopher René Descartes
(1596–1650). They represented the two essential halves of the scientific method:
inductive reasoning through observation and experimental research, and deductive
reasoning from self-evident principles.
In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Bacon attacked reliance on ancient writ-
ers and optimistically predicted that the scientific method would lead to social prog-
ress. The minds of the medieval scholars, he said, had been “shut up in the cells of
a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the
cells of monasteries and colleges,” and they could therefore produce only “cobwebs
of learning” that were “of no substance or profit.” Knowledge, in Bacon’s view, must
be empirically based (that is, gained by observation and experiment).
Although Descartes agreed with Bacon’s denunciation of traditional learning, he
was concerned that the attack on tradition might only replace the dogmatism of the
churches with the skepticism of Montaigne — that nothing at all was certain. Des-
cartes aimed to establish the new science on more secure philosophical foundations,
those of mathematics and logic. In his Discourse on Method (1637), he argued that
mathematical and mechanical principles provided the key to understanding all of
nature, including the actions of people and states. All prior assumptions must be
[ 1560–1648
]
repudiated in favor of one elementary principle: “I think, therefore I am.” Everything
else could — and should — be doubted, but even doubt showed the certain existence
of someone thinking. Descartes insisted that human reason could not only unravel
the secrets of nature but also prove the existence of God. Although he hoped to
secure the authority of both church and state, his reliance on human reason rather
than faith irritated authorities, and his books were banned in many places. He moved
to the Dutch Republic to work in peace. Scientific research, like economic growth,
became centered in the northern, Protestant countries, where it was less constrained
by church control than in the Catholic south.
The power of the new scientific method was dramatically confirmed in the
grand synthesis of the laws of motion developed by the English natural philosopher
Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Born five years after the publication of Descartes’s Dis-
course on Method and educated at Cambridge University, where he later became a
professor, Newton brought his most significant mathematical and mechanical dis-
coveries together in his masterwork, Principia Mathematica (1687). In it, he devel-
oped his law of universal gravitation, which explained both movement on earth and
the motion of the planets. His law held that every body in the universe exerts over
every other body an attractive force directly proportional to the product of their
masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This
law of universal gravitation explained Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits just as it
accounted for the way an apple fell to the ground.
Newtonian physics combined mass, inertia, force, velocity, and acceleration — all
key concepts in modern science — and made them quantifiable. Once set in motion,
in Newton’s view, the universe operated like a masterpiece made possible by the
ingenuity of God. Newton saw no conflict between faith and science. He believed
that by demonstrating that the physical universe followed rational principles, natural
philosophers could prove the existence of God and so liberate humans from doubt
and the fear of chaos. Even while laying the foundation for modern physics, optics,
and mechanics, Newton spent long hours trying to calculate the date of the begin-
ning of the world and its end with the second coming of Jesus. Others, less devout
than Newton, envisioned a clockwork universe that had no need for God’s continu-
ing intervention.
The Natural Laws of Politics

In reaction to the religious wars, writers not only began to defend the primacy of
state interests over those of religious conformity but also insisted on secular explana-
tions for politics. The Italian political theorist Machiavelli had pointed in this direc-
tion with his advice to Renaissance princes in the early sixteenth century, but this
secular intellectual movement gathered steam in the aftermath of the religious vio-
lence unleashed by the Reformation.
The French Catholic lawyer and politique Jean Bodin (1530–1596) sought sys-
tematic secular answers to the problem of disorder in The Six Books of the Common-
[1560–1648
wealth (1576). Comparing the different forms of government throughout history, he

concluded that there were three basic types of sovereignty: monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy. Only strong monarchical power offered hope for maintaining order, he
insisted, and so he rejected any doctrine of the right to resist tyrannical authority.
While Bodin’s ideas helped lay the foundation for absolutism — the idea that the mon-
arch should be the sole and uncontested source of power — his systematic discussion
of types of governments implied that they might be subject to choice and undercut
the notion that monarchies were ordained by God, as most rulers maintained.
During the Dutch revolt against Spain, the legal scholar Hugo Grotius (1583–
1645) furthered secular thinking by attempting to systematize the notion of “natural
law” — laws of nature that give legitimacy to government and stand above the actions
of any particular ruler or religious group. Grotius argued that natural law stood
beyond the reach of either secular or divine authority; natural law would be valid
even if God did not exist (though Grotius himself believed in God). By this account,
natural law — not scripture, religious authority, or tradition — should govern politics.
Such ideas got Grotius into trouble with both Catholics and Protestants. His work
The Laws of War and Peace (1625) was condemned by the Catholic church, while
the Dutch Protestant government arrested him for taking part in religious contro-
versies. Grotius’s wife helped him escape prison by hiding him in a chest of books.
Grotius was one of the first to argue that international conventions should govern
the treatment of prisoners of war and the making of peace treaties.
Grotius’s conception of natural law also challenged the widespread use of torture.
Most states and the courts of the Catholic church used torture when a serious crime
had been committed and the evidence seemed to point to a particular defendant but
no definitive proof had been established. The judges ordered torture — hanging the
accused by the hands with a rope thrown over a beam or pressing the legs in a leg
screw — to extract a confession, which had to be given with a medical expert and
notary present and had to be repeated without torture.
To be in accord with natural law, Grotius argued, governments had to defend
natural rights, which he defined as life, body, freedom, and honor. Grotius did not
encourage rebellion in the name of natural law or rights, but did hope that some-
day all governments would adhere to these principles and stop killing their own
and one another’s subjects in the name of religion. Natural law and natural rights
would play an important role in the founding of constitutional governments from
the 1640s forward and in the establishment of various charters of human rights in
our own time.
The Arts in an Age of Crisis

Two new forms of artistic expression — professional theater and opera — provided an
outlet for secular values in an age of conflict over religious beliefs. Religion still played
an important role in painting, however, even though many rulers also commissioned
paintings on secular subjects.
[ 1560–1648
]
The first professional acting companies performed before paying audiences in
London, Seville, and Madrid in the 1570s. A huge outpouring of playwriting followed
upon the formation of permanent professional theater companies. The Spanish play-
wright Lope de Vega (1562–1635) alone wrote more than fifteen hundred plays.
Theaters were extremely popular despite Puritan opposition in England and Catholic
objections in Spain. Shopkeepers, apprentices, lawyers, and court nobles crowded
into open-air theaters to see everything from bawdy farces to profound tragedies.
The most enduring and influential playwright of the time — in fact, the man
considered the greatest playwright of the English language — was William Shake-
speare (1564–1616), who wrote three dozen plays (including histories, comedies, and
tragedies) and was a member of a chief acting troupe. Although none of Shake-
speare’s plays were set in contemporary England, they reflected the concerns of his
age: the nature of power and the crisis of authority. His tragedies in particular show
the uncertainty and even chaos that result when power is misappropriated or mis-
used. In Hamlet (1601), for example, the Danish prince Hamlet’s mother marries the
man who murdered his royal father and usurped the crown. In the end, Hamlet, his
mother, and the usurper all die. Like many real-life people, Shakespeare’s tragic char-
acters found little peace in the turmoil of their times.
Although painting did not always touch broad popular audiences in the ways
that theater could, new styles in art and especially church architecture helped shape
ordinary people’s experience of religion. In the late sixteenth century, the artistic style
known as mannerism emerged in the Italian states and soon spread across Europe.
Mannerism was an almost theatrical style that allowed painters to distort perspective
to convey a message or emphasize a theme. The most famous mannerist painter,
called El Greco because he was of Greek origin, trained in Venice and Rome before
he moved to Spain in the 1570s. The religious intensity of El Greco’s pictures found
a ready audience in Catholic Spain, which had proved immune to the Protestant
suspicion of ritual and religious imagery (see the illustration on page 478).
The most important new style was the baroque, which, like mannerism, origi-
nated in the Italian states. In place of the Renaissance emphasis on harmonious
design, unity, and clarity, the baroque featured curves, exaggerated lighting, intense
emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. Like many
other historical designations, the word baroque (“irregularly shaped”) was not used
as a label by people living at the time; art critics in the eighteenth century coined the
word to mean shockingly bizarre, confused, and extravagant, and art historians and
collectors largely disdained the baroque until the late nineteenth century.
Closely tied to Catholic resurgence after the Reformation, the baroque melodra-
matically reaffirmed the emotional depths of the Catholic faith and glorified both
church and monarchy. The style spread from Rome to other Italian states and then
into central Europe. The Spanish built baroque churches in their American colonies
as part of their massive conversion campaign.
A new secular musical form, the opera, grew up parallel to the baroque style in
the visual arts. First influential in the Italian states, opera combined music, drama,
[1560–1648
dance, and scenery in a grand sensual display, often with themes chosen to please the
ruler and the aristocracy. Composers could base operas on typically baroque sacred
subjects or on traditional stories. Like many playwrights, including Shakespeare,
opera composers often turned to familiar stories their audiences would recognize and
readily follow. One of the most innovative composers of opera was Claudio Monte-
verdi (1567–1643), whose earliest operatic production, Orfeo (1607), was based on
Greek mythology.
Magic and Witchcraft

Although artists, political thinkers, and scientific experimenters increasingly pursued
secular goals, most remained as devout in their religious beliefs as ordinary people.
Many scholars, including Newton, studied alchemy alongside their scientific pur-
suits. Alchemists aimed to discover techniques for turning lead and copper into gold.
The astronomer Tycho Brahe defended his studies of alchemy and astrology as part
of “natural magic,” as opposed to demonic “black magic.”
Learned and ordinary people alike also firmly believed in witchcraft, that is, the
exercise of magical powers gained by a pact with the devil. The same Jean Bodin who
argued against religious fanaticism insisted on death for witches — and for those mag-
istrates who would not prosecute them. Trials of witches peaked in Europe between
1560 and 1640, the very time of the celebrated breakthroughs of the new science. Mon-
taigne was one of the few to speak out against executing accused witches: “It is taking
one’s conjectures rather seriously to roast someone alive for them,” he wrote in 1580.
Witches had long been blamed for destroying crops and causing personal catas-
trophes ranging from miscarriage to madness, but never before had they been offi-
cially persecuted in such numbers. Denunciation and persecution of witches coin-
cided with the spread of reform, both Protestant and Catholic. Witch trials concentrated
especially in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the boiling cauldron of
the Thirty Years’ War.
The victims of the persecution were overwhelmingly female: women accounted
for 80 percent of the accused witches in about 100,000 trials in Europe and North
America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. About one-third were sen-
tenced to death. Before 1400, when witchcraft trials were rare, nearly half of those
accused had been men. Why did attention now shift to women? Some official
descriptions of witchcraft oozed lurid details of sexual orgies, in which women acted
as the devil’s sexual slaves. Social factors help explain the prominence of women
among the accused. Accusers were almost always better off than those they accused.
The poorest and most socially marginal people in most communities were elderly
spinsters and widows. Because they were thought likely to hanker after revenge on
those more fortunate, they were singled out as witches.
The tide turned against witchcraft trials when physicians, lawyers, judges, and
even clergy came to suspect that accusations were based on superstition and fear. In
1682, a French royal decree treated witchcraft as fraud and imposture, meaning that
[ 1560–1648
]
Execution of Witches in England

No one knows exactly how many people were executed as a result of the tens of thousands of
witchcraft trials held across Europe and North America, but the number seems most likely to be
around 50,000. By far the highest number were executed in the Holy Roman Empire; in Britain
and North America there were 1,500 to 2,000 executions. As this colored etching shows, most
of the victims were women. (Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
the law did not recognize anyone as a witch. In 1693, the jurors who had convicted
twenty people of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, recanted, claiming: “We justly
fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken.” The Salem jurors had not stopped
believing in witches; they had simply lost confidence in their ability to identify them.
When physicians and judges had believed in witches and carried out official persecu-
tions, with torture, those accused of witch-
craft had gone to their deaths in record
REVIEW QUESTION How could belief in witch-
numbers. But when the same groups dis-
craft and the rising prestige of the scientific
method coexist? tanced themselves from popular beliefs,
the trials and the executions stopped.
Conclusion
The witchcraft persecutions reflected the traumas of these times of religious war,
economic decline, and crises of political and intellectual authority. Deep differences
over religion came to a head in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which cut a path
of destruction through central Europe and involved most of the European powers.
[ 1560–1648
] Conclusion 501
Catholic NORWAY SWEDEN

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MAPPING THE WEST The Religious Divisions of Europe, c. 1648

The Peace of Westphalia recognized major religious divisions within Europe that have endured
for the most part to the present day. Catholicism dominated in southern Europe, Lutheranism
had its stronghold in northern Europe, and Calvinism flourished along the Rhine River. In south-
eastern Europe, the Islamic Ottoman Turks accommodated the Greek Orthodox Christians under
their rule but bitterly fought the Catholic Austrian Habsburgs for control of Hungary.
Repulsed by the effects of religious violence, European rulers agreed to a peace that
effectively removed disputes between Catholics and Protestants from the international
arena. Almost everywhere rulers emerged from these decades of war with expanded
powers that they would seek to extend further in the second half of the seventeenth
century. The constant extension of state power is one of the defining themes of
modern history; religious warfare gave it a jump-start.
For all their strength, however, rulers could not control economic, social, or intel-
lectual trends. The economic downturn of the seventeenth century shifted economic
power from the Mediterranean world to northwestern Europe because England,
[ 1560–1648
]
France, and the Dutch Republic suffered less from the fighting of the Thirty Years’
War and recovered more quickly from bad times. They would become even more
powerful in the decades to come.
An underlying shift in cultural attitudes and intellectual expectations accompa-
nied these changes. Secularization encompassed the establishment of the scientific
method as the standard of truth, the search for nonreligious foundations of political
authority, and the growing popularity of nonreligious forms of art, such as theater
and opera. Proponents of these changes did not renounce their religious beliefs, and
it would be foolish to claim that everyone’s mental universe changed. The signifi-
cance of secularization would only emerge over the long term.
Chapter 15 Review
Catherine de Médicis (p. 474) Elizabeth I (p. 479) scientific method (p. 493)
Edict of Nantes (p. 475) Puritans (p. 479) heliocentrism (p. 493)
politiques (p. 475) Peace of Westphalia (p. 484) baroque (p. 498)
Philip II (p. 476) raison d’état (p. 487)
Lepanto (p. 477) secularization (p. 492)
Review Questions
1. How did state power depend on religious unity at the end of the sixteenth century and start
of the seventeenth?
2. Why did a war fought over religious differences result in stronger states?
3. What were the consequences of economic recession in the early 1600s?
4. How could belief in witchcraft and the rising prestige of the scientific method coexist?
Making Connections
1. How did the balance of power shift in Europe between 1560 and 1648? What were the
main reasons for the shift?
2. What were the limits to the growth of secularization?
3. What was the influence of New World colonies on Europe from 1560 to 1648?
4. How did religious conflict mix with political concerns in this period?
Religious conflict, the Thirty Years’ War, science, witchcraft, and the travails of everyday life have
all been the subject of groundbreaking research, yet the personalities of individual rulers still
make for great stories, too.
[1560–1648
Important Events
1562 French Wars of Religion begin

1566 Revolt of Calvinists against Spain begins in Netherlands
1569 Formation of commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania
1571 Battle of Lepanto marks victory of West over Ottomans at sea
1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of French Protestants
1576 Spanish Fury erupts in Antwerp
1588 English defeat of Spanish Armada
1598 French Wars of Religion end with Edict of Nantes
1601 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
1618 Thirty Years’ War begins
1625 Hugo Grotius publishes The Laws of War and Peace
1633 Galileo Galilei forced to recant his support of heliocentrism
1635 French join the Thirty Years’ War by declaring war on Spain
1648 Peace of Westphalia ends Thirty Years’ War
Consider two events: Thirty Years’ War begins (1618) and Hugo Grotius publishes The
Laws of War and Peace (1625). How does the latter event represent an effort to grapple
with the climate of religious violence?
Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip the Second.
Trans. Siân Reynolds. 2 vols. 1972, 1973.
*Diefendorf, Barbara B. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents.
2008.
Galileo Project: http://galileo.rice.edu
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. 2013.
*Jacob, Margaret. The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with Documents. 2010.
Konstam, Angus. Lepanto 1571: The Greatest Naval Battle of the Renaissance. 2003.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Atlantic in World History. 2012.
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 2006.
Lynn, John A. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. 2008.
Madariaga, Isabel De. Ivan the Terrible. 2006.
*Medick, Hans, and Benjamin Marschke. Experiencing the Thirty Years War: A Brief History with
Documents. 2013.
Patterson, Benton Rain. With the Heart of a King: Elizabeth I of England, Philip II of Spain, and the
Fight for a Nation’s Soul and Crown. 2007.
Pitts, Vincent J. Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age. 2008.
Tracy, James D. The Founding of the Dutch Republic: War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572–
1588. 2008.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. 2008.
*Primary source.
Absolutism,
16
Constitutionalism,
and the Search for Order
1640–1700
I
n May 1664, King Louis XIV of France organized the first of many spectacular
entertainments for his court at Versailles, where he had recently begun construc-
tion of a magnificent new palace. More than six hundred members of his court
attended the weeklong series of parades, races, ballets, plays, and fireworks. In the
opening parade, Louis was accompanied by an eighteen-foot-high float in the form
of a chariot dedicated to Apollo, Greek god of the sun and Louis’s personally chosen
emblem. The king’s favorite writers and musicians presented works specially pre-
pared for the occasion, and each evening ended with a candlelit banquet served by
masked and costumed servants.
Louis XIV designed his pageants to awe
those most dangerous to him, the leading nobles
Louis XIV and His Bodyguards
One of Louis XIV’s court painters, of his kingdom. To make his authority and
the Flemish artist Adam Frans van glory concrete, the king relentlessly increased
der Meulen, depicted the king arriv- the power of his bureaucracy, expanded his
ing at the palace of Versailles, still army, and insisted on Catholic orthodoxy. This
under construction. The painting model of state building was known as abso-
dates from 1669, when none of the
gardens, pools, or statues had yet
lutism, a system of government in which the
been installed. Louis is the only fig- ruler claims sole and uncontestable power.
ure facing the viewer, and his Other mid-seventeenth-century rulers followed
clothing is much more colorful than Louis XIV’s example or explicitly rejected it,
that of anyone else in the painting. but they could not afford to ignore it.
(Chateau de Versailles et de Trianon, Ver-
sailles, France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Although absolutism exerted great influ-
Resource, NY.) ence beginning in the mid-1600s, it faced com-
petition from constitutionalism, a system in
which the ruler shares power with an assembly
of elected representatives. Constitutionalism provided a strong foundation for state
power in England, the Dutch Republic, and the British North American colonies, while
absolutism dominated in central and eastern Europe. Constitutionalism triumphed
505
506 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
in England, however, only after one king had been executed as a traitor and another
had been deposed. The English conflicts over the nature of authority found their
most enduring expression in the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, which
laid the foundations of modern political science.
The search for order took place not only in government and politics but also in
intellectual, cultural, and social life. Artists sought means of glorifying power and
expressing order and symmetry in new ways. As states consolidated their power, elites
endeavored to distinguish themselves more clearly from the lower orders. Officials,
clergy, and laypeople worked to reform the
poor, now seen as a major source of dis-
tant differences between absolutism and
order. Whether absolutist or constitution-
constitutionalism, and how did each system alist, seventeenth-century states all aimed
establish order? to extend control over their subjects’ lives.
Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits

French king Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) personified the absolutist ruler, who in theory
shared his power with no one. In 1655, he reputedly told the Paris high court of
justice, “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”), emphasizing that state authority rested in
him personally. Louis cleverly manipulated the affections and ambitions of his court-
iers, chose as his ministers middle-class men who owed everything to him, built up
Europe’s largest army, and snuffed out every hint of religious or political opposition.
Yet the absoluteness of his power should not be exaggerated. Like all other rulers of
his time, Louis depended on the cooperation of many people: local officials who
enforced his decrees, peasants and artisans who joined his armies and paid his taxes,
clergy who preached his notion of Catholicism, and nobles who joined court festivi-
ties rather than causing trouble.
The Fronde, 1648–1653

Louis XIV’s absolutism built on a long French tradition of increasing centralization
of state authority, but before he could establish his preeminence he had to weather
a series of revolts known as the Fronde. Louis was only five when he came to the
throne in 1643 upon the death of his father, Louis XIII, who with his chief minister,
Cardinal Richelieu, had steered France through increasing involvement in the Thirty
Years’ War, rapidly climbing taxes, and innumerable tax revolts. Louis XIV’s mother,
Anne of Austria, and her Italian-born adviser and rumored lover, Cardinal Mazarin
(1602–1661), ruled in the young monarch’s name.
To meet the financial pressure of fighting the Thirty Years’ War, Mazarin sold
new offices, raised taxes, and forced creditors to extend loans to the government. In
1648, a coalition of his opponents presented him with a charter of demands that, if
granted, would have given the parlements (high courts) a form of constitutional
[1640–1700
] Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits 507
Louis XIV, Conqueror

of the Fronde
In this painting of 1654,
Louis XIV is depicted as the
Roman god Jupiter, who
crushes the discord of the
Fronde (represented on the
shield by the Medusa’s head,
made up of snakes). When
the Fronde began, Louis was
only ten years old; at the time
of this painting, he was six-
teen. The propaganda about
his divine qualities had
already begun. (By Charles
Poerson [1609–1667], Château
de Versailles, France / Bridgeman
Images.)
power with the right to approve new taxes. Mazarin responded by arresting the lead-
ers of the parlements. He soon faced a series of revolts.
Fearing for the young king’s safety, his mother took Louis and fled Paris. With
civil war threatening, Mazarin and Anne agreed to compromise with the parlements.
The nobles saw an opportunity to reassert their claims to power against the weakened
monarchy and demanded greater local control. Leading noblewomen often played
key roles in the opposition to Mazarin, carrying messages and forging alliances,
especially when male family members were in prison. While the nobles sought to
regain power and local influence, the middle and lower classes chafed at the repeated
tax increases. Conflicts erupted throughout the kingdom as nobles, parlements, and
city councils all raised their own armies to fight either the crown or one another. The
urban poor, such as those in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, sometimes revolted
as well.
Mazarin and Anne eventually got the upper hand because their opponents failed
to maintain unity in fighting the king’s forces. But Louis XIV never forgot the humili-
ation and uncertainty that marred his childhood. His own policies as ruler would
be designed to prevent the recurrence of any such revolts. Yet, for all his success,
peasants would revolt against the introduction of new taxes on at least five more
occasions in the 1660s and 1670s, requiring tens of thousands of soldiers to reestab-
lish order.
[ 1640–1700
]
Court Culture as an Element of Absolutism
When Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV, then twenty-two years old, decided
to rule without a first minister. He described the dangers of his situation in memoirs
he wrote later for his son’s instruction: “Everywhere was disorder. My Court as a
whole was still very far removed from the sentiments in which I trust you will find
it.” Louis listed many other problems in the kingdom, but none occupied him more
than his attempts to control France’s leading nobles, some of whom came from fami-
lies that had opposed him militarily during the Fronde.
The French nobles had long exercised local authority by maintaining their own
fighting forces, meting out justice on their estates, arranging jobs for underlings, and
resolving their own conflicts through dueling. Louis set out to domesticate the war-
rior nobles by replacing violence with court ritual, such as the festivities at Versailles
described at the beginning of this chapter. Using a systematic policy of bestowing
pensions, offices, honors, gifts, and the threat of disfavor or punishment, Louis induced
the nobles to cooperate with him. The aristocracy increasingly vied for his favor and
in the process became his clients, dependent on him for advancement. Great nobles
competed for the honor of holding his shirt when he dressed, foreign ambassadors
squabbled for places near him, and royal mistresses basked in the glow of his per-
sonal favor. Far from the court, however, nobles could still make considerable trouble
for the king, and royal officials learned to compromise with them.
Those who did come to the king’s court were kept on their toes. The preferred
styles of behavior changed without notice, and the tiniest lapse in attention to eti-
quette could lead to ruin. Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, known as Madame
de Lafayette, described the court in her novel The Princess of Clèves (1678): “The
Court gravitated around ambition. . . . Everybody was busily trying to better his or
her position by pleasing, by helping, or by hindering somebody else.”
Louis XIV appreciated the political uses of every form of art. Calling himself the
Sun King, after Apollo, Louis stopped at nothing to burnish this radiant image. He
played Apollo in ballets performed at court; posed for portraits with the emblems
of Apollo (laurel, lyre, and tripod); and adorned his palaces with statues of the god.
He also emulated the style and methods of ancient Roman emperors. At a celebration
for the birth of his first son in 1662, Louis dressed in Roman attire, and many
engravings and paintings showed him as a Roman emperor.
The king gave pensions to artists who worked for him and sometimes protected
writers from clerical critics. The most famous of these writers was the playwright
Molière (the pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673), whose comedy Tar-
tuffe (1664) made fun of religious hypocrites and was loudly condemned by church
leaders. Louis forced Molière to delay public performances of the play after its pre-
miere at the festivities of May 1664 but resisted calls for his dismissal. Louis’s min-
isters set up royal academies of dance, painting, architecture, music, and science. The
government regulated the number and locations of theaters and closely censored all
forms of publication.
[1640–1700
Louis commissioned operas to celebrate royal marriages and military victories.

His favorite composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, wrote sixteen operas for court perfor-
mances as well as many ballets. Playwrights often presented their new plays first to
the court. Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine wrote tragedies set in Greece or Rome
that celebrated the new aristocratic virtues that Louis aimed to inculcate: a reverence
for order and self-control. All the characters were regal or noble, all the language
lofty, all the behavior aristocratic.
Louis glorified his image as well through massive public works projects. Veter-
ans’ hospitals and new fortified towns on the frontiers represented his military might.
Urban improvements, such as the reconstruction of the Louvre palace in Paris,
proved his wealth. But his most ambitious project was the construction of a new
palace at Versailles, twelve miles from the turbulent capital.
Building began in the 1660s. By 1685, the frenzied effort had engaged thirty-six
thousand workers, not including the thousands of troops who diverted a local river
to supply water for pools and fountains. The gardens designed by landscape architect
André Le Nôtre reflected the spirit of Louis XIV’s rule: their geometrical arrange-
ments and clear lines showed that art and design could tame nature and that order
and control defined the exercise of power. Versailles symbolized Louis’s success at
reining in the nobility and dominating Europe, and other monarchs eagerly mim-
icked French fashion and often conducted their business in French.
Yet for all its apparent luxury and frivolity, life at Versailles was often cramped
and cold. Fifteen thousand people crowded into the palace’s apartments, including all
the highest military officers, the ministers of state, and the separate households of
each member of the royal family. Refuse collected in the corridors during the inces-
sant building, and thieves and prostitutes overran the grounds. By the time Louis
actually moved from the Louvre to Versailles in 1682, he had reigned as monarch
for thirty-nine years. After his wife’s death in 1683, he secretly married his mistress,
Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, and conducted most state affairs from
her apartments at the palace. She inspired Louis XIV to increase his devotion to
Catholicism.
Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy

Louis believed that he reigned by divine right. As Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
(1627–1704) explained, “We have seen that kings take the place of God, who is the
true father of the human species. We have also seen that the first idea of power which
exists among men is that of the paternal power; and that kings are modeled on
fathers.” The king, like a father, should instruct his subjects in the true religion, or
at least make sure that others did so.
Louis’s campaign for religious conformity first focused on the Jansenists, Catho-
lics whose doctrines and practices resembled some aspects of Protestantism. Follow-
ing the posthumous publication of the book Augustinus (1640) by the Flemish theo-
logian Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), the Jansenists stressed the need for God’s grace
[ 1640–1700
]
in achieving salvation. They emphasized the importance of original sin and resem-
bled the English Puritans in their austere religious practice. Prominent among the
Jansenists was Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), a mathematician of genius, who wrote his
Provincial Letters (1656–1657) to defend Jansenism against charges of heresy. Many
judges in the parlements likewise endorsed Jansenist doctrine. Louis rejected any
doctrine that gave priority to considerations of individual conscience over the demands
of the official church hierarchy. Therefore, in 1660 he began enforcing various papal
bulls (decrees) against Jansenism and closed down Jansenist theological centers.
Protestants posed an even greater obstacle to religious conformity. After many
years of escalating pressure on the Calvinist Huguenots, Louis decided to eliminate
all of the Calvinists’ rights. Louis considered the Edict of Nantes (1598), by which
his grandfather Henry IV granted the Protestants religious freedom and a degree of
political independence, a temporary measure, and he fervently hoped to reconvert
the Huguenots to Catholicism. In 1685, his revocation of the Edict of Nantes closed
Calvinist churches and schools, forced all pastors to leave the country, and ordered
the conversion of all Calvinists. Children of Calvinists could be taken away from their
parents and raised Catholic. Tens of thousands of Huguenots responded by illegally
fleeing to England, Brandenburg-Prussia, the Dutch Republic, or North America.
Protestant European countries were shocked by this crackdown on religious dissent
and would cite it in justification of their wars against Louis.
Extending State Authority at Home and Abroad

Louis XIV could not have enforced his religious policies without the services of a
nationwide bureaucracy. Bureaucracy — a network of state officials carrying out
orders according to a regular and routine line of authority — comes from the French
word bureau, for “desk,” which came to mean “office,” both in the sense of a physical
space and a position of authority. Louis personally supervised the activities of his
bureaucrats and worked to ensure his supremacy in all matters. But he always had
to negotiate with nobles and local officials who sometimes thwarted his will.
Louis extended the bureaucratic forms his predecessors had developed, espe-
cially the use of intendants. He handpicked an intendant for each region to represent
his rule against entrenched local interests such as the parlements, provincial estates,
and noble governors. The intendants supervised the collection of taxes, the financ-
ing of public works, and the provisioning of the army. In 1673, Louis decreed that
the parlements could no longer vote against his proposed laws or even speak against
them.
To keep tabs on all the issues before him, Louis relied on a series of talented
ministers, usually of modest origins, who gained fame, fortune, and even noble status
from serving the king. Most important among them was Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–
1683), a wool merchant’s son turned royal official. Colbert had managed Mazarin’s
personal finances and worked his way up under Louis XIV to become head of royal
finances, public works, and the navy.
[
1640–1700
Colbert used the bureaucracy to establish a new economic doctrine, mercantilism.

According to mercantilist policy, governments must intervene to increase national
wealth by whatever means possible. Such government intervention inevitably increased
the number of bureaucrats needed. Under Colbert, the French government estab-
lished overseas trading companies and granted manufacturing monopolies. A gov-
ernment inspection system regulated the quality of finished goods and compelled all
craftsmen to organize into guilds, in which masters could supervise the work of the
journeymen and apprentices. To protect French production, Colbert rescinded many
internal customs fees but enacted high foreign tariffs, which cut imports of com-
peting goods. To compete more effectively with England and the Dutch Republic,
Colbert also subsidized shipbuilding, a policy that dramatically expanded the num-
ber of seaworthy French vessels. Such mercantilist measures aimed to ensure France’s
prominence in world markets and to provide the resources needed to fight wars
against the nation’s increasingly long list of enemies. Although later economists ques-
tioned the value of mercantilism, virtually every government in Europe embraced it.
Colbert’s mercantilist projects shaped life in the French colonies, too. He forbade
colonial businesses from manufacturing anything already produced in mainland
France. In 1663, he took control of the trading company that had founded New
France (Canada). With the goal of establishing permanent settlements like those in
the British North American colonies, he transplanted several thousand peasants from
western France to the present-day province of Quebec, which France had claimed
since 1608. He also tried to limit expansion westward, without success.
Despite the Iroquois’ initial interruption of French fur-trading convoys, fur
trader Louis Jolliet and Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette reached the upper Mis-
sissippi River in 1672 and traveled downstream as far as Arkansas. In 1684, French
explorer Sieur de La Salle went all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming a
vast territory for Louis XIV and calling it Louisiana after him. Colbert’s successors
embraced the expansion he had resisted, thinking it crucial to competing successfully
with the English and the Dutch in the New World.
Colonial settlement occupied only a portion of Louis XIV’s attention, however,
for his main foreign policy goal was to extend French power in Europe. To expand
the army, Louis’s minister of war centralized the organization of French troops. Bar-
racks built in major towns received supplies — among which were uniforms to rein-
force discipline — from a central distribution system. Louis’s wartime army could
field a force as large as that of all his enemies combined.
Absolutist governments always tried to increase their territorial holdings, and
as Louis extended his reach, he gained new enemies. In 1667–1668, in the War of
Devolution (so called because Louis claimed that lands in the Spanish Netherlands
should devolve to him since the Spanish king had failed to pay the dowry of Louis’s
Spanish bride), Louis defeated the Spanish armies but had to make peace when
England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic joined the war. In the Treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle in 1668, he gained control of a few towns on the border of the Spanish
Netherlands.
[ 1640–1700
]
Wars of Louis XIV In 1672, Louis XIV opened hostilities
against the Dutch because they stood in the
1667–1668 War of Devolution way of his acquisition of more territory in
Enemies: Spain, Dutch Republic, the Spanish Netherlands. He declared war
England, Sweden
again on Spain in 1673. By now the Dutch
Ended by Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
had allied themselves with their former
in 1668, with France gaining
towns in Spanish Netherlands Spanish masters to hold off the French.
(Flanders) Louis also marched his troops into terri-
1672–1678 Dutch War tories of the Holy Roman Empire, provok-
Enemies: Dutch Republic, Spain, ing many of the German princes to join with
Holy Roman Empire the emperor, the Spanish, and the Dutch in
Ended by Treaty of Nijmegen, an alliance against Louis, whom they now
1678–1679, which gave several denounced as a “Christian Turk” for his
towns in Spanish Netherlands
imperialist ambitions. Faced with bloody
and Franche-Comté to France
but inconclusive results on the battlefield,
1688–1697 War of the League of Augsburg
the parties agreed to the Treaty of Nijmegen
Enemies: Holy Roman Empire, of 1678–1679, which ceded several Flemish
Sweden, Spain, England, Dutch
Republic towns and the Franche-Comté region to
Ended by Peace of Rijswijk, 1697,
Louis, linking Alsace to the rest of France.
with Louis returning all his con- French government deficits soared, and in
quests made since 1678 except 1675 increases in taxes touched off the most
Strasbourg
serious antitax revolt of Louis’s reign.
1701–1713 War of the Spanish Succession Louis had no intention of standing still.
Enemies: Holy Roman Empire, Heartened by the Habsburgs’ seeming weak-
England, Dutch Republic, Prussia ness, he pushed eastward, seizing the city
Ended by Peace of Utrecht, 1713– of Strasbourg in 1681 and invading the
1714, with Louis ceding territories
in North America to the British
province of Lorraine in 1684. In 1688, he
attacked some of the small German cities
of the Holy Roman Empire. So obsessed
was Louis with his military standing that he had miniature battle scenes painted on
his high heels and commissioned tapestries showing his military processions into
conquered cities, even those he did not take by force. It took a large coalition known
as the League of Augsburg — made up of England, Spain, Sweden, the Dutch Repub-
lic, the Austrian emperor, and various German princes — to hold back the French
king. When hostilities between Louis and the League of Augsburg ended in the Peace
of Rijswijk in 1697, Louis returned many of his conquests made since 1678, with the
exception of Strasbourg (Map 16.1).
Four years later, Louis embarked on his last and most damaging war, the War of
the Spanish Succession (1701–1713). It was caused by disagreement over who would
inherit the throne of Spain. Before he died, Spanish king Charles II (r. 1665–1700)
named Louis XIV’s second grandson — Philip, duke of Anjou — as his heir, but the
Austrian emperor Leopold I refused to agree and the British and the Dutch sup-
ported his refusal. In the ensuing war, the French lost several major battles and had
[1640–1700
France in 1667 Nor th

ENG L AND
IC
Acquisitions to 1668 S ea
BL
Amsterdam
PU
Treaty of Nijmegen, 1678–1679
Rijswijk
RE
Treaty of Rijswijk, 1697 Utrecht C H
T
DU
HOLY
SPA
0 50 100 miles Nijmegen
l
English Ch anne
Flanders
NI
0 50 100 kilometers H Brussels Cologne
S
NE
Rhine
TH
Rouen ER ROMAN
LA N
R.
D
N Brittany
Normandy Luxembourg S Frankfurt
Se
ine
Paris
W EMPIRE
.R
e
E Mannheim
in
r ra
S Nantes Orléans Alsace
Lo
Lo
ir Strasbourg
Tours
eR
AT L A N T I C
.
OCEAN FRANCE Basel
Franche-
Comté SWISS
CONFEDERATION
Bordeaux
Geneva
Lyon SAVOY
MILAN
R.
ône
Rh
Toulouse
Marseille
S PA I N
Medite r ranean S ea
MAP 16.1 Louis XIV’s Acquisitions, 1668–1697

Every ruler in Europe hoped to extend his or her territorial control, and war was often the result.
Louis XIV steadily encroached on the Spanish Netherlands to the north and the lands of the Holy
Roman Empire to the east. Although coalitions of European powers reined in Louis’s grander
ambitions, he nonetheless incorporated many neighboring territories into the French crown.
to accept disadvantageous terms in the Peace of Utrecht of 1713–1714. France ceded

possessions in North America (Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay area, and most of
Nova Scotia) to Britain. Although Philip was recognized as king of Spain, he had to
renounce any future claim to the French crown, thus barring unification of the two
kingdoms. Spain surrendered its territories in Italy and the Netherlands to the Aus-
trians, and Gibraltar to the British. Lying on his deathbed in 1715, the seventy-six-
year-old Louis XIV watched helplessly as his accomplishments began to unravel.
Louis XIV’s policy of absolutism fomented bitter hostility among his own subjects.
Critics complained about the secrecy of Louis’s government, and nobles resented his
promotions of commoners to high office. The duke of Saint-Simon complained that
“falseness, servility, admiring glances, combined with a dependent and cringing attitude,
above all, an appearance of being nothing without him, were the only ways of pleasing
him.” Ordinary people suffered the most for Louis’s ambitions. By the end of the Sun
King’s reign, one in six Frenchmen had served in the military. In addition to the higher
[ 1640–1700
]
taxes paid by everyone, those who lived on
REVIEW QUESTION How “absolute” was the the routes leading to the battlefields had to
power of Louis XIV? house and feed soldiers; only nobles were
exempt from this requirement.
Constitutionalism in England
Of the two models of state building — absolutism and constitutionalism — the first
seemed unquestionably more powerful because Louis XIV could raise such large
armies and tax his subjects without much consultation. In the end, however, Louis
could not defeat the coalition led by England’s constitutional monarch. Constitution-
alism had its own distinctive strengths, which came from the ruler sharing power
through a representative assembly such as the English houses of Parliament. But the
English rulers themselves hoped to follow Louis XIV’s lead and install their own
absolutist policies. Two revolutions, in 1642–1660 and 1688–1689, overturned two
kings and confirmed the constitutional powers of an elected parliament, laying the
foundation for the idea that government must guarantee certain rights to the people
under the law.
England Turned Upside Down, 1642–1660

Disputes about the right to levy taxes and the nature of authority in the Church of
England had long troubled the relationship between the English crown and Parlia-
ment. For more than a hundred years, wealthy English landowners had been accus-
tomed to participating in government through Parliament and expected to be con-
sulted on royal policy. Although England had no single constitutional document,
it did have a variety of laws, judicial decisions, customary procedures, and charters
and petitions granted by the king that all regulated relations between king and Par-
liament. When Charles I tried to assert his authority over Parliament, a civil war
broke out. Some historians view the English civil war of 1642–1646 as the last great
war of religion because it pitted Puritans against those trying to push the Church of
England toward Catholicism; others see in it the first modern revolution because it
gave birth to democratic political and religious movements.
When Charles I (r. 1625–1649) succeeded his father, James I, he faced an increas-
ingly aggressive Parliament that resisted efforts to extend his personal control. In
1628, Parliament forced Charles to agree to the Petition of Right, by which he prom-
ised not to levy taxes without Parliament’s consent. Charles hoped to avoid further
interference with his plans by simply refusing to call Parliament into session between
1629 and 1640. Without it, the king’s ministers had to find every loophole possible
to raise revenues. They tried to turn “ship money,” a levy on seaports in times of
emergency, into an annual tax collected everywhere in the country. The crown won
the ensuing court case, but many subjects still refused to pay what they considered
to be an illegal tax.
[
1640–1700
] Constitutionalism in England 515
Religious tensions brought conflicts over the king’s authority to a head. With
Charles’s encouragement, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573–1645),
imposed increasingly elaborate ceremonies on the Church of England. Angered by
these moves toward “popery,” the Puritans responded with pamphlets and sermons
filled with fiery denunciations. Laud then hauled them before the feared Court of Star
Chamber, which the king personally controlled. The court ordered harsh sentences for
Laud’s Puritan critics; they were whipped, pilloried, branded, and even had their ears
cut off and their noses split. When Laud tried to apply his policies to Scotland, how-
ever, they backfired completely: the stubborn Presbyterian Scots invaded the north
of England in 1640. To raise money to fight the war, Charles called Parliament into
session and unwittingly opened the door to a constitutional and religious crisis.
The Parliament of 1640 did not intend revolution, but reformers in the House
of Commons (the lower house of Parliament) wanted to undo what they saw as
the royal tyranny of the 1630s. Parliament removed Laud from office, ordered the
execution of an unpopular royal commander, abolished the Court of Star Chamber,
repealed recently levied taxes, and provided for a parliamentary assembly at least
once every three years, thus establishing a constitutional check on royal authority.
Moderate reformers expected to stop there and resisted Puritan pressure to abolish
bishops and eliminate the Church of England prayer book. The reformers also faced
a rebellion in Ireland by native Catholics against the English and Scottish settlers
who had taken over their lands. The reformers in Parliament feared that the Irish
Catholics would make common cause with Charles to reestablish Catholicism as the
religion of England and Scotland. Their hand was forced in January 1642, when
Charles and his soldiers invaded Parliament and tried unsuccessfully to arrest those
leaders who had moved to curb his power. Faced with mounting opposition within
London, Charles quickly withdrew from the city and organized an army.
The ensuing civil war between king and Parliament lasted four years (1642–1646)
and divided the country. The king’s army of royalists, known as Cavaliers, enjoyed
the most support in northern and western England. The parliamentary forces, called
Roundheads because they cut their hair short, had their stronghold in the southeast,
including London. Although Puritans dominated on the parliamentary side, they
were divided among themselves about the proper form of church government: the
Presbyterians wanted a Calvinist church with some central authority, whereas the
Independents favored entirely autonomous congregations free from other church
government (hence the term congregationalism, often associated with the Indepen-
dents). The Puritans put aside their differences for the sake of military unity and
united under an obscure member of the House of Commons, the country gentle-
man Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), who sympathized with the Independents. After
Cromwell skillfully reorganized the parliamentary troops, his New Model Army
defeated the Cavaliers at the battle of Naseby in 1645. Charles surrendered in 1646.
Although the civil war between king and Parliament had ended in victory for
Parliament, divisions within the Puritan ranks now came to the fore: the Presbyte-
rians dominated Parliament, but the Independents controlled the army. The disputes
[ 1640–1700
]
between the leaders drew lower-class groups into the debate. When Parliament tried
to disband the New Model Army in 1647, disgruntled soldiers protested. Called
Levellers because of their insistence on leveling social differences, the soldiers took
on their officers in a series of debates about the nature of political authority. The
Levellers demanded that Parliament meet annually, that members be paid so as to
allow common people to participate, and that all male heads of households be
allowed to vote. Their ideal of political participation excluded servants, the property-
less, and women but offered access to artisans, shopkeepers, and modest farmers.
Cromwell and other army leaders rejected the Levellers’ demands as threatening to
property owners. Speaking to his advisers, Cromwell insisted, “You have no other
way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces.”
While political differences between Presbyterians and Independents helped
spark new political movements, their conflicts over church organization fostered the
emergence of new religious sects that emphasized the “inner light” of individual
religious inspiration and a disdain for hierarchical authority. The Baptists, for
example, insisted on adult baptism because they believed that Christians should
choose their own church and that children should not automatically become mem-
bers of the Church of England. The Religious Society of Friends, who came to be
called Quakers, demonstrated their beliefs in equality and the inner light by refus-
ing to doff their hats to men in authority. Manifesting their religious experience
by trembling, or “quaking,” the Quakers believed that anyone — man or woman —
inspired by a direct experience of God could preach. In keeping with their notions
of equality and individual inspiration, many of the new sects provided opportunities
for women to become preachers and prophets.
Parliamentary leaders feared that the new sects would overturn the whole social
hierarchy. Some sects did advocate sweeping change. The Diggers promoted rural
communism — collective ownership of all property. Seekers and Ranters questioned
just about everything. One notorious Ranter, John Robins, even claimed to be God.
A few men advocated free love. The political elite decided that tolerating the new
sects would lead to skepticism, anarchism, and debauchery, and they therefore took
measures to suppress the most radical ones.
The king tried to negotiate with the Presbyterians in Parliament, but Indepen-
dents in the army purged the Presbyterians from Parliament in late 1648, leaving a
“rump” of about seventy members. This Rump Parliament then created a high court
to try Charles I. The court found him guilty of attempting to establish “an unlim-
ited and tyrannical power” and pronounced a death sentence. On January 30, 1649,
Charles was beheaded before an enormous crowd, which reportedly groaned as one
when the ax fell. Although many had objected to Charles’s autocratic rule, few had
wanted him killed. For royalists, Charles immediately became a martyr, and reports
of miracles, such as the curing of blindness by the touch of a handkerchief soaked
in his blood, soon circulated.
The Rump Parliament abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords (the
upper house of Parliament) and set up a Puritan republic with Oliver Cromwell as
[1640–1700
Portrait of Oliver Cromwell

In this painting by Thomas
Wyck, Cromwell’s pose on
horseback mirrors that of King
Charles I in a painting of 1633.
Cromwell therefore appears
quite literally as Charles’s suc-
cessor. The setting, however, is
different. Cromwell is attended
by a black servant with a back-
drop that suggests North
Africa. The artist may be
referring to Cromwell’s 1655
foray against the pirates who
attacked English merchant
ships from their headquarters
on the Tunisian coast. Crom-
well sent twenty ships to
bombard the pirates’ fortifica-
tions and destroy their fleet.
(Private Collection / Photo © Philip
Mould Ltd., London, UK / Bridgeman
Images.)
chairman of the Council of State. Cromwell did not tolerate dissent from his policies.
When his agents discovered plans for mutiny within the army, they executed the
perpetrators; new decrees silenced the Levellers. Although under Cromwell the vari-
ous Puritan sects could worship rather freely and Jews with needed skills were per-
mitted to return to England for the first time since the thirteenth century, Catholics
could not worship publicly, nor could adherents of the Church of England use the
Book of Common Prayer, thought to be too Catholic. The elites were troubled by
Cromwell’s religious policies but pleased to see some social order reestablished.
The new regime aimed to extend state power just as Charles I had before. Crom-
well laid the foundation for a Great Britain — made up of England, Ireland, and
Scotland — by reconquering Scotland and brutally subduing Ireland. When his posi-
tion was secured in 1649, Cromwell went to Ireland with a large force and easily
defeated the rebels, massacring whole garrisons and their priests. He encouraged
expropriating more lands of the Irish “barbarous wretches,” and Scottish immigrants
resettled the northern county of Ulster. This seventeenth-century English conquest
left a legacy of bitterness that the Irish even today call “the curse of Cromwell.”
In 1651, Parliament turned its attention overseas, putting mercantilist ideas into
practice in the first Navigation Act, which allowed imports only if they were carried
on English ships or came directly from the producers of goods. The Navigation Act
[ 1640–1700
]
was aimed at the Dutch, who dominated world trade; Cromwell tried to carry the
policy further by waging naval war on the Dutch from 1652 to 1654.
At home, however, Cromwell faced growing resistance. His wars required a bud-
get twice the size of Charles I’s, and his increases in property taxes and customs
duties alienated landowners and merchants. The conflict reached a crisis in 1653: Par-
liament considered disbanding the army, whereupon Cromwell abolished the Rump
Parliament in a military coup and made himself Lord Protector. He now silenced his
critics by banning newspapers and using networks of spies to read mail and keep
tabs on his enemies. Cromwell intended that his son should succeed him, but his
death in 1658 only revived the prospect of civil war and political chaos. In 1660, a
newly elected Parliament invited Charles II, the son of the executed king, to return
from exile.
Restoration and Revolution Again

England’s traditional monarchical form of government was restored in 1660 under
Charles II (r. 1660–1685). More than a thousand Puritan ministers lost their posi-
tions, and attending a service other than one conforming with the Book of Common
Prayer was illegal after 1664. Two natural disasters in quick succession posed new
challenges. The plague struck in 1665, claiming more than thirty thousand victims
in just a few months and forcing Charles and Parliament to flee from London. Then
in 1666, the Great Fire swept the city. Some saw these disasters as punishment for
the sins of the Cromwell era, others as an ill omen for Charles’s reign.
Many in Parliament feared that Charles II wanted to emulate Louis XIV. In 1670,
Charles made a secret agreement, soon leaked, with Louis in which he promised to
announce his conversion to Catholicism in exchange for money for a war against
the Dutch. Charles never proclaimed himself a Catholic, but in his Declaration of
Indulgence (1673) he did suspend all laws against Catholics and Protestant dissent-
ers. Parliament refused to continue funding the Dutch war unless Charles rescinded
his Declaration of Indulgence. Asserting its authority further, Parliament passed the
Test Act in 1673, requiring all government officials to profess allegiance to the Church
of England and in effect disavow Catholic doctrine. Then in 1678, Parliament pre-
cipitated the so-called Exclusion Crisis by explicitly denying the throne to a Roman
Catholic. This action was aimed at the king’s brother and heir, James, an open con-
vert to Catholicism. Charles refused to allow it to become law.
The dynastic crisis over the succession of a Catholic gave rise to two distinct
factions in Parliament: the Tories, who supported a strong, hereditary monarchy and
the restored ceremony of the Church of England, and the Whigs, who advocated
parliamentary supremacy and toleration of Protestant dissenters such as Presbyteri-
ans. Both labels were originally derogatory: Tory meant an Irish Catholic bandit;
Whig was the Irish Catholic designation for a Presbyterian Scot. The Tories favored
James’s succession despite his Catholicism, whereas the Whigs opposed a Catholic
monarch.
[1640–1700
Great Fire of London, 1666

This view of London shows the three-day fire at its height. The writer John Evelyn described the
scene in his diary: “All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light
seen above 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the
like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder
of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm.” Everyone in
London at the time felt overwhelmed by the catastrophe, and many deemed it God’s punish-
ment for the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s. (© Museum of London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
When James II (r. 1685–1688) succeeded his brother, he seemed determined to

force Catholicism on his subjects. Tories and Whigs joined together when a male
heir — who would take precedence over James’s two adult Protestant daughters — was
born to James’s second wife, an Italian Catholic, in 1688. They invited the Dutch ruler
William, prince of Orange, and his wife, James’s older daughter, Mary, to invade
England. Mary was brought up as a Protestant and was willing to act with her husband
against her father’s pro-Catholic policies. James fled to France, and Parliament offered
the throne jointly to William (r. 1689–1702) and Mary (r. 1689–1694) on the condi-
tion that they accept a bill of rights guaranteeing Parliament’s full partnership in a
constitutional government.
In the Bill of Rights (1689), William and Mary agreed not to raise a standing
army or to levy taxes without Parliament’s consent. They also agreed to call meetings
of Parliament at least every three years, to guarantee free elections to parliamentary
seats, and to abide by Parliament’s decisions. The agreement gave England’s constitu-
tional government a written, legal basis by formally recognizing Parliament as a self-
contained, independent body that shared power with the rulers. Victorious supporters
of the coup declared it the Glorious Revolution because it was achieved with so little
bloodshed (at least in England).
[ 1640–1700
]
The propertied classes who controlled Parliament prevented any resurgence of
the popular turmoil of the 1640s. The Toleration Act of 1689 granted all Protestants
freedom of worship, though non-Anglicans (those not in the Church of England)
were still excluded from the universities; Catholics got no rights but were more often
left alone to worship privately. When the Catholics in Ireland rose to defend James II,
William and Mary’s troops savagely suppressed them.
Social Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke

Out of the turmoil of the English revolutions came a major rethinking of the founda-
tions of all political authority. Although Thomas Hobbes and John Locke wrote in
response to the upheavals of their times, they offered opposing arguments that were
applicable to any place and any time, not just England of the seventeenth century.
Hobbes justified absolute authority; Locke provided the rationale for constitutional-
ism. Yet both argued that all authority came not from divine right but from a social
contract among citizens.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a royalist who sat out the English civil war of
the 1640s in France, where he tutored the future king Charles II. Returning to
England in 1651, Hobbes published his masterpiece, Leviathan, in which he argued
for unlimited authority in a ruler. Absolute authority could be vested in either a king
or a parliament; it had to be absolute, Hobbes insisted, in order to overcome the
defects of human nature. Believing that people are essentially self-centered and
driven by the “right to self-preservation,” Hobbes made his case by referring to sci-
ence, not religion. To Hobbes, human life in a state of nature — that is, any situation
without firm authority — was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Only the
assurance of social order could make people secure enough to act according to law;
consequently, giving up personal liberty, he maintained, was the price of collective
security. Rulers derived their power, he concluded, from a contract in which absolute
authority protects people’s rights.
Hobbes’s notion of rule by an absolute authority left no room for political dissent
or nonconformity, and it infuriated both royalists and supporters of Parliament. He
enraged his fellow royalists by arguing that authority came not from divine right but
from the social contract. Parliamentary supporters resisted Hobbes’s claim that rulers
must possess absolute authority to prevent the greater evil of anarchy. Like Machia-
velli before him, Hobbes became associated with a cynical, pessimistic view of human
nature, and future political theorists often began their arguments by refuting Hobbes.
Rejecting both Hobbes and the more traditional royalist defenses of absolute
authority, John Locke (1632–1704) used the notion of a social contract to provide a
foundation for constitutionalism. Locke experienced political life firsthand as physi-
cian, secretary, and intellectual companion to the earl of Shaftesbury, a leading English
Whig. In 1683, during the Exclusion Crisis, Locke fled with Shaftesbury to the Dutch
Republic. There he continued work on his Two Treatises of Government, which, when
published in 1690, served to justify the revolution of 1688. Locke’s position was thor-
[1640–1700
] Outposts of Constitutionalism 521
oughly anti-absolutist. He denied the divine right of kings and ridiculed the common
royalist idea that political power in the state mirrored the father’s authority in the family.
Like Hobbes, he posited a state of nature that applied to all people. Unlike Hobbes,
however, he thought people were reasonable and the state of nature peaceful.
Locke insisted that government’s only purpose was to protect life, liberty, and
property, a notion that linked economic and political freedom. Ultimate authority
rested in the will of a majority of men who owned property, and government should
be limited to its basic purpose of protection. A ruler who failed to uphold his part
of the social contract between the ruler and the populace could be justifiably resisted,
an idea that would become crucial for the leaders of the American Revolution a
century later. For England’s seventeenth-century landowners, however, Locke helped
validate a revolution that consolidated their interests and ensured their privileges in
the social hierarchy.
Locke defended his optimistic view of human nature in the immensely influential
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). He denied the existence of any innate
ideas and asserted instead that each human is born with a mind that is a tabula rasa
(blank slate). Not surprisingly, Locke devoted considerable energy to rethinking edu-
cational practices; he believed that education shaped the human personality by chan-
neling all sensory experience. Everything humans know, he claimed, comes from
sensory experience, not from anything inherent in human nature. Although Locke
himself owned shares in the Royal African
Company and justified slavery, his writings REVIEW QUESTION What differences over
were later used by abolitionists in their religion and politics caused the conflict
campaign against slavery. between king and Parliament in England?
Outposts of Constitutionalism
When William and Mary came to the throne in England in 1689, the Dutch and the
English put aside the rivalries that had brought them to war against each other in
1652–1654, 1665–1667, and 1672–1674. The English and Dutch had much in com-
mon: oriented toward commerce, especially overseas, they both had developed rep-
resentative forms of government. Also among the few outposts of constitutionalism
in the seventeenth century were the British North American colonies, which devel-
oped representative government while the English were preoccupied with their revo-
lutions at home. Constitutionalism was not the only factor shaping this Atlantic
world; as constitutionalism developed in the colonies, so, too, did the enslavement
of black Africans as a new labor force.
The Dutch Republic

When the Dutch Republic gained formal independence from Spain in 1648, it had
already established a decentralized, constitutional state. Rich merchants called regents
effectively controlled the internal affairs of each province and (through the Estates
[ 1640–1700
]
General) chose the stadholder, the executive officer responsible for defense and for
representing the state at all ceremonial occasions. They almost always picked one of
the princes of the house of Orange, but the stadholder resembled a president more
than a king.
The Dutch Republic soon became Europe’s financial capital. Praised for their
industriousness, thrift, and cleanliness — and maligned as greedy, dull, and fat — the
Dutch dominated overseas commerce with their shipping (Map 16.2). They imported
products from all over the world: spices, tea, and silk from Asia; sugar and tobacco
from the Americas; wool from England and Spain; timber and furs from Scandinavia;
grain from eastern Europe. A widely reprinted history of Amsterdam that appeared
in 1662 described the city as “risen through the hand of God to the peak of prosperity
N
North Iron,
Sea Timber, copper,
tar, W E
pitch furs
Herring,
wool Wheat, S
ATLANTIC rye
NORTH OCEAN Danzig
DUTCH Amsterdam ASIA
AMERICA REPUBLIC EUROPE
NEW Wine
NETHERLAND
AZORES Wool CHINA
Tobacco JAPAN
Canton
Chinsura Tea, Nagasaki
silk, Amoy Silk,
Calcutta porcelain luxury goods
WEST INDIES Port
Tobacco Bombay INDIA Macao Zeelandia PACIFIC
Curaçao St. Martin Gorée AFRICA Goa
Madras Cloth Manila OCEAN
CAPE VERDE Negapatam PHILIPPINES
IS. Slaves Accra Cochin Colombo
GUIANA Ceylon Malacca Camphor, pepper,
Stabroek Sugar Borneo sandalwood
(Georgetown) DUTCH Axim Cloves, MOLUCCAS
Mombasa
BRAZIL
cinnamon Pepper Spices New
Zanzibar Sunda Macassar Guinea
Sugar Batavia
SOUTH Mauritsstad Mauritius Strait
Java Timor
AMERICA Mozambique Tea,
teak
Madagascar NEW HOLLAND
Cape Town INDIAN (Unknown except for
Provisioning
West Coast)
Station OCEAN
Dutch trade routes 0 1,500 3,000 miles

Areas under Dutch control 0 1,500 3,000 kilometers
Ports under Dutch control
Other major ports
Spices Goods shipped to the Dutch Republic
MAP 16.2 Dutch Commerce in the Seventeenth Century

Even before gaining formal independence from the Spanish in 1648, the Dutch had begun to
compete with the Spanish and Portuguese all over the world. In 1602, a group of merchants
established the Dutch East India Company, which soon offered investors an annual rate of
return of 35 percent on the trade in spices with countries located on the Indian Ocean. Global
commerce gave the Dutch the highest standard of living in Europe and soon attracted the envy
of the French and the English.
[1640–1700
] Outposts of Constitutionalism 523
A Typical Dutch Scene

from Daily Life
Dutch artist Jan Steen painted The
Baker Arent Oostward and His Wife in
1658. Steen ran a brewery and tavern
in addition to painting, and he was
known for his interest in the details of
daily life. Dutch artists popularized this
kind of “genre” painting, which showed
ordinary people at work and play.
(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands /
Bridgeman Images.)
and greatness. . . . The whole world

stands amazed at its riches and
from east and west, north and south
they come to behold it.”
The Dutch rapidly became the
most prosperous and best-educated
people in Europe. Whereas in other
countries kings, nobles, and churches
bought art, in the Dutch Republic
art buyers were merchants, artisans,
and shopkeepers. One foreigner commented that “pictures are very common here,
there being scarce an ordinary tradesman whose house is not decorated with them.”
Relative prosperity decreased the need for married women to work, so Dutch society
developed the clear contrast between middle-class male and female roles that would
become prevalent elsewhere in Europe and in America more than a century later.
Extraordinarily high levels of urbanization and literacy created a large reading
public. Dutch presses printed books censored elsewhere, and the University of Leiden
attracted students and professors from all over Europe. Dutch tolerance extended to
the works of Benedict Spinoza (1633–1677), a Jewish philosopher and biblical scholar
who was expelled by his synagogue for alleged atheism but left alone by the Dutch
authorities. Spinoza strove to reconcile religion with science and mathematics, but
his work scandalized many Christians and Jews because he seemed to equate God
and nature. Like nature, Spinoza’s God followed unchangeable laws and could not
be influenced by human actions, prayers, or faith.
The Dutch lived, however, in a world of international rivalries in which strong
central authority gave their enemies an advantage. The naval wars with England
between 1652 and 1674 and the land wars with France, which lasted until 1713,
drained the state’s revenues. The Dutch survived these direct military challenges but
began to lose their position in international trade as both the British and French
limited commerce with their own colonies to merchants from their own nations. At
the end of the seventeenth century, as the Dutch elites became more preoccupied
with ostentation, the Dutch “golden age” came to an end.
[ 1640–1700
]
Freedom and Slavery in the New World
The Dutch Republic competed with England, France, and other European nations
for its share of the burgeoning slave trade, but it lost its only settler colony in North
America, New Netherland (present-day New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Con-
necticut), to England in 1674. After the Spanish and Portuguese had shown that
African slaves could be transported and forced to labor in South and Central Amer-
ica, the English and French endeavored to set up similar labor systems in their new
Caribbean island colonies. White planters with large tracts of land bought African
slaves to work fields of sugarcane; and as they gradually built up their holdings, the
planters displaced most of the original white settlers.
By the end of the seventeenth century, slavery had become codified as an inher-
ited status that applied only to blacks. In 1661, Barbados instituted a slave code that
stripped all Africans of rights under English law. Louis XIV promulgated a “black
code” in 1685 to regulate the legal status of slaves in the French colonies and to pre-
vent non-Catholics from owning slaves. The code supposedly set limits on the vio-
lence planters could exercise and required them to house, feed, and clothe their slaves.
But white planters simply ignored provisions of the code that did not suit them, and
in any case, because the code defined slaves as property, slaves could not themselves
bring suit in court to demand better treatment.
The highest church and government authorities in Catholic and Protestant coun-
tries alike condoned the gradually expanding slave trade. In 1600, seventy-six hun-
dred Africans were exported annually from Africa to the New World; by 1700, this
number had increased more than fourfold, to thirty-three thousand. Historians
advance several different ideas about which factors increased the slave trade: some
claim that improvements in muskets made European slavers more effective; others
cite the rising price for slaves, which made their sale more attractive for the Africans
who sold them; still others focus on factors internal to Africa such as the increasing
size of African armies and their use of muskets in fighting and capturing other
Africans for sale as slaves. What is clear is that a combination of factors prepared
the way for the development of an Atlantic economy based on slavery.
While blacks were being subjected to the most degrading forms of bondage,
whites in the colonies enjoyed more freedom than ever before. Virtually left to them-
selves during the upheavals in England, the fledgling English colonies in North Amer-
ica developed representative government on their own. Almost every colony had a
two-house legislature. William and Mary reluctantly allowed emerging colonial elites
even more control over local affairs. The social and political elite among the settlers
hoped to impose an English social hierarchy dominated by rich landowners. Ordinary
immigrants to the colonies, however, took advantage of plentiful land to carve out
their own farms using white servants and, later, in some colonies, African slaves.
For native Americans, the expanding European presence meant something else
altogether. They faced death through disease, warfare, and the accelerating loss of
their homelands. Many native Americans believed that land was a divine gift pro-
[1640–1700
] Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe 525
vided for their collective use and not subject to individual ownership. Europeans’
claims that they owned exclusive land rights consequently resulted in frequent skir-
mishes. In 1675–1676, for instance, three tribes allied under Metacomet (called King
Philip by the English) threatened the sur-
vival of New England settlers, who sav- REVIEW QUESTION Why did constitutionalism
agely repulsed the attacks and sold their thrive in the Dutch Republic and the British
captives as slaves. The benefits of constitu- North American colonies, even as their par-
tionalism were reserved for Europeans. ticipation in the slave trade grew?
Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe

Constitutionalism had an outpost in central and eastern Europe, too, but there it
collapsed in failure. A long crisis in Poland-Lithuania virtually destroyed central state
authority and pulled much of eastern Europe into its turbulent wake. Most central
and eastern European rulers followed Louis XIV’s model of absolutist state building,
though they did not blindly emulate him, in part because they confronted conditions
peculiar to their regions. Everywhere in eastern Europe, nobles lorded over their
serfs but owed almost slavish obedience in turn to their rulers.
Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed
In the version of constitutionalism adopted in Poland-Lithuania, the great nobles dom-
inated the Sejm (parliament). To maintain an equilibrium among themselves, these
nobles each wielded an absolute veto power. This “free veto” constitutional system
deadlocked parliamentary government. The monarchy lost its room to maneuver and,
with it, much of its remaining power.
Ukrainian Cossack warriors revolted against the king of Poland-Lithuania in
1648, inaugurating two decades of tumult known as the Deluge. Cossack was the name
given to runaway serfs and poor nobles who formed outlaw bands in the no-man’s-
land of southern Russia and Ukraine. In 1654, the
Cossacks offered Ukraine to Russian rule, provok- Territory lost
to Russia, 1667 Volga R .
ing a Russo-Polish war that ended in 1667 when
SWEDEN
the tsar annexed eastern Ukraine and Kiev. RUSSIA
Many towns were destroyed in the fighting,
POLAND-
and as much as a third of the Polish population LITHUANIA Kiev
BRANDENBURG- UKRAINE
perished. The once prosperous Jewish and Protes- PRUSSIA
tant minorities suffered greatly: some fifty-six AUSTRIA Transylvania

HUNGARY Black Sea
thousand Jews were killed by the Cossacks, the D anu
b e R.
Polish peasants, or the Russian troops. Surviving OT TO
MAN
0 250 500 miles EMP
Jews moved from towns to shtetls (Jewish vil- IRE
lages), where they took up petty trading, money-
lending, tax gathering, and tavern leasing — Poland-Lithuania in the
activities that fanned peasant anti-Semitism. Seventeenth Century
[ 1640–1700
]
Desperate for protection amid the war, most Polish Protestants backed the violently
anti-Catholic Swedes, who tried to intervene militarily, and the victorious Catholic
majority branded the Protestants as traitors. In Poland-Lithuania people came to
assume that a good Pole was a Catholic. The commonwealth had ceased to be an
outpost of toleration.
The commonwealth revived briefly when a man of ability and ambition, Jan
Sobieski (r. 1674–1696), was elected king. Sobieski gained a reputation throughout
Europe when he led twenty-five thousand Polish cavalrymen into battle in the siege
of Vienna in 1683. His cavalry helped rout the Turks and turned the tide against the
Ottomans. Despite his efforts to rebuild the monarchy, Sobieski could not halt
Poland-Lithuania’s decline into powerlessness. The Polish version of constitutional-
ism fatally weakened the state and made it prey to neighboring powers.
Brandenburg-Prussia: Militaristic Absolutism

The contrast between Poland-Lithuania and Brandenburg-Prussia could not have
been more extreme. The first was huge in territory and constitutional in government
but in the end failed as a state. The second was puny and made up of disparate far-
flung territories moving toward absolutism but in the nineteenth century would
unify the different German states into modern-day Germany.
The ruler of Brandenburg was an elector, one of the seven German princes
entitled to select the Holy Roman Emperor. Since the sixteenth century, the ruler of
Brandenburg had also controlled the duchy of East Prussia; after 1618, the state was
called Brandenburg-Prussia. Despite meager resources, Frederick William of
Hohenzollern, who was the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia (r. 1640–1688),
succeeded in welding his scattered lands into an absolutist state.
Frederick William was determined to force his territories’ estates (representative
assemblies) to grant him a dependable income. The Great Elector struck a deal with
the Junkers (nobles) of each province: in exchange for allowing him to collect taxes,
he gave them complete control over their enserfed peasants and exempted them from
taxation. By the end of his reign, the estates met only on ceremonial occasions.
Frederick William was able to expand his army from eight thousand to thirty thou-
sand men. Peasants filled the ranks, and Junkers became officers.
As a Calvinist ruler, Frederick William avoided the ostentation of the French
court, even while following the absolutist model of centralizing state power. He
boldly rebuffed Louis XIV by welcoming twenty thousand French Huguenot refugees
after Louis’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In pursuing foreign and domestic
policies that promoted state power and prestige, Frederick William adroitly switched
sides in Louis’s wars and would stop at almost nothing to crush resistance at home.
In 1701, his son Frederick I (r. 1688–1713) persuaded Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I
to grant him the title “king in Prussia” in exchange for support in the War of the
Spanish Succession. Until then, there was only one kingdom in the Holy Roman
Empire, the kingdom of Bohemia. Prussia had arrived as an important power.
[1640–1700
An Uneasy Balance: Austrian Habsburgs and Ottoman Turks

Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (r. 1658–1705) ruled over a variety of territories of
different ethnicities, languages, and religions, yet in ways similar to his French and
Prussian counterparts, he gradually consolidated his power. Like all other Holy
Roman Emperors since 1438, Leopold was an Austrian Habsburg. He was simultane-
ously duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, count of Tyrol, archduke of Upper and Lower
Austria, king of Bohemia, king of Hungary and Croatia, and ruler of Styria and
Moravia (Map 16.3). Some of these territories were provinces in the Holy Roman
Empire; others were simply ruled from Vienna as Habsburg family holdings.
In response to the weakening of the Holy Roman Empire by the ravages of the
Thirty Years’ War, the emperor and his closest officials took control over recruiting,
provisioning, and strategic planning and worked to replace the mercenaries hired
Se
a
Brandenburg-Prussian territory in 1640

c
Nor th ti
Sea B al Brandenburg-Prussian territory acquired to 1688
Königsberg
Eastern Brandenburg-Prussian territory acquired to 1701
Pomerania Austrian Habsburg territory in 1648
Elb Lands taken from Turks by Austrian Habsburgs,
DUTCH e R.
Ravensburg 1683–1699
REPUBLIC
Cleve Berlin
BRANDENBURG-
Mark PRUSSIA POLAND- RUSSIA
SPANISH Cologne Magdeburg Saxony LITHUANIA
NETHERLANDS Silesia
HOLY
Rhi
ROMAN
ne R
EMPIRE
.
Bohemia Moravia
N
AUSTRIA
E
Da Vienna W
nub
e R.
S
Styria Buda Pest Transylvania
FRANCE SWISS
Tyrol
Carinthia
CONFEDERATION HUNGARY
Carniola
tia
oa
Karlowitz
Cr
Bl ack S ea
A
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
dr
ia
ti
c
Se
B AL KANS 0 200 400 miles

a
Mediterranean Sea
MAP 16.3 State Building in Central and Eastern Europe, 1648–1699

The Austrian Habsburgs had long contested the Ottoman Turks for dominance of eastern
Europe, and by 1699 they had pushed the Turks out of Hungary. In central Europe, the Austrian
Habsburgs confronted the growing power of Brandenburg-Prussia, which had emerged from rela-
tive obscurity after the Thirty Years’ War to begin an aggressive program of expanding its mili-
tary and its territorial base. As emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Habsburg ruler
governed a huge expanse of territory, but the emperor’s control was in fact only partial because
of guarantees of local autonomy.
[ 1640–1700
]
during the war with a permanent standing army that promoted professional disci-
pline. Intent on replacing Bohemian nobles who had supported the 1618 revolt against
Austrian authority, the Habsburgs promoted a new nobility made up of Czechs, Ger-
mans, Italians, Spaniards, and even Irish who used German as their common tongue,
professed Catholicism, and loyally served the Austrian dynasty. Bohemia became a
virtual Austrian colony. In addition to holding Louis XIV in check on his western
frontiers, Leopold confronted the ever-present challenge of the Ottoman Turks to
the east. Austria had fought the Turks for control of Hungary for more than 150
years. In 1682, war broke out again. As they had in 1529, the Turks in 1683 pushed
all the way to the gates of Vienna and laid siege to the Austrian capital. With the
help of Polish cavalry, the Austrians finally broke the siege and turned the tide in a
major counteroffensive. By the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, the Ottoman Turks sur-
rendered almost all of Hungary to the Austrians, marking the beginning of the decline
of Ottoman power.
Once the Turks had been beaten back, Austrian rule over Hungary tightened. In
1687, the Habsburg dynasty’s hereditary right to the Hungarian crown was acknowl-
edged by the Hungarian diet, a parliament revived by Leopold in 1681 to gain the
cooperation of Hungarian nobles. The diet was dominated by a core of pro-Habsburg
Hungarian aristocrats, who would support the dynasty until it fell in 1918. To root
out remaining Turkish influence and assert Austrian superiority, Leopold systemati-
cally destroyed Turkish buildings and rebuilt Catholic churches, monasteries, road-
side shrines, and monuments in the flamboyant Austrian baroque style.
The Ottoman Turks pursued their state consolidation in a different fashion.
Hundreds of thousands of Turkish families had moved with Turkish soldiers into the
Balkan peninsula in the 1400s and 1500s. As locals converted to Islam, administra-
tion passed gradually into their hands. The Ottoman state, ultimately, would last
longer than the French absolutist monarchy, even though the Ottoman rulers, the
sultans, were often challenged by mutinous army officers. Despite frequent palace
coups and assassinations of sultans, the Ottoman state continued to pose a massive
military threat on Europe’s southeastern borders.
Russia: Setting the Foundations of Bureaucratic Absolutism

Seventeenth-century Russia seemed a world apart from the Europe of Leopold I and
Louis XIV. Straddling Europe and Asia, the Russian lands stretched across Siberia to
the Pacific Ocean. Western visitors either sneered or shuddered at the “barbarism”
of Russian life, and Russians reciprocated by nursing deep suspicions of everything
foreign. But under the surface, Russia was evolving as an absolutist state; the tsars
wanted to claim unlimited autocratic power, but like their European counterparts
they had to surmount internal disorder and come to an accommodation with noble
landlords.
In 1649, the Russian tsar Alexei (r. 1645–1676) convened the Assembly of the
Land (consisting of noble delegates from the provinces) to consult on a sweeping law
[1640–1700
Stenka Razin in
Captivity
After leading a revolt of
thousands of serfs, peas-
ants, and members of
non-Russian tribes of the
middle and lower Volga
region, Stenka Razin
was captured by Russian
forces and led off to Mos-
cow, as shown here,
where he was executed
in 1671. He has been
the subject of songs, leg-
ends, and poems ever
since. (© Imagno / ullstein
bild / The Image Works.)
code to organize Russian society in a strict social hierarchy. The code of 1649 —
which held for nearly two centuries — assigned all subjects to a hereditary class
according to their current occupation or state needs. Slaves and free peasants were
merged into a serf class. As serfs, they could not change occupations or move; they
were tightly tied to the soil and to their noble masters. To prevent tax evasion, the
code also forbade townspeople to move from the community where they resided.
Nobles owed absolute obedience to the tsar and were required to serve in the army,
but in return no other group could own estates worked by serfs. Serfs became the
chattel of their lord, who could sell them like horses or land. Their lives differed
little from those of the slaves on the plantations in the Americas.
Some peasants resisted enserfment. In 1667, Stenka Razin (1630–1671), the
head of a powerful band of pirates and outlaws in southern Russia, led a rebellion
that promised liberation from the great noble landowners. Captured four years later
by the tsar’s army, Razin was taken to Moscow, where he was dismembered in front
of the public and his body thrown to the dogs. Thousands of his followers also suf-
fered grisly deaths, but Razin’s memory lived on in folk songs and legends.
Like his Western rivals, Tsar Alexei wanted a bigger army, exclusive control over
state policy, and a greater say in religious matters. The size of the army increased
dramatically from 35,000 in the 1630s to 220,000 by the end of the century. The
Assembly of the Land, once an important source of consultation for the nobles, never
met again after 1653. Alexei also imposed firm control over the Russian Orthodox
church. The state-dominated church took action against a religious group called the
Old Believers, who rejected church efforts to bring Russian worship in line with
Byzantine tradition. Whole communities of Old Believers starved or burned them-
selves to death rather than submit to the crown.
Nevertheless, modernizing trends prevailed. Tsar Alexei set up the first Western-
style theater in the Kremlin, and his daughter Sophia translated French plays. The
[ 1640–1700
]
most adventurous nobles began to wear
REVIEW QUESTION Why did absolutism flour- German-style clothing. Some even argued
ish everywhere in eastern Europe except that ser vice, not just birth, should deter-
Poland-Lithuania? mine rank. Russia’s long struggle over West-
ern influences had begun.
The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture

In the period of state building from 1640 to 1715, questions about obedience, order,
and the limits of state power occupied poets, painters, architects, and men of science
as much as they did rulers and their ministers. How much freedom of expression
could be allowed? How did the individual’s needs and aspirations fit with the require-
ments of state authority? The greatest thinkers and writers wrestled with these issues
and helped frame debates for generations to come. At the same time, elites worked
to distinguish themselves from the lower classes by developing new codes of correct
behavior and teaching order and discipline to their social inferiors. Their repeated
efforts show, however, that popular culture had its own dynamics that resisted con-
trol from above.
Freedom and Constraint in the Arts and Sciences

Most Europeans feared disorder above all else. The French mathematician Blaise
Pascal vividly captured their worries in his Pensées (Thoughts) of 1660: “I look on
all sides, and I see only darkness everywhere.” Reason could not determine whether
God existed or not, Pascal concluded. Poets, painters, and architects all grappled with
similar issues of faith, reason, and authority, but most of them came to more positive
conclusions than Pascal about human capacities.
The English Puritan poet John Milton (1608–1674) wrestled with the inevitable
limitations on individual liberty. In 1643, in the midst of the civil war between king
and Parliament, he published writings in favor of allowing married couples to divorce.
When Parliament enacted a censorship law aimed at such literature, Milton responded
in 1644 with one of the first defenses of freedom of the press, Areopagitica. In it, he
argued that even controversial books about religion should be allowed. Forced into
retirement after the restoration of the monarchy, Milton published his epic poem
Paradise Lost in 1667. He used the biblical Adam and Eve’s fall from grace to medi-
tate on human freedom and the tragedies of rebellion. His Satan, the proud angel
who challenges God and is cast out of heaven, is so compelling as to be heroic. In
the end, Adam and Eve learn the limits to their freedom, yet personal liberty remains
essential to their humanity.
The dominant artistic styles of the time — the baroque and the classical — both
submerged the ordinary individual in a grander design. The combination of religious
and political purposes in baroque art is best exemplified in the architecture and
sculpture of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the papacy’s official artist. His archi-
[1640–1700
] The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture 531
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of

St. Teresa of Ávila (c. 1650)
This ultimate statement of baroque
sculpture captures all the drama and
even sensationalism of a mystical
religious faith. Bernini based his
figures on a vision reported by
St. Teresa in which she saw an
angel: “In his hands I saw a great
golden spear, and at the iron tip
there appeared to be a point of fire.
This he plunged into my heart sev-
eral times so that it penetrated my
entrails. When he pulled it out I felt
that he took them with it, and left me
utterly consumed by the great love of
God.” (Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria,
Rome, Italy / De Agostini Picture Library /
G. Nimatallah / Bridgeman Images.)
tectural masterpiece was the gigantic square facing St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Ber-
nini’s use of freestanding colonnades and a huge open space was meant to impress
the individual observer with the power of the popes and the Catholic religion.
Although France was a Catholic country, French artists, like their patron Louis
XIV, preferred the standards of classicism to those of the baroque. As its name sug-
gests, classicism reflected the ideals of the art of antiquity: geometric shapes, order,
and harmony of lines took precedence over the sensuous, exuberant, and emotional
forms of the baroque. Rather than being overshadowed by the sheer power of emo-
tional display, in classicism the individual could be found at the intersection of con-
verging, symmetrical, straight lines. These influences were apparent in the work of
the leading French painters of the period, Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Claude
Lorrain (1600–1682), both of whom tried to re-create classical Roman values in their
mythological scenes and Roman landscapes.
Art could also serve the interests of science. One of the most skilled illustra-
tors of insects and flowers was Maria Sibylla Merian (1646–1717), a German-born
painter-scholar whose engravings were widely celebrated for their brilliant realism
and microscopic clarity. Merian separated from her husband and accompanied mis-
sionaries to the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America. She painted watercolors
of the exotic flowers, birds, and insects she found in the jungle around the cocoa
and sugarcane plantations.
Despite the initial religious controversies associated with the scientific revo-
lution, absolutist rulers quickly saw the potential of the new science for enhancing
[ 1640–1700
]
French Classicism
This painting by Nicolas Poussin, Discovery of Achilles on Skyros (1649–1650), shows the
French interest in classical themes and ideals. In the Greek story, Thetis dresses her son
Achilles as a young woman and hides him on the island of Skyros so he would not have to
fight in the Trojan War. When a chest of treasures is offered to the women, Achilles reveals him-
self (he is the figure on the far right) because he cannot resist the sword. In telling the story,
Poussin emphasizes harmony and almost a sedateness of composition, avoiding the exuber-
ance and emotionalism of the baroque style. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA /
Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
their prestige and glory. Various German princes supported the work of Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who claimed that he, and not Isaac Newton, had
invented modern calculus. A lawyer, mathematician, and philosopher who wrote
about metaphysics, cosmology, and history, Leibniz also helped establish scientific
societies in the German states. Government involvement in science was greatest in
France. In 1666, Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded the Royal Academy of Sciences,
which supplied fifteen scientists with government stipends. In contrast, the Royal
Society of London grew out of informal meetings of scientists at London and Oxford.
It received a royal charter in 1662 but maintained complete independence.
Because of their exclusion from most universities, women only rarely partici-
pated in the new scientific discoveries. In 1667, nonetheless, the Royal Society of Lon-
don invited the writer Margaret Cavendish to watch the exhibition of experiments.
Labeled “mad” by her critics, she attacked the use of telescopes and microscopes
because she detected in the new experimentalism a mechanistic view of the world
that exalted masculine prowess and challenged the Christian belief in freedom of the
[1640–1700
European Fascination with Products

of the New World
In this painting of a banana plant, Maria
Sibylla Merian offers a scientific study of
one of the many exotic plants and ani-
mals found by Europeans who traveled to
the colonies overseas. In 1699, Merian
traveled to the Dutch South American
colony of Surinam with her daughter.
(Inflorescence of Banana, 1705, by Maria Sibylla
Graff Merian [1647–1717] / Minneapolis Institute
of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA / The Ethel
Morrison Van Derlip Fund / Bridgeman Images.)
will. Yet she urged the formal educa-

tion of women, complaining that
“we are kept like birds in cages to
hop up and down in our houses.”
Women and Manners

Although excluded from the univer-
sities and the professions, women
played important roles not only in
the home but also in more formal spheres of social interaction, such as the courts
of rulers. Under the tutelage of their mothers and wives, nobles learned manners, or
the fine points of social etiquette. In some ways, aristocratic men were expected to
act more like women; just as women had long been expected to please men, now
aristocratic men had to please their monarch or patron by displaying proper manners
and conversing with elegance and wit.
The upper classes began to reject popular festivals and fairs in favor of private
theaters, where seats were relatively expensive and behavior was formal. Clowns and
buffoons now seemed vulgar; the last king of England to keep a court fool was
Charles I. Some tastes spread downward from the upper classes, however. Chivalric
romances that had long entranced the nobility, such as Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso,
now appeared in simplified form in cheap booklets printed for lower-class readers.
Molière, the greatest French playwright of the seventeenth century, wrote sparkling
comedies of manners that revealed much about the new aristocratic behavior. His play
The Middle-Class Gentleman, first performed for Louis XIV in 1670, revolves around
the yearning of a rich middle-class Frenchman, Monsieur Jourdain, to learn to act like
a gentilhomme (both “gentleman” and “nobleman”). Monsieur Jourdain buys fancy
clothes; hires private instructors in dancing, music, fencing, and philosophy; and lends
money to a debt-ridden noble in hopes that the noble will marry his daughter. Only
his sensible wife and his daughter’s love for a worthier commoner stand in his way.
The message for the king’s courtiers seemed to be a reassuring one: only born nobles
[ 1640–1700
]
can hope to act like nobles. But the play also showed how the middle classes were
learning to emulate the nobility: If one could learn to act nobly through self-discipline,
could not anyone with some education and money pass himself off as noble?
As Molière’s play demonstrated, new attention to manners trickled down from
the court to the middle class. A French treatise on manners written in 1672 explained
proper behavior:
Formerly one was permitted . . . to dip one’s bread into the sauce, provided
only that one had not already bitten it. Nowadays that would be a kind of
rusticity. Formerly one was allowed to take from one’s mouth what one
could not eat and drop it on the floor, provided it was done skillfully. Now
that would be very disgusting.
The key words rusticity and disgusting reveal the association of unacceptable social
behavior with the peasantry, dirt, and repulsion. Similar rules governed spitting and
blowing one’s nose in public.
Courtly manners often permeated the upper reaches of society by means of the
salon, an informal gathering held regularly in a private home and presided over by
a socially eminent woman. The French government occasionally worried that these
gatherings might challenge its authority, but the three main topics of salon conversa-
tion were love, literature, and philosophy. Before publishing a manuscript, many
authors, including court favorites like Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, would read
their compositions to a salon gathering.
Some women went beyond encouraging male authors and began to write their
own works, but they faced many obstacles. Madame de Lafayette wrote several short
novels that were published anonymously because it was considered inappropriate for
aristocratic women to appear in print. Following the publication of The Princess of
Clèves in 1678, she denied having written it. Despite these limitations, French women
began to turn out best sellers of that new type of literary form, the novel. Their suc-
cess prompted the philosopher Pierre Bayle to remark in 1697 that “our best French
novels for a long time have been written by women.”
The new importance of women in the world of manners and letters did not sit
well with everyone. Although the French writer François Poulain de la Barre, in a series
of works published in the 1670s, used the new science to assert the equality of women’s
minds, most men resisted the idea. Clergymen, lawyers, scholars, and playwrights
attacked women’s growing public influence. Women, they complained, were corrupting
forces and needed restraint. Molière wrote plays denouncing women’s pretension to
judge literary merit. English playwrights derided learned women by creating characters
with names such as Lady Knowall, Lady Meanwell, and Mrs. Lovewit.
A real-life target of the English playwrights was Aphra Behn (1640–1689), one
of the first professional woman authors. Her short novel Oroonoko (1688) told the
story of an African prince mistakenly sold into slavery. The story was so successful
that it was adapted by playwrights and performed repeatedly in England and France
for the next hundred years.
[
1640–1700
Reforming Popular Culture

Controversies over female influence had little effect on the unschooled peasants who
made up most of Europe’s population. Peasant culture had three main elements: reli-
gion, which shaped every aspect of life and death; knowledge needed to work at farm-
ing or in a trade; and popular forms of entertainment such as village fairs and dances.
What changed most noticeably in the seventeenth century was the social elites’ atti-
tude toward lower-class culture.
In the seventeenth century, Protestant and Catholic churches alike pushed hard
to change popular religious practices. Their campaigns against popular “paganism”
began during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-
Reformation but reached much of rural Europe only in the seventeenth century.
Puritans in England tried to root out maypole dances, Sunday village fairs, gambling,
taverns, and bawdy ballads. In Lutheran Norway, pastors denounced a widespread
belief in the miracle-working powers of St. Olaf. The word superstition previously
meant “false religion” (Protestantism was a superstition for Catholics, Catholicism
for Protestants); in the seventeenth century it took on its modern meaning of irra-
tional fears, beliefs, and practices that anyone educated or refined would avoid.
Catholic bishops in the French provinces trained parish priests to reform their
flocks by using catechisms in local dialects and insisting that parishioners attend
Mass. The church faced a formidable challenge. One bishop in France complained
in 1671, “Can you believe that there are in this diocese entire villages where no one
has even heard of Jesus Christ?” In some places, believers sacrificed animals to the
Virgin; prayed to the new moon; and, as in pre-Christian times, worshipped at the
sources of streams.
Like its Protestant counterpart, the Catholic campaign against ignorance and
superstition helped extend state power. Clergy, officials, and local police worked
together to limit carnival celebrations, to regulate pilgrimages to shrines, and to
replace “indecent” images of saints with more restrained and decorous ones. In
Catholicism, the cult of the Virgin Mary and devotions closely connected with Jesus,
such as the Holy Sacrament and the Sacred Heart, took precedence over the celebra-
tion of popular saints who seemed to have pagan origins or were credited with
unverified miracles.
The campaign for more disciplined religious practices helped generate a new
attitude toward the poor. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the upper
classes, the church, and the state increasingly regarded the poor as dangerous, deceit-
ful, and lacking in character. The courts had previously expelled beggars from cities;
now local leaders, both Catholic and Protestant, tried to reform their character.
Municipal magistrates and local notables worked together to transform hospitals into
houses of confinement for beggars. In Catholic France, upper-class women’s religious
associations, known as confraternities, set up asylums that confined prostitutes (by
arrest if necessary) and rehabilitated them. Such groups advocated harsh discipline
as the cure for poverty.
[ 1640–1700
]
Even as reformers from church and state tried to regulate popular activities, vil-
lagers and townspeople pushed back with reassertions of their own values. For hun-
dreds of years, peasants had maintained their own forms of village justice — called
variously “rough music,” “charivari,” or in North America, “shivaree.” If a young man
married a much older woman for her money, for example, villagers would serenade
the couple by playing crude flutes, banging pots and pans, and shooting muskets. If
a man was rumored to have been physically assaulted by his wife, a reversal of the
usual sex roles, he (or effigies of him and his wife) might be ridden on a donkey
facing backward (to signify the role reversal) and pelted with dung before being
ducked in a nearby pond or river. Others directed their mockery at tax officials,
gamekeepers on big estates who tried to keep villagers from hunting, or unpopular
preachers.
No matter how much care went into controlling religious festivals, such events
almost invariably opened the door to popular reinterpretation and sometimes
drunken celebration. When the Spanish introduced Corpus Christi processions to
their colony in Peru in the seventeenth century, elite Incas dressed in royal costumes
to carry the banners of their parishes. Their clothing and ornaments combined
Christian symbols with their own indigenous ones. They thus signaled their conver-
sion to Catholicism but also reasserted their own prior identities. The Corpus Christi
festival, held in late May or early June, conveniently took place about the same time
as Inca festivals from the pre-Spanish era. Carnival, the days preceding Lent on
the Christian calendar — of which Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”) is the last — offered
the occasion for public revelry of all sorts. Although Catholic clergy worked hard
to clamp down on the more riotous aspects of Carnival, many towns and villages
still held parades, like those of present-
day New Orleans or Rio de Janeiro, that
REVIEW QUESTION How did elite and popular included companies of local men dressed
culture become more separate in the seven- in special costumes and gigantic stuffed
teenth century? figures, sometimes with animal skins, ani-
mal heads, or elaborate masks.
Conclusion
The search for order took place on various levels, from the reform of the disorderly
poor to the establishment of bureaucratic routines in government. The absolutist
government of Louis XIV served as a model for all those who aimed to increase the
power of the central state. Even Louis’s rivals — such as the Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold I and Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia —
followed his lead in centralizing authority and building up their armies. Whether
absolutist or constitutionalist in form, seventeenth-century states aimed to penetrate
more deeply into the lives of their subjects. They wanted more men for their armed
forces; higher taxes to support their projects; and more control over foreign trade,
religious dissent, and society’s unwanted.
[ 1640–1700
] Conclusion 537
Austrian territory by 1699

Brandenburg-Prussian territory by 1701
AY
Spanish Habsburg lands
S W E D E N
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Ottoman Empire FINLAND
K-N
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire d
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0 200 400 miles
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ENGLAND REPUBLIC Danzig RUSSIA
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Minsk
S London Amsterdam Berlin Warsaw
Kiev
SPANISH BRANDENBURG-
English Channel PRUSSIA
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NETH. Leipzig
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Paris
.
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Comté Alsace Danube Munich
Bay of AUSTRIA Buda Pest
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Bordeaux SAVOY Venice
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MAPPING THE WEST Europe at the End of the Seventeenth Century

Size was not necessarily an advantage in the late 1600s. Poland-Lithuania, a large country on
the map, had been fatally weakened by internal conflicts. In the next century it would disappear
entirely. While the Ottoman Empire still controlled an extensive territory, outside of Anatolia its
rule depended on intermediaries. The Austrian Habsburgs had pushed the Turks out of Hungary
and back into the Balkans. The tiny Dutch Republic, meanwhile, had become very rich through
international commerce and was the envy of far larger nations.
Some tears had begun to appear, however, in the seamless fabric of state power.
The civil war between Charles I and Parliament in England in the 1640s opened the
way to new demands for political participation. When Parliament overthrew James II
in 1688, it also insisted that the new king and queen, William and Mary, agree to
the Bill of Rights. In the eighteenth century, new levels of economic growth and the
appearance of new social groups would exert pressures on the European state system.
The success of seventeenth-century rulers created the political and economic condi-
tions in which their critics would flourish.
Chapter 16 Review
absolutism (p. 505) mercantilism (p. 511) Frederick William of
constitutionalism (p. 505) Levellers (p. 516) Hohenzollern (p. 526)
Louis XIV (p. 506) William, prince of Orange Stenka Razin (p. 529)
revocation of the Edict of (p. 519) classicism (p. 531)
Nantes (p. 510) Glorious Revolution (p. 519) salon (p. 534)
bureaucracy (p. 510) social contract (p. 520)
Review Questions
1. How “absolute” was the power of Louis XIV?
2. What differences over religion and politics caused the conflict between king and Parliament
in England?
3. Why did constitutionalism thrive in the Dutch Republic and the British North American
colonies, even as their participation in the slave trade grew?
4. Why did absolutism flourish everywhere in eastern Europe except Poland-Lithuania?
5. How did elite and popular culture become more separate in the seventeenth century?
Making Connections
1. What accounts for the success of absolutism in some parts of Europe and its failure in
others?
2. How did religious differences in the late seventeenth century still cause political conflict?
3. What were the chief differences between eastern and western Europe in this period?
4. Why was the search for order a major theme in science, politics, and the arts during this
period?
Recent studies have insisted that absolutism could never be entirely absolute because rulers
depended on collaboration to enforce their policies. Studies of constitutional governments have
emphasized the limitations of freedoms for the lower classes and especially for slaves.
*Beik, William. Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents. 2000.
British Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate 1638–1660: http://bcw-project.org/
Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. 2008.
Davies, Brian L. Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700. 2007.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. 1995.
France in America (site of the Library of Congress on French colonies in North America):
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/fiatheme.html#track1
Friedrich, Karin. Brandenburg-Prussia, 1466–1806: The Rise of a Composite State. 2012.
Pestana, Carla Gardina. The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661. 2007.
*Pincus, Steven C. A. England’s Glorious Revolution, 1688–1689: A Brief History with Documents.
2006.
*Primary source.
538
[1640–1700
Important Events
1642–1646 English civil war between Charles I and Parliament

1648 Peace of Westphalia ends Thirty Years’ War; Fronde revolt challenges
royal authority in France; Ukrainian Cossack warriors rebel against king
of Poland-Lithuania; Spain formally recognizes independence of Dutch
Republic
1649 Charles I of England executed; new Russian legal code assigns all to
hereditary class
1651 Thomas Hobbes publishes Leviathan
1660 Monarchy restored in England
1661 Slave code set up in Barbados
1667 Louis XIV begins first of many wars that continue throughout his reign
1678 Madame de Lafayette anonymously publishes The Princess of Clèves
1683 Austrian Habsburgs break Turkish siege of Vienna
1685 Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes
1688 Parliament deposes James II; William, prince of Orange, and Mary take
the throne
1690 John Locke publishes Two Treatises of Government and Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
Consider three events: Thomas Hobbes publishes Leviathan (1651), Madame de

Lafayette anonymously publishes The Princess of Clèves (1678), and John Locke
publishes Two Treatises of Government (1690). How did Hobbes’s new doctrine of
absolute political authority, de Lafayette’s novel, and Locke’s emphasis on a social
contract represent both an effort to create order and a challenge to the established
order?
Soll, Jacob. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System.
2009.
Stoye, John. The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross and Crescent. 2006.
Tezcan, Baki. The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early
Modern World. 2012.
Versailles castle: http://en.chateauversailles.fr/homepage
Worden, Blair. The English Civil Wars, 1640–1660. 2009.
The Atlantic System
17
and Its Consequences
1700–1750
I
n 1699, a few coffee plants changed the history of the world. European travel-
ers at the end of the sixteenth century noticed Middle Eastern people drinking a
“black drink” called kavah, but the Arab monopoly on its production kept prices
high. This all changed in 1699, when Dutch traders brought a few coffee plants from
the east coast of India to their colony of Java (now Indonesia), which proved ideal
for growing the beans. Within two decades, the trickle of beans going from Java to
Europe became a flood of 200,000 pounds a year. After a shoot from a Dutch plant
made its way to the Caribbean island of Mar-
tinique in 1721, coffee plants quickly spread
London Coffeehouse
This gouache (a variant on water- throughout the Caribbean, where African
color painting) from about 1725 slaves provided the plantation labor.
depicts a scene from a London cof- European consumption of coffee, tea, sugar,
feehouse located in the courtyard and other novelties increased dramatically as
of the Royal Exchange (merchants’ European nations forged worldwide economic
bank). Middle-class men (wearing
wigs) read newspapers, drink coffee,
links. At the center of this new global economy
smoke pipes, and discuss the news was the Atlantic system, the web of trade routes
of the day. The coffeehouse has that bound together western Europe, Africa,
drawn them out of their homes and the Americas. Europeans bought slaves in
into a new public space. (The British western Africa, transported them to be sold in
Museum, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
the colonies in North and South America and
the Caribbean, bought raw commodities such
as coffee and sugar that were produced by the new colonial plantations, and then
sold those commodities in European ports for refining and reshipment. This Atlantic
system, which first took clear shape in the early eighteenth century, became the hub
of European expansion throughout the world.
Coffee drinking is just one example of the many new social and cultural patterns
that took root between 1700 and 1750. Improvements in agricultural production
at home reinforced the effects of trade overseas; Europeans now had more dispos-
able income for extras, and they spent their money not only in the new coffeehouses
and cafés that sprang up all over Europe but also on newspapers, musical concerts,
541
542 Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences
[ 1700–1750
]
paintings, and novels. A new middle-class public began to make its presence felt in
every domain of culture and social life.
Although the rise of the Atlantic system gave Europe new prominence in the
global context, European rulers still focused most of their political, diplomatic, and
military energies on their rivalries within Europe. A coalition of countries had suc-
ceeded in containing French aggression under Louis XIV, and a more balanced
diplomatic system emerged. The more evenly matched competition among the great
powers encouraged the development of diplomatic skills and drew attention to public
health as a way of encouraging population growth.
In the aftermath of Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a
new intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment began to germinate. An
initial impetus came from French Protestant refugees who published works critical
of absolutism in politics and religion. Fed by the popularization of science and the
growing interest in travel literature, the early Enlightenment encouraged greater
skepticism about religious and state authority. Eventually, the movement would ques-
tion almost every aspect of social and political life in Europe. The Enlightenment,
which began in western Europe in those
countries most affected by the new Atlan-
tant consequences of the growth of the Atlantic
tic system — Britain, France, and the Dutch
system? Republic — can be considered a product of
the age of coffee.
The Atlantic System and the World Economy

Although their ships had been circling the globe since the early 1500s, Europeans did
not draw most of the world into their economic orbit until the 1700s. Western Euro-
pean nations sent ships loaded with goods to buy slaves from local rulers on the
western coast of Africa; the slaves were then transported to the colonies in North and
South America and the Caribbean and sold to the owners of plantations producing
coffee, sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Money from the slave trade was used to buy the
raw commodities produced in the colonies and ship them back to Europe, where they
were refined or processed and then sold within Europe and around the world. The
Atlantic system and the growth of international trade thus helped create a new con-
sumer society.
Slavery and the Atlantic System

In the eighteenth century, European trade in the Atlantic rapidly expanded and
became more systematically interconnected (Map 17.1). By 1650, Portugal had already
sent forty thousand African slaves to Brazil to work on the new plantations, which
were producing some fifteen thousand tons of sugar a year. A plantation was a large
tract of land that produced a staple crop such as sugar, coffee, or tobacco; was farmed
by slave labor; and was owned by a colonial settler from western Europe.
[ 1700–1750
] The Atlantic System and the World Economy 543
W E
AY
S W
OR
-N
ICELAND
AR K
SWEDEN
DENM
Hudson RUSSIA
Bay
ATLANTIC GREAT
CANADA BRITAIN
OCEAN DUTCH REPUBLIC
NEW EUROPE ASIA
NORTH FRANCE RTH Furs, fish ood
s FRANCE
AMERICA NOCATimber, fish t ure
dg
OTTOMAN
SH RI nu
fac SPAIN EMPIRE CHINA
TI M E
co Ma
Tobac JAPAN
I
PORTUGAL
BR
A
Sl a
NEW SPAIN
ve gar Calcutta
s Su
PACIFIC
r wa in, silk
Gold
ices
(Br.)
(MEXICO) silver
, WEST INDIES INDIA Guangzhou
OCEAN
re, sp
Barbados AFRIC A Bombay (Canton)
la
(Br.)
lac , porce
r Pondicherry
lv
e (Fr.) PHILIPPINES
Si Slav
que
es
Tea
EAST INDIES
Gold,
IND ONESIA
s, calicoes, pearls
Slaves
PERU
Silk, coffee, gems

BRAZIL Java
on, gems
silve
r
suga
Coffee
SOUTH ANGOLA
r
British
laves
l d,
AMERICA
pe r
, cott
Go
Danish
Pep
e
s
Spice
ice
ffe
y, s
Silk
Co
Sp
on
Dutch
Eb
French Cape of
Good Hope
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish 0 1,500 3,000 miles
Spices Trade goods
MAP 17.1 European Trade Patterns, c. 1740

By 1740, the European powers had colonized much of North and South America and incorporated
their colonies there into a worldwide system of commerce centered on the slave trade and plan-
tation production of staple crops. Europeans still sought spices and luxury goods in China and
the East Indies, but few Europeans had settled permanently in these areas (with the exception of
Java). How did control over colonies determine dominance in international trade in this period?
Realizing that plantations producing staples for Europeans could bring fabulous
wealth, the European powers grew less interested in the dwindling trade in precious
metals and more eager to colonize. In the 1700s, large-scale planters of sugar, tobacco,
and coffee began displacing small farmers who relied on one or two indentured
servants (men and women who gained passage to the Americas in exchange for
several years of work). Planters and their plantations won out because even cheaper
slave labor allowed them to produce mass quantities of commodities at low prices.
State-chartered private companies from Portugal, France, Britain, the Dutch
Republic, Prussia, and even Denmark exploited the 3,500-mile coastline of West
Africa for slaves. Before 1675, most blacks taken from Africa had been sent to Brazil
or Spanish America on Portuguese or Dutch ships, but by 1725 more than 60 percent
of African slaves landed in the Caribbean (Figure 17.1), and more and more of them
were carried on British or French ships.
After 1700, the plantation economy also began to expand on the North Ameri-
can mainland. The numbers stagger the imagination (Figure 17.2). In all, more than
[ 1700–1750
]
3,219,950
1,718,000
275,000
57,900
British North Spanish America Caribbean Brazil
America and U.S.
FIGURE 17.1 African Slaves Imported into American Territories, 1701–1810

During the eighteenth century, planters in the newly established Caribbean colonies imported
millions of African slaves to work the new plantations that produced sugar, coffee, indigo, and
cotton for the European market. The vast majority of African slaves transported to the Americas
ended up in either the Caribbean or Brazil. Why were so many slaves transported to the Carib-
bean islands, which are relatively small compared to Spanish America or British North America?
(Adapted from http://www.slavevoyages.org/.)
ten million Africans, not counting those who were captured but died before or during
the sea voyage, were transported to the Americas before 1850, after which the slave
trade finally began to wind down. Europeans traded textiles, cowries (shells from the
Indian Ocean), and firearms for slaves, altering local African power structures and
creating political instability. Population declined in West Africa, and because two-
thirds of those enslaved were men, husbands were in short supply and men increas-
ingly took two or more wives in a practice known as polygyny.
The enslaved women and men suffered terribly. Most had been sold to European
traders by Africans from the west coast who acquired them through warfare or
kidnapping. The vast majority were between fourteen and thirty-five years old.
Before cramming them onto the ships for the three-month trip, slavers shaved their
heads and stripped them naked; they also branded some with red-hot irons. They
separated men and women, and shackled men with leg irons. Sailors and officers
raped the women at will. In the cramped and appalling conditions of the voyage, as
many as one-fourth of the slaves died.
Those who survived the transit were sold and given new names, often only first
names. Slaves had no social identities of their own; they were expected to learn their
master’s language and to do any job assigned. Slaves worked fifteen- to seventeen-
hour days and were fed only enough to keep them on their feet. The death rate among
slaves was high, especially on the sugar plantations, where slaves had to cut and haul
sugarcane to the grinders and boilers before it spoiled. During the harvest, grinding
[ 1700–1750
and boiling went on around the clock. Because so many slaves died in the sugar-
growing regions, more and more slaves, especially strong males, had to be imported.
In North America, in contrast, where sugar was a minor crop, the slave population
increased tenfold by 1863 through natural growth.
Not surprisingly, despite the threat of torture or death on recapture, slaves some-
times ran away. Outright revolt was uncommon, but slaveholders’ fears about con-
spiracy and revolt lurked beneath the surface of every slave-based society. In 1710,
the royal governor of Virginia reminded the colonial legislature of the need for
unceasing vigilance: “We are not to Depend on Either Their Stupidity, or that Babel
of Languages among ’em; freedom Wears a Cap which Can Without a Tongue, Call
Togather all Those who Long to Shake off the fetters of Slavery.” Masters defended
whipping and other forms of physical punishment as essential to maintaining disci-
pline. Laws called for the castration of a slave who struck a white person.
The balance of white and black populations in the New World colonies varied
greatly. Because they did not own plantations, New England merchants and farmers
bought few slaves. Blacks — both slave and free — made up only 3 percent of the
population in eighteenth-century New England, compared with 60 percent in South
Carolina. The imbalance of whites and blacks was even more extreme in the Carib-
bean, where most indigenous people had already died fighting Europeans or the
diseases brought by them. By 1713, the French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue
110,000
100,000
90,000
80,000
Number of slaves
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850
Years
FIGURE 17.2 Annual Imports in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1500–1870

The importation of slaves to the American territories increased overall from 1650 until 1800
and did not finally collapse until after 1850.
[ 1700–1750
]
(on the western part of Hispaniola, present-day Haiti) had four times as many black
slaves as whites; by 1754, slaves there outnumbered whites more than ten to one.
Plantation owners often left their colonial possessions in the care of agents and
merely collected the revenue so that they could live as wealthy landowners back
home, where they built opulent mansions and gained influence in local and national
politics. William Beckford, for example, left his inherited sugar plantations in Jamaica
and moved the headquarters of the family business to London in the 1730s to be
close to the government and financial markets. His holdings formed the single most
powerful economic interest in Jamaica, but he preferred to live in England, where
he held political office (he was lord mayor of London and a member of Parliament)
and even loaned money to the government.
The slave trade permanently altered consumption patterns for ordinary people.
Sugar had been prescribed as a medicine before the end of the sixteenth century, but
the development of plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean made it a standard food
item. By 1700, the British were sending home fifty million pounds of sugar a year,
a figure that doubled by 1730. Equally pervasive was the spread of tobacco; by the
1720s, men of every country and class smoked pipes or took snuff.
Even though the traffic in slaves disturbed some Europeans, in the 1700s slave-
holders began to justify their actions by demeaning the mental and spiritual qualities
of the enslaved Africans. White Europeans and colonists sometimes described black
slaves as animal-like, akin to apes. A leading New England Puritan asserted about
the slaves: “Indeed their Stupidity is a Discouragement. It may seem, unto as little
purpose, to Teach, as to wash an Aethiopian [Ethiopian].” One of the great paradoxes
of this time was that talk of liberty and rights, especially prevalent in Britain and
its North American colonies, coexisted with the belief that some people were meant
to be slaves. The churches often defended or at least did not oppose the inequities
of slavery.
World Trade and Settlement

The Atlantic system helped extend European trade relations across the globe. The
textiles that Atlantic shippers exchanged for slaves on the west coast of Africa, for
example, were manufactured in India and exported by the British and French East
India Companies. As much as one-quarter of the British exports to Africa in the
eighteenth century were actually re-exports from India. To expand their trade in the
rest of the world, Europeans seized territories and tried to establish permanent
settlements. The eighteenth-century extension of European power prepared the way
for Western global domination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In contrast to the sparsely inhabited European trading outposts in Asia and Africa,
the colonies in the Americas bulged with settlers. The British North American colo-
nies contained about 1.5 million nonnative (that is, white settler and black slave) resi-
dents by 1750. While the Spanish competed with the Portuguese for control of South
America, the French competed with the British for control of North America.
[
1700–1750
Local economies shaped colonial social relations; men in French trapper com-
munities in Canada, for example, had little in common with the men and women
of the plantation societies in Barbados or Brazil. Racial attitudes also differed from
place to place. Unlike the French and English, the Spanish and Portuguese tolerated
intermarriage with the native populations in both America and Asia. By 1800, mes-
tizos, people born to a Spanish father and an Indian mother, accounted for more
than a quarter of the population in the Spanish colonies. Where intermarriage between
colonizers and natives was common, conversion to Christianity proved most suc-
cessful. However, greater racial diversity seems not to have improved the treatment
of slaves.
In the early years of American colonization, many more men than women emi-
grated from Europe. Although the sex imbalance began to decline at the end of the
seventeenth century, it remained substantial; two and a half times more men than
women were among the immigrants leaving Liverpool, England, between 1697 and
1707, for example. Women who emigrated as indentured servants ran great risks:
many died of disease during the voyage, and at least one in five gave birth to an
illegitimate child.
However, the uncertainties of life in the American colonies provided new oppor-
tunities for European women and men willing to live outside the law. In the 1500s
and 1600s, the English and Dutch governments had routinely authorized pirates to
prey on the ships of their rivals, the Spanish and Portuguese. Then, in the late 1600s,
English, French, and Dutch bands made up of deserters and crews from wrecked
vessels began to form their own associations of pirates, especially in the Caribbean.
Called buccaneers from their custom of curing strips of beef, called boucan by the
native Caribs of the islands, the pirates governed themselves and preyed on every-
one’s shipments without regard to national origin. After 1700, the colonial govern-
ments tried to stamp out piracy.
In comparison to those in the Americas, white settlements in Africa and Asia
remained small. A handful of Portuguese trading posts in Angola and a few Dutch
farms on the Cape of Good Hope provided the only toeholds in Africa for future
expansion. In China, the emperors had welcomed Catholic missionaries at court in
the seventeenth century, but the priests’ credibility diminished as they squabbled
among themselves and associated with European merchants, whom the Chinese con-
sidered pirates. In 1720, only one thousand Europeans resided in Guangzhou (Can-
ton), the sole place where foreigners could legally trade for spices, tea, and silk (see
Map 17.1, page 543).
Europeans exercised more influence in Java (in what was then called the East
Indies) and in India. Many Dutch settled in Java to oversee coffee production and
Asian trade. Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Danish companies competed
in India for spices, cotton, and silk; by the 1740s, the English and French had
become the leading rivals in India, just as they were in North America. Both coun-
tries extended their power as India’s Muslim rulers lost control to local Hindu
princes, rebellious Sikhs, invading Persians, and their own provincial governors. A
[ 1700–1750
]
India Cottons and Trade with the East

This colored cotton cloth (now faded with age) was painted and embroidered in Madras, in
southern India, sometime in the late 1600s. The male figure with a mustache may be a Euro-
pean, but the female figures are clearly Asian. Europeans — especially the British — discovered
that they could make big profits on the export of Indian cotton cloth to Europe. They also traded
Indian cottons in Africa for slaves and sold large quantities in the colonies. (Detail, Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
few thousand Europeans lived in India, though many thousand more soldiers were
stationed there to protect them. The staple of trade with India in the early 1700s was
calico — lightweight, brightly colored cotton cloth that caught on as a fashion in
Europe. English and French slave traders sold calico to the Africans in exchange for
slaves.
The Birth of Consumer Society

As worldwide colonization produced new supplies of goods, from coffee to calico,
population growth in Europe fueled demand for them. Beginning in Britain, then in
France and the Italian states, and finally in eastern Europe, population surged, grow-
ing by about 20 percent between 1700 and 1750. The gap between a fast-growing
northwest and a more stagnant south and central Europe now diminished as regions
that had lost population during the seventeenth-century downturn recovered. Cities,
in particular, grew. Between 1600 and 1750, Paris’s population more than doubled
and London’s more than tripled.
[1700–1750
Although contemporaries could not have realized it then, this was the start of
the modern population explosion. It appears that a decline in the death rate, rather
than a rise in the birthrate, explains the turnaround. Three main factors contributed
to increased longevity: better weather and hence more bountiful harvests, improved
agricultural techniques, and the plague’s disappearance after 1720.
By the early eighteenth century, the effects of economic expansion and popula-
tion growth brought about a consumer revolution. For example, at Nantes, the center
of the French sugar trade, imports quadrupled between 1698 and 1733. Tea, chocolate,
and coffee became virtual necessities. In 1700, England had two thousand coffee-
houses; by 1740, every English country town had at least two. Paris got its first cafés
at the end of the seventeenth century, and Berlin opened its first coffeehouse in 1714.
A new economic dynamic steadily took shape that has influenced all of subse-
quent history. More and more people escaped the confines of a subsistence economy,
in which peasants produced barely enough to support themselves from year to year.
As ordinary people gained more disposable income, demand for nonessential con-
sumer goods rose. These included not only the new colonial products such as coffee
and tea but also tables, chairs, sheets, chamber pots, lamps, and mirrors — and for the
better off still, coffee- and teapots, china, cutlery, chests of drawers, desks, clocks,
and pictures for the walls.
Rising demand created more jobs and more income and yet more purchas-
ing power in a mutually reinforcing cycle. In the English economic literature of the
1690s and early 1700s, writers reacted to these developments by expressing a new
view of humans as consuming
animals with boundless appe-
tites. Change did not occur all
at once, however. The consumer
revolution spread from the cities
The Exotic as Consumer Item

This painting by the Venetian artist
Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757) is
titled Africa. The young black girl
wearing a turban represents the
African continent. Carriera was
known for her use of pastels. In
1720, she journeyed to Paris,
where she became an associate of
Antoine Watteau and helped inaugu-
rate the rococo style in painting.
Why might the artist have chosen
to paint an African girl? (bpk, Berlin /
Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Staaliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany /
Photo: Elke Estel / Hans-Peter Klut / Art
Resource, NY.)
[ 1700–1750
]
to the countryside, from England to the continent, and from western Europe to
eastern Europe only over the long run.
Europe was not the only region experiencing such changes. China’s population
grew even faster — it may have tripled during the 1700s — and there, too, consump-
tion of cloth, furniture, tea, sugar, and tobacco all increased. In China, these goods
could be locally produced, and China did
REVIEW QUESTION How was consumerism not pursue colonization of far-flung lands.
related to slavery in the early eighteenth Still, foreign trade also increased, especially
century? with lands on China’s borders.
New Social and Cultural Patterns

The rise of consumption in Europe was fueled in part by a revolution in agricultural
techniques that made it possible to produce larger quantities of food with a smaller
agricultural workforce. As population increased, more people moved to the cities,
where they found themselves caught up in innovative urban customs such as attend-
ing musical concerts and reading novels. Along with a general increase in literacy,
these activities helped create a public that responded to new writers and artists. As
always, people’s experiences varied depending on whether they lived in wealth or
poverty, in urban or rural areas, or in eastern or western Europe.
Agricultural Revolution
Although Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic shared the enthusiasm for con-
sumer goods, Britain’s domestic market grew most quickly. In Britain, as agricultural
output increased by 43 percent over the course of the 1700s, the population increased
by 70 percent. The British imported grain to feed the growing population, but they
also benefited from the development of techniques that together constituted an
agricultural revolution. It was not new machinery but rather increasingly aggressive
attitudes toward investment and management that propelled this revolution. The
Dutch and the Flemish had pioneered many agricultural management techniques in
the 1600s, but the British took them further.
Four major changes occurred in British agriculture that eventually spread to
other countries. First, farmers increased the amount of land under cultivation by
draining wetlands and by growing crops on previously uncultivated common lands
(acreage maintained by the community for grazing). Second, those farmers who could
afford it consolidated small, scattered plots into larger, more efficient units. Third,
livestock raising became more closely linked to crop growing, and the yields of each
increased. For centuries, most farmers had rotated their fields in and out of produc-
tion to replenish the soil. Now farmers planted carefully chosen fodder crops such
as clover and turnips that added nutrients to the soil, thereby eliminating the need
to leave a field fallow (unplanted) every two or three years. With more fodder avail-
able, farmers could raise more livestock, which in turn produced more manure to
[1700–1750
] New Social and Cultural Patterns 551
fertilize grain fields. Fourth, selective breeding of animals combined with the increase
in fodder to improve the quality and size of herds. By the 1730s and 1740s, agricul-
tural output had increased dramatically, and prices for food had fallen because of
these interconnected innovations.
Changes in agricultural practices did not benefit all landowners equally. The
biggest British landowners consolidated their holdings in the “enclosure movement.”
They put pressure on small farmers and villagers to sell their land or give up their
common lands. The big landlords then fenced off (enclosed) their property. Because
enclosure eliminated community grazing rights, it frequently sparked a struggle
between the big landlords and villagers, and in Britain it normally required an act
of Parliament. Such acts became increasingly common in the second half of the
eighteenth century, and by the century’s end six million acres of common lands had
been enclosed and developed. In this way the English peasantry largely disappeared,
replaced by a more hierarchical society of big landlords, enterprising tenant farmers,
and poor agricultural laborers.
The new agricultural techniques spread slowly from Britain and the Low Coun-
tries (the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands) to the rest of western
Europe. Outside a few pockets, however, subsistence agriculture (producing just
enough to get by rather than surpluses for the market) continued to dominate farm-
ing in western Europe and Scandinavia. Unlike the populations of the highly urban-
ized Low Countries (where half the people lived in towns and cities), most Europe-
ans, western and eastern, eked out their existence in the countryside and could barely
participate in the new markets for consumer goods.
In eastern Europe, the condition of peasants worsened in the areas where land-
lords tried hardest to improve crop yields. To produce more for the Baltic grain
market, aristocratic landholders in Prussia, Poland, and parts of Russia drained wet-
lands, cultivated moors, and built dikes. They also forced peasants off lands that the
peasants had worked for themselves, and they increased compulsory labor services
(the critical element in serfdom). Some eastern landowners grew fabulously wealthy.
The Potocki family in the Polish Ukraine, for example, owned three million acres of
land and had 130,000 serfs.
Social Life in the Cities

Because of emigration from the countryside, cities grew in population and conse-
quently exercised a growing influence on culture and social life. Between 1650 and
1750, cities with at least ten thousand inhabitants increased in population by 44
percent. From the eighteenth century onward, urban growth has been continuous.
Along with the general growth of cities, an important south-to-north shift occurred
in the pattern of urbanization. Around 1500, half of the people in cities of at least
ten thousand residents could be found in the Italian states, Spain, or Portugal; by
1700, the urbanization of northwestern and southern Europe was roughly equal.
Eastern Europe, despite the huge cities of Istanbul and Moscow, was still less urban
[ 1700–1750
]
than western Europe. With 675,000 inhabitants, London was by far the most popu-
lous European city in 1750; Berlin had 90,000 people, Warsaw only 23,000.
Many landowners kept a residence in town, so the separation between rural and
city life was not as extreme as might be imagined, at least not for the very rich. At
the top of the ladder in the big cities were the landed nobles. Some of them filled
their lives only with conspicuous consumption of fine food, extravagant clothing,
carriages, books, and opera; others held key political, administrative, or judicial
offices. However they spent their time, these rich families employed thousands of
artisans, shopkeepers, and domestic servants. Many English peers (highest-ranking
nobles) had thirty or forty servants at each of their homes.
The middle classes of officials, merchants, professionals, and landowners occupied
the next rung down on the social ladder. London’s population, for example, included
about twenty thousand middle-class families (constituting, at most, one-sixth of the
city’s population). In this period the middle classes began to develop distinctive ways
of life that set them apart from both the rich noble landowners and the lower classes.
Unlike the rich nobles, the middle classes lived primarily in the cities and towns,
even if they owned small country estates.
Below the middle classes came the artisans and shopkeepers (most of whom
were organized in professional guilds), then the journeymen, apprentices, servants,
and laborers. At the bottom of the social scale were the unemployed poor, who
Vauxhall Gardens, London

This hand-colored print from the mid-eighteenth century shows the newly refurbished gardens
near the Thames River. Prosperous families show off their brightly colored clothes and listen to
a public concert by the orchestra seated just above them. These activities helped form a more
self-conscious public. (Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Images.)
[1700–1750
survived by intermittent work and charity. Women married to artisans and shopkeep-
ers often kept the accounts, supervised employees, and ran the household as well.
Every middle-class and upper-class family employed servants; artisans and shop-
keepers frequently hired them, too. Women from poorer families usually worked as
domestic servants until they married. Four out of five domestic servants in the city
were female. In large cities such as London, the servant population grew faster than
the population of the city as a whole.
Social status in the cities was readily visible. Wide, spacious streets graced rich
districts; the houses had gardens, and the air was relatively fresh. In poor districts,
the streets were narrow, dirty, dark, humid, and smelly, and the houses were damp
and crowded. The poorest people were homeless, sleeping under bridges or in aban-
doned buildings. A Neapolitan prince described his homeless neighbors as “lying
like filthy animals, with no distinction of age or sex.”
Like shelter, clothing was a reliable social indicator. The poorest workingwomen
in Paris wore woolen skirts and blouses of dark colors over petticoats, a bodice, and
a corset. They also donned caps of various sorts, cotton stockings, and shoes (prob-
ably their only pair). Workingmen dressed even more drably. Many occupations
could be recognized by their dress: no one could confuse lawyers in their dark robes
with masons or butchers in their special aprons, for example. People higher on the
social ladder were more likely to sport a variety of fabrics, colors, and unusual designs
in their clothing and to own many different outfits. Social status was not an abstract
idea; it permeated every detail of daily life.
The ability to read and write also reflected social differences. People in the upper
classes were more literate than those in the lower classes; city people were more liter-
ate than peasants. Protestant countries appear to have been more successful at pro-
moting education and literacy than Catholic countries, perhaps because of the Prot-
estant emphasis on Bible reading. Widespread literacy among the lower classes was
first achieved in the Protestant areas of Switzerland and in Presbyterian Scotland. In
France, literacy doubled in the eighteenth century thanks to the spread of parish
schools, but still only one in two men and one in four women could read and write.
Most peasants remained illiterate. Few schools existed, teachers received low wages,
and no country had yet established a national system of education.
A new literate public nonetheless arose among the middle classes of the cities.
More books and periodicals were published than ever before, another aspect of the
consumer revolution. The trend began in the 1690s in Britain and the Dutch Republic
and gradually accelerated. In 1695, new newspapers and magazines proliferated when
the British government stopped demanding that each publication have a government-
approved license. The first London daily newspaper came out in 1702, and in 1709
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele published the first literary magazine, The Spec-
tator. They devoted their magazine to the cultural improvement of the increasingly
influential middle class. By the 1720s, twenty-four provincial newspapers were pub-
lished in England. In the London coffeehouses, an edition of a single newspaper might
reach ten thousand male readers. Women did their reading at home. Except in the
[ 1700–1750
]
Dutch Republic, newspapers on the continent lagged behind and often consisted
mainly of advertising with little critical commentary. France, for example, had no
daily paper until 1777.
New Tastes in the Arts

The new literate public did not just read newspapers; its members now pursued an
interest in painting, attended concerts, and besieged booksellers in search of popular
novels. Because increased trade and prosperity put money into the hands of the
growing middle classes, a new urban audience began to compete with the churches,
rulers, and courtiers as chief patrons for new work.
Developments in painting reflected the tastes of the new public, as the rococo
style challenged the hold of the baroque and classical schools, especially in France.
Rococo, like baroque, was an invented word (from the French word rocaille, “shell-
work”) and originally a derogatory label, meaning “frivolous decoration.” Many
rococo paintings depicted scenes of intimate sensuality rather than the monumental,
emotional grandeur favored by classical and baroque painters. Personal portraits and
pastoral paintings took the place of heroic landscapes and grand, ceremonial can-
vases. Rococo paintings adorned homes as well as palaces and served as a form of
interior decoration rather than as a statement of piety. Its decorative quality made
rococo art an ideal complement to newly discovered materials such as stucco and
porcelain, especially the porcelain vases now imported from China.
Public music concerts were first
performed in England in the 1670s
and became much more regular and
frequent in the 1690s. On the con-
tinent, Frankfurt organized the first
regular public concerts in 1712;
Hamburg and Paris began holding
them within a few years. Opera con-
tinued to spread in the eighteenth
century; Venice had sixteen public
Rococo Painting
The rococo emphasis on interiors, on dec-
oration, and on intimacy rather than
monumental grandeur are evident in Fran-
çois Boucher’s painting The Luncheon
(1739). The painting also draws attention
to new consumer items, from the mirror
and the clock to chocolate, children’s
toys, a small Buddha statue, and the intri-
cately designed furniture. (Louvre, Paris,
France / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY.)
[
1700–1750
opera houses by 1700, and the Covent Garden opera house opened in London in
1732.
The growth of a public that appreciated and supported music had much the
same effect as the extension of the reading public: like authors, composers could now
begin to liberate themselves from court patronage and work for a paying audience.
The composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was among the first to grasp the
new directions in music. A German by birth, Handel wrote operas in Italy and then
moved in 1710 to Britain, where he wrote music for the court and began composing
oratorios. The oratorio, a form Handel introduced in Britain, combined the drama
of opera with the majesty of religious and ceremonial music and featured the chorus
over the soloists. The “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s oratorio Messiah (1741) is
perhaps the single best-known piece of Western classical music. It reflected the com-
poser’s personal, deeply felt piety but also his willingness to combine musical
materials into a dramatic form that captured the enthusiasm of the new public.
Nothing captured the imagination of the new public more than the novel, the liter-
ary genre whose very name underscored the eighteenth-century taste for novelty. More
than three hundred French novels appeared between 1700 and 1730. During this
unprecedented explosion, the novel took on its modern form and became more con-
cerned with individual psychology and social description than with the adventure tales
popular earlier (such as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote). The novel’s popularity
was closely tied to the expansion of the reading public, and novels were available in
serial form in periodicals or from the many booksellers who served the new market.
Women figured prominently in novels as characters, and women writers
abounded. The English author Eliza Haywood (1693?–1756) earned her living turning
out a stream of novels with titles such as Persecuted Virtue, Constancy Rewarded, and
The History of Betsy Thoughtless — all showing a concern for the proper place of
women as models of virtue in a changing world. Haywood’s male counterpart was
Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), a merchant’s son who had a diverse and colorful career
as a manufacturer, political spy, novelist, and social commentator. Defoe is best known
for his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). The story of the adventures of a shipwrecked
sailor, Robinson Crusoe portrayed the new values of the time: to survive, Crusoe had
to employ fearless entrepreneurial ingenuity. He had to be ready for the unexpected
and be able to improvise in every situation. He was, in short, the model for the new
man in an expanding economy. Crusoe’s patronizing attitude toward the black man
Friday now draws much critical attention, but his discovery of Friday shows how the
fate of blacks and whites had become intertwined in the new colonial environment.
Religious Revivals
Despite the novel’s growing popularity, religious books and pamphlets still sold in
huge numbers, and most Europeans remained devout, even as their religions were
changing. In this period, a Protestant revivalist movement known as Pietism rocked
the complacency of the established churches in northern Europe. Pietists believed in
[ 1700–1750
]
a mystical religion of the heart; they wanted a deeply emotional, even ecstatic reli-
gion. They urged intense Bible study, which in turn promoted popular education
and contributed to the increase in literacy. Many Pietists attended catechism instruc-
tion every day and also went to morning and evening prayer meetings in addition
to regular Sunday services. Although Pietism appealed to both Lutherans and Cal-
vinists, it had the greatest impact in Lutheran Prussia, where it taught the virtues of
hard work, obedience, and devotion to duty.
Catholicism also had its versions of religious revival, especially in France. A French-
woman, Jeanne Marie Guyon (1648–1717), attracted many noblewomen and a few
leading clergymen to her own Catholic brand of Pietism, known as Quietism. Claim-
ing miraculous visions and astounding prophecies, she urged a mystical union with
God through prayer and simple devotion. Despite papal condemnation and intense
controversy within Catholic circles in France, Guyon had followers all over Europe.
Even more influential were the Jansenists, who gained many new adherents to
their austere form of Catholicism despite Louis XIV’s harassment and repeated con-
demnation by the papacy. Under the pressure of religious and political persecution,
Jansenism took a revivalist turn in the 1720s. At the funeral of a Jansenist priest in
Paris in 1727, the crowd who flocked to the grave claimed to witness a series of miracu-
lous healings. Some believers fell into frenzied convulsions, claiming to be inspired by
the Holy Spirit through the intercession of
the dead priest. After midcentury, Jansen-
REVIEW QUESTION How were new social
trends reflected in cultural life in the early ism became even more politically active as
1700s? its adherents joined in opposition to the
crown’s policies on religion.
Consolidation of the European State System

The spread of Pietism and Jansenism reflected the emergence of a middle-class pub-
lic that now participated in every new development, including religion. The middle
classes could pursue these interests because the European state system gradually sta-
bilized despite the increasing competition for wealth in the Atlantic system. Warfare
settled three main issues between 1700 and 1750: a coalition of powers held France
in check on the continent, Great Britain emerged from the wars against France as
the preeminent maritime power, and Russia defeated Sweden in the contest for
supremacy in the Baltic. After Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Europe enjoyed the fruits
of a more balanced diplomatic system, in which warfare became less frequent and
less widespread. States could then spend their resources establishing and expanding
control over their own populations, both at home and in their colonies.
A New Power Alignment

The peace treaties that ended the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713) sig-
naled a new alignment of power in western Europe (see Chapter 16). Spain began a
long decline, French ambitions for dominance were thwarted, and Great Britain
[1700–1750
] Consolidation of the European State System 557
emerged as the new center in the balance of power. A coalition led by Britain and
joined by most of the European powers had confronted Louis XIV’s French forces
across Europe. The conflict extended to the Caribbean and North and South Amer-
ica as well. The casualties mounted inexorably: in the battle of Blenheim in southern
Germany in 1704, 108,000 soldiers fought and 33,000 were killed or wounded — in
just one day. At Malplaquet, near the northern French border, a great battle in 1709
engaged 166,000 soldiers and cavalrymen, and 36,000 of them were killed or wounded.
Those allied against Louis won at Malplaquet, but they lost twice as many men as the
French did and could not pursue their advantage. Everyone rejoiced when peace came
(Map 17.2).
By the terms of the peace, French king Louis XIV’s grandson was confirmed as
King Philip V of Spain (r. 1700–1746) but only on the condition that he renounce
any claim to the French throne. None of the other powers could countenance a joint
French-Spanish monarchy. Philip opened Spain further to the rest of Europe and sta-
bilized the currency, but he could not revive Spain’s military prestige or commercial
position. Spain consistently imported more from Britain and France than it exported
to them. As a country that had been created by a campaign against Muslims within
its boundaries, Spain remained firmly in the grip of the Catholic clergy, which insisted
on the censorship of dissident or heretical ideas. Although the capital city, Madrid,
had 200,000 inhabitants, laws prohibited people from smoking, reading newspapers,
or talking politics in the cafés and inns of the city — precisely the activities flourish-
ing in England, France, and the Dutch Republic.
When Louis XIV died in 1715, his five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him
as Louis XV (r. 1715–1774), with the duke of Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the
dead king, serving as regent for the young boy. To raise much-needed funds, in 1719
the regent encouraged the Scottish financier John Law to set up an official trading
company for North America and a state bank that issued paper money and stock
(without which trade depended on the available supply of gold and silver). The bank
was supposed to offer lower interest rates to the state, thus cutting the cost of financ-
ing the government’s debts. The value of the stock rose rapidly in a frenzy of specula-
tion, only to crash a few months later. France finally achieved a measure of financial
stability under the leadership of Cardinal Hercule de Fleury (1653–1743), the most
powerful member of the government after the death of the regent. Colonial trade
boomed. Peace and the acceptance of limits on territorial expansion inaugurated a
century of French prosperity.
British Rise and Dutch Decline

The British and the Dutch had formed a coalition against Louis XIV under their
joint ruler, William III, who was simultaneously stadholder (elected head) of the
Dutch Republic and, with his English wife, Mary (d. 1694), ruler of England, Wales,
and Scotland. After William’s death in 1702, the British and Dutch went their separate
ways. Over the next decades, England incorporated Scotland and subjugated Ireland,
[ 1700–1750
]
British and French Claims
after the Peace of Utrecht, 1714
0 200 400 miles
Newfoundland
Hudson
Bay
AY
British French
claim claim
RW
S W E D E N
0 500 1000 miles Nova
British Scotia
-NO
0 500 1000 kilometers claim
RK
St. Petersburg
MA
SCOTLAND
DEN
Edinburgh
a
Moscow
Nor th
Se
N IRELAND S ea
lti
c
W
Ba
Dublin
E GREAT DUTCH POLAND- RUSSIA
BRITAIN REPUBLIC
I
LITHUANIA
SS
U
S PR
ENGLAND G-
Hanover UR
ENB
Utrecht BRAND
London Berlin Warsaw
Elb
English Channel Austrian Cologne

eR
Neth. HOLY Kiev

.
Rh
Malplaquet R.
ROM A N
ine
la
AT L A N T I C Vistu
R
Paris EMPIRE
.
OCEAN Blenheim
AUSTRIA
.
Loire R Vienna
HUNGARY
SWISS Pest
Buda
FR ANCE CONFED.
SAVOY
MILANVENICE Da
nub
e R.
GENOA
Black Sea
Marseille TUSCANYPAPAL
PORTUGAL STATES O
Madrid
Corsica T
TO Constantinople
Lisbon
SPAIN
Rome M
Minorca KINGDOM AN
(Gr. Br.) OF NAPLES EM
BALEARIC IS. Sardinia PIR
E
Gibraltar
(Gr. Br.) Sicily
Territories gained after the Peace of Utrecht, 1714
French Bourbon lands To Great Britain
Spanish Bourbon lands To the Austrian Empire
Austrian Habsburg lands The Jacobite rising of 1715 M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Prussian lands Main areas of fighting during the
War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1713
Great Britain
MAP 17.2 Europe, c. 1715

Although Louis XIV succeeded in putting his grandson Philip on the Spanish throne, France
emerged considerably weakened from the War of the Spanish Succession. France ceded large
territories in Canada to Britain, which also gained key Mediterranean outposts from Spain as
well as a monopoly on providing slaves to the Spanish colonies. Spanish losses were cata-
strophic. Philip had to renounce any future claim to the French crown and give up considerable
territories in the Netherlands and Italy to the Austrians. How did the competing English and
French claims in North America around 1715 create potential conflicts for the future?
[1700–1750
becoming “Great Britain” in 1707. At the same time, Dutch imperial power declined;
by 1700, the British dominated the seas, and the Dutch, with their small population
of less than two million, came to depend on alliances with bigger powers.
English relations with Scotland and Ireland were complicated by the problem of
succession: William and Mary had no children. To ensure a Protestant succession,
Parliament ruled that Mary’s sister, Anne, would succeed William and Mary and that
the Protestant house of Hanover in Germany would succeed Anne if she had no
surviving heirs. Catholics were excluded. When Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714) died
leaving no children, the elector of Hanover, a Protestant great-grandson of James I,
consequently became King George I (r. 1714–1727). The house of Hanover — renamed
the house of Windsor during World War I — still occupies the British throne today.
Support from the Scots and Irish for this solution did not come easily because
many in Scotland and Ireland supported the claims to the throne of the deposed
Catholic king, James II, and, after his death in 1701, his son James Edward. Out of
fear of this Jacobitism (from the Latin Jacobus, for “James”), Scottish Protestant lead-
ers agreed to the Act of Union of 1707, which abolished the Scottish Parliament and
affirmed the Scots’ recognition of the Protestant Hanoverian succession. The Scots
agreed to obey the Parliament of Great Britain, which would include Scottish mem-
bers in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. A Jacobite rebellion in Scot-
land in 1715, aiming to restore the Stuart line, was suppressed (see Map 17.2, page
558). The threat of Jacobitism nonetheless continued into the 1740s.
The Irish — 90 percent of whom were Catholic — proved even more difficult to
subdue. William III had to take command of the joint English and Dutch forces to
defeat the Irish supporters of James II, and after that defeat Catholics in Ireland faced
yet more confiscation and legal restrictions. By 1700, Irish Catholics, who in 1640
had owned 60 percent of the land in Ireland, owned just 14 percent. The Protestant-
controlled Irish Parliament passed a series of laws limiting the rights of the Catholic
majority: Catholics could not marry Protestants, send children abroad for education,
or establish Catholic schools at home. Moreover, Catholics could not sit in Parlia-
ment, nor could they vote for its members unless they took an oath renouncing
Catholic doctrine. These and a host of other laws reduced Catholic Ireland to the
status of a colony.
In Britain’s constitutional system, the monarch ruled with Parliament. The crown
chose ministers, directed policy, and supervised administration, while Parliament
raised revenue, passed laws, and represented the interests of the people to the crown.
The powers of Parliament were reaffirmed by the Triennial Act in 1694, which pro-
vided that Parliaments meet at least once every three years (this was extended to
seven years in 1716, after the Whigs had established their ascendancy). Only 200,000
propertied men could vote, out of a population of more than 5 million, and a few
hundred families controlled all the important political offices.
George I and George II (r. 1727–1760) relied on one man, Sir Robert Walpole
(1676–1745), to help them manage their relations with Parliament. From his posi-
tion as First Lord of the Treasury, Walpole made himself into the first, or “prime,”
[ 1700–1750
]
minister, leading the House of Commons from 1721 to 1742. Although appointed
initially by the king, Walpole established an enduring pattern of parliamentary gov-
ernment in which a prime minister from the leading party guided legislation through
the House of Commons. Walpole also built a vast patronage machine that dispensed
government jobs to win support for the crown’s policies.
The partisan division between the Whigs, who supported the Hanoverian suc-
cession and the rights of dissenting Protestants, and the Tories, who had backed the
Stuart line and the Church of England, did not hamper Great Britain’s pursuit of
economic, military, and colonial power. In this period, Great Britain became a great
power on the world stage by virtue of its navy and its ability to finance major military
involvement in wars. The founding in 1694 of the Bank of England — which, unlike
the French bank, endured — enabled the government to raise money at low interest
for foreign wars. By the 1740s, the government could borrow more than four times
what it could in the 1690s.
When William of Orange (William III of England) died in 1702, he left no heirs,
and for forty-five years the Dutch lived without a stadholder. The merchant ruling
class of some two thousand families dominated the Dutch Republic more than ever,
but they presided over a country that counted for less in international power politics.
The Dutch population was not growing as fast as others, and the Dutch share of the
Baltic trade decreased from 50 percent in 1720 to less than 30 percent by the 1770s.
The output of Leiden textiles dropped to one-third of its 1700 level by 1740. Ship-
building, paper manufacturing, tobacco processing, salt refining, and pottery produc-
tion all dwindled as well. The biggest exception to the downward trend was trade with
the New World, which increased with escalating demands for sugar and tobacco. The
Dutch shifted their interest away from great-power rivalries and toward those areas of
international trade and finance where they could establish an enduring presence.
Russia’s Emergence as a European Power

The commerce and shipbuilding of the Dutch and British so impressed Russian tsar
Peter I (r. 1689–1725) that he traveled incognito to their shipyards in 1697 to learn
their methods firsthand. Known to history as Peter the Great, he dragged Russia
kicking and screaming all the way to great-power status. Although he came to the
throne while still a minor (on the eve of his tenth birthday), grew up under the threat
of a palace coup, and enjoyed little formal education, his accomplishments soon
matched his seven-foot-tall stature. Peter transformed public life in Russia and estab-
lished an absolutist state based on the Western model. His attempts to create a soci-
ety patterned after western Europe, known as Westernization, ignited an enduring
controversy: Did Peter set Russia on a course of inevitable Westernization required
to compete with the West? Or did he forever and fatally disrupt Russia’s natural
evolution into a distinctive Slavic society?
To pursue his goal of Westernizing Russian culture, Peter set up the first labora-
tories and technical schools and founded the Russian Academy of Sciences. He ordered
[1700–1750
Peter the Great Modernizes Russia

In this popular print, a barber forces a
protesting noble to conform to Western
fashions. Peter the Great ordered all
nobles, merchants, and middle-class
professionals to cut off their beards or
pay a huge tax to keep them. An early
biographer of Peter claimed that those
who lost their beards saved them to put
in their coffins, in fear that they would
not enter heaven without them. Most
western Europeans applauded these
attempts to modernize Russia, but many
Russians deeply resented the attack
on traditional ways. Why was everyday
appearance such a contested issue in
Russia? (Universal History Archive / UIG /
Bridgeman Images.)
translations of Western classics and

hired a German theater company to
perform the French plays of Molière.
He replaced the traditional Russian calendar with the Western one,* introduced Ara-
bic numerals, and brought out the first public newspaper. He ordered his officials
and the nobles to shave their beards and dress in Western fashion.
Peter encouraged foreigners to move to Russia to offer their advice and skills,
especially for building the capital city. Named St. Petersburg after the tsar, the new
capital symbolized Russia’s opening to the West. Construction began in 1703 in a
Baltic province that had been recently conquered from Sweden. By the end of 1709,
thirty thousand laborers had been enlisted in the construction. Peter ordered skilled
workers to move to the new city and commanded all landowners possessing more
than forty serf households to build houses there. In the 1720s, a German minister
described St. Petersburg “as a wonder of the world, considering its magnificent pal-
aces, . . . and the short time that was employed in the building of it.” At Peter’s death
in 1725, the new city had forty thousand residents.
Peter aimed to set Russia on a new course. At his new capital he tried to improve
the traditionally denigrated, secluded status of women by ordering them to dress in
European styles and appear publicly at his dinners for diplomatic representatives. A
foreigner headed every one of Peter’s new technical and vocational schools, and for
its first eight years the new Academy of Sciences included no Russians. Every min-
istry was assigned a foreign adviser. Upper-class Russians learned French or German,
*Peter introduced the Julian calendar, then still used in Protestant but not Catholic countries. Later in
the eighteenth century, Protestant Europe abandoned the Julian for the Gregorian calendar. Not until
1918 was the Gregorian calendar adopted in Russia, at which point Russia’s calendar had fallen thir-
teen days behind Europe’s.
[ 1700–1750
]
which they spoke even at home. Such changes affected only the very top of Russian
society, however; the mass of the population had no contact with the new ideas and
ended up paying for the innovations either in ruinous new taxation or by building
St. Petersburg, a project that cost the lives of thousands of workers. Serfs remained
tied to the land, completely dominated by their noble lords.
Peter also reorganized government and finance on Western models and, like
other absolute rulers, strengthened his army. With ruthless recruiting methods,
which included branding a cross on every recruit’s left hand to prevent desertion, he
forged an army of 200,000 men and equipped it with modern weapons. He not only
built the first navy in Russian history but also created schools for artillery, engineer-
ing, and military medicine. Not surprisingly, taxes tripled.
The tsar allowed nothing to stand in his way. He did not hesitate to use torture,
and he executed thousands. He gave a special guard regiment unprecedented power
to expedite cases against those suspected of rebellion, espionage, pretensions to the
throne, or just “unseemly utterances” against him. Because his only son, Alexei, had
allied himself with Peter’s critics, the tsar threw him into prison, where the young
man mysteriously died.
To control the often restive nobility, Peter insisted that all noblemen engage in
state service. The Table of Ranks (1722) classified them into military, administrative,
and court categories, a codification of social and legal relationships in Russia that
would last for nearly two centuries. Because the nobles lacked a secure independent
status, Peter could command them to a degree that was unimaginable in western
Europe. State service was not only compulsory but also permanent. Moreover, the
male children of those in service had to be registered by the age of ten and begin
serving at fifteen. To increase his authority over the Russian Orthodox church, Peter
allowed the office of patriarch (supreme head) to remain vacant, and in 1721 he
replaced it with the Holy Synod, a bureaucracy of laymen under his supervision.
Peter the Great’s success in building up state authority changed the balance of
power in eastern Europe. First he took on Sweden, which had dominated the Baltic
region since the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Peter joined an anti-Swedish coali-
tion in 1700 with Denmark, Saxony, and Poland, but the ensuing Great Northern
War (1700–1721) went badly for the allies at first. The Swedes defeated Denmark,
quickly marched into Poland and Saxony, and then invaded Russia. Peter’s rebuilt
army finally defeated the Swedes at the battle of Poltava (1709), taking twenty-three
thousand Swedish soldiers prisoner and marking the end of Swedish imperial ambi-
tions in the Baltic (Map 17.3). Russia could then begin to compete with the great
powers Prussia, Austria, and France.
When the tide turned in the Great Northern War, King Frederick William I of
Prussia (r. 1713–1740) joined the Russian side and gained new territories. Prussia
had to make the most of every military opportunity because it was much smaller in
size and population than the other powers. Frederick William doubled the size of
the Prussian army; though still smaller than those of his rivals, it was the best-trained
and most up-to-date force in Europe. The army so dominated life in Prussia that the
[1700–1750
N Expansion of Russia under

W Peter the Great, 1689–1725
E Swedish losses to Prussia
S after the Treaty of Nystad
SW E DE N Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
FINLAND
Battle
ia
rel
Ka
Nystad St. Petersburg Volga R.
Ingria .
Estonia lR
ra
Moscow
U
ea Livonia
RUSSIA
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lti
DENMARK
IA
Ba
SS
RU
ViP Warsaw Poltava
stu
HOLY la Kiev
POLAND- 1709
R.
ROMAN LITHUANIA Ca
sp
EMPIRE ia
Vienna
n
AUSTRIA
Se
a
Black Sea
D an u b e R .
0 250 500 miles
MAP 17.3 Russia and Sweden after the Great Northern War, 1721
After the Great Northern War, Russia supplanted Sweden as the major power in the north.
Although Russia had a much larger population from which to draw its armies, Sweden made
the most of its advantages and gave way only after a great military struggle.
country earned the label “a large army with a small state attached.” One of the first
rulers to wear a military uniform as his everyday dress, Frederick William subordi-
nated the entire domestic administration to the army’s needs. He financed the army’s
growth by subjecting all the provinces to an excise tax on food, drink, and manu-
factured goods and by increasing rents on crown lands.
Continuing Dynastic Struggles

War broke out again in 1733 when the king of Poland-Lithuania died. France, Spain,
and Sardinia joined in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1735) against Austria
and Russia, each side supporting rival claimants to the Polish throne. Prussia chose
to sit on the sidelines. Although Peter the Great had been followed by a series of
weak rulers, Russian forces were still strong enough to drive the French candidate
out of Poland-Lithuania, prompting France to accept the Austrian candidate. In
exchange, Austria gave the province of Lorraine to the French candidate, the father-
in-law of Louis XV, with the promise that the province would pass to France on his
death. France and Britain went back to pursuing their colonial rivalries. Prussia and
Russia concentrated on shoring up their influence within Poland-Lithuania.
Because its armies still faced the Turks on its southeastern border, Austria did
not want to become mired in a long struggle in Poland-Lithuania. Even though the
[ 1700–1750
]
Austrians had forced the Turks to recognize their
Habsburg dominions, 1657
Habsburg Hungary, 1657
rule over all of Hungary and Transylvania in 1699
Expansion to 1699 and had occupied Belgrade in 1717, the Turks did
Expansion to 1718 not stop fighting. In the 1730s, the Turks retook
Regained by Ottoman Empire
Battle
Belgrade, and Russia now claimed a role in the
struggle against the Turks. Moreover, Hungary
POLAND- proved less than enthusiastic about submitting to
LITHUANIA
Austria. In 1703, the wealthiest Hungarian noble
landlord, Ferenc Rákóczi (1676–1735), raised an
HUNGARY
AUSTRIA
Vienna Transylvania
army of seventy thousand men who fought for
1683
“God, Fatherland, and Liberty” until 1711. They
Ad Belgrade forced the Austrians to recognize local Hungarian
r ia 1717
ti c institutions, grant amnesty, and restore confiscated
Se OTTOMAN
a EMPIRE
0 250 500 miles
estates in exchange for confirming hereditary Aus-
0 250 500 kilometers trian rule.
When Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died
Austrian Conquest of Hungary, without a male heir in 1740, another war of succes-
1657–1730
sion, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–
1748), began. Most European rulers recognized the emperor’s chosen heiress, his
daughter Maria Theresa, because Charles’s Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 had given a
woman the right to inherit the Habsburg crown lands. The new king of Prussia, Fred-
erick II, who had just succeeded his father a few months earlier in 1740, saw his chance
to grab territory and immediately invaded the rich Austrian province of Silesia. France
joined Prussia in an attempt to further humiliate its traditional enemy Austria, and
Great Britain allied with Austria to prevent the French from taking the Austrian Neth-
erlands. The war soon expanded to the overseas colonies of Great Britain and France.
French and British colonials in North America fought each other all along their bound-
aries, enlisting native American auxiliaries. Hostilities broke out in India, too.
Maria Theresa (r. 1740–1780) survived only by conceding Silesia to Prussia in
order to split the Prussians off from France. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) rec-
ognized Maria Theresa as the heiress to the Austrian lands; her husband, Francis I,
became Holy Roman Emperor, thus reasserting the integrity of the Austrian Empire.
The peace of 1748 failed to resolve the colonial conflicts between Britain and France,
however, and fighting for domination continued unofficially.
The Power of Diplomacy and the Importance of Population

No single power emerged from the wars of the first half of the eighteenth century
clearly superior to the others, and the Peace of Utrecht explicitly declared that main-
taining a balance of power was crucial to keeping peace in Europe. Diplomacy helped
preserve that balance, and to meet the new demands placed on it, the diplomatic
service, like the military and financial bureaucracies before it, had to develop regular
procedures. The French set a pattern that the other European states soon imitated.
[1700–1750
By 1685, France had embassies in all the important capitals. Nobles of ancient fami-
lies served as ambassadors to Rome, Madrid, Vienna, and London, whereas royal
officials were chosen for Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, and Venice. The ambas-
sador selected and paid for his own staff, which might be as large as eighty people.
The diplomatic system ensured a continuation of the principles of the Peace of West-
phalia (1648); in the midst of every crisis and war, the great powers would convene
and hammer out a written agreement detailing the requirements for peace.
Adroit diplomacy could smooth the road toward peace, but success in war still
depended on sheer numbers — of men and of muskets. Because each state’s strength
depended largely on the size of its army, the growth and health of the population
increasingly entered into government calculations. William Petty’s Political Arithmetick
(1690) offered statistical estimates of human capital — that is, of population and
wages — to determine Britain’s national wealth. Government officials devoted increased
effort to the statistical estimation of total population and rates of births, deaths, and
marriages.
Physicians used the new population statistics to explain the environmental
causes of disease, another new preoccupation in this period. Petty, trained as a physi-
cian himself, devised a quantitative scale that distinguished healthy from unhealthy
places largely on the basis of air quality, an early precursor of modern environmen-
tal studies. Cities were the unhealthiest places because garbage and excrement (ani-
mal and human) accumulated where people lived densely packed together. The Irish
writer Jonathan Swift described what happened in London after a big rainstorm:
“Filths of all hues and colors . . . sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and
blood . . . dead cats and turniptops come tumbling down the flood.” Reacting to
newly collected data on climate, disease, and population, local governments under-
took such measures as draining low-lying areas, burying refuse, and cleaning wells.
Not all changes came from direct government intervention. Hospitals, founded
originally as charities concerned foremost with the moral worthiness of the poor,
gradually evolved into medical institutions that defined patients by their diseases.
Physicians began to rely on postmortem dissections in the hospital to gain better
knowledge, a practice most patients’ families resented. Press reports of body snatch-
ing and grave robbing by surgeons and their apprentices outraged the public well
into the 1800s.
Despite the change in hospitals, a medical profession with nationwide organiza-
tions and licensing had not yet emerged, and no clear line separated trained physi-
cians from quacks. Patients in a hospital were as likely to catch a deadly disease as
to be cured there. Antiseptics were virtually unknown. Because doctors believed that
most insanity was caused by disorders in the system of bodily “humors,” their pre-
scribed treatments included blood transfusions; ingestion of bitter substances such
as coffee, quinine, and soap; immersion in water; various forms of exercise; and
burning or cauterizing the body to allow “black vapors” to escape.
Hardly any infectious diseases could be cured, though inoculation against small-
pox spread from the Middle East to Europe in the early eighteenth century, thanks
[ 1700–1750
]
largely to the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762). Wife of the British
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Montagu witnessed firsthand the Turkish use
of inoculation. When a new smallpox epidemic threatened England in 1721, she
called on her physician to inoculate her daughter. Inoculation against smallpox
spread more widely only after 1796, when the English physician Edward Jenner
developed a serum based on cowpox, a milder disease.
Public bathhouses had disappeared from cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries because they seemed to be a source of disorderly behavior and epidemic
illness. In the eighteenth century, even private bathing came into disfavor because
people feared the effects of contact with water. Bathing was hazardous, physicians
insisted, because it opened the body to disease. The upper classes associated clean-
liness not with baths but with frequently
changed linens, powdered hair, and per-
REVIEW QUESTION What events and develop-
ments led to greater stability and more limited
fume, which was thought to strengthen the
warfare within Europe? body and refresh the brain by counteract-
ing corrupt and foul air.
The Birth of the Enlightenment

Economic expansion, the emergence of a new consumer society, and the stabilization
of the European state system all generated optimism about the future. The intellec-
tual corollary was the Enlightenment, a term used later in the eighteenth century
to describe the movement begun by a loosely knit group of writers and scholars who
believed that human beings could apply a critical, reasoning spirit to every problem
they encountered in this world. The new secular, scientific, and critical attitude first
emerged in the 1690s, scrutinizing everything from the absolutism of Louis XIV to
the traditional role of women in society. After 1750, criticism took a more systematic
turn as writers provided new theories for the organization of society and politics;
but as early as the 1720s, established authorities realized they faced a new set of chal-
lenges. Even while slavery expanded in the Atlantic system, Enlightenment writers
began to insist on the need for new freedoms in Europe.
Popularization of Science and Challenges to Religion

The writers of the Enlightenment glorified the geniuses of the new science and cham-
pioned the scientific method as the solution for all social problems. By 1700, math-
ematics and science had become fashionable topics in high society, and the public
flocked to lectures explaining scientific discoveries.
As the prestige of science increased, some developed a skeptical attitude toward
attempts to enforce religious conformity. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a French Hugue-
not refugee from Louis XIV’s persecutions, launched an internationally influential
campaign against religious intolerance from his safe haven in the Dutch Repub-
lic. His News from the Republic of Letters (first published in 1684) bitterly criticized
the policies of Louis XIV and was quickly banned in Paris and condemned in Rome.
[1700–1750
] The Birth of the Enlightenment 567
Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet

In this watercolor, painted in 1750 by the
French artist Louis Carmontelle (1717–1806),
Voltaire is shown conversing with Gabrielle
Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du
Châtelet. She had died the year before after
giving birth to a daughter, an untimely end for
one of the few people, man or woman, who
understood Newton’s mathematics. Voltaire
lived in her house for a number of years
(tolerated by her husband), and they set up
a scientific laboratory there to pursue their
mutual interests. Émilie du Châtelet prepared
a French translation of Newton’s Principia
Mathematica that was published after her
death; it is still the standard French transla-
tion. In his typical tongue-in-cheek fashion
Voltaire said that she was “a great man whose
only fault was being a woman.” (Bibliothèque
nationale, Paris, France / bnF / Art Resource, NY.)
After attacking Louis XIV’s anti-Protestant policies, Bayle took a more general stand
in favor of religious toleration. No state in Europe officially offered complete toler-
ance, though the Dutch Republic came closest with its tacit acceptance of Catholics,
dissident Protestant groups, and open Jewish communities. In 1697, Bayle published
his Historical and Critical Dictionary, which cited all the errors and delusions that
he could find in past and present writers of all religions. Even religion must meet
the test of reasonableness: “Any particular dogma, whatever it may be, whether it is
advanced on the authority of the Scriptures, or whatever else may be its origins, is
to be regarded as false if it clashes with the clear and definite conclusions of the
natural understanding [reason].”
Bayle’s insistence on rational investigation seemed to challenge the authority of
faith. Other scholars challenged the authority of the Bible by subjecting it to histori-
cal criticism. Discoveries in geology in the early eighteenth century showed that
marine fossils dated immensely further back than the biblical flood story suggested.
Investigations of miracles, comets, and oracles — like the growing literature against
belief in witchcraft — urged the use of reason to combat superstition and prejudice.
Defenders of church and state published books warning of the new skepticism’s dan-
gers. The spokesman for Louis XIV’s absolutism, the bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet,
warned that “reason is the guide of their choice, but reason only brings them face
to face with vague conjectures and baffling perplexities.” Human beings, the tradi-
tionalists held, were simply incapable of subjecting everything to reason, especially
in the realm of religion.
State authorities found religious skepticism equally unsettling because it threat-
ened to undermine state power, too. The extensive literature of criticism was not
[ 1700–1750
]
limited to France, but much of it was published in French, and the French govern-
ment took the lead in suppressing the more outspoken works. Forbidden books were
then often published in the Dutch Republic, Britain, or Switzerland and smuggled
back across the border to a public whose appetite was only whetted by censorship.
The most influential writer of the early Enlightenment was a Frenchman born
into the upper middle class, François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name, Vol-
taire (1694–1778). Voltaire took inspiration from Bayle, once giving him the follow-
ing tongue-in-cheek description: “He gives facts with such odious fidelity, he exposes
the arguments for and against with such dastardly impartiality, he is so intolerably
intelligible, that he leads people of only ordinary common sense to judge and even
to doubt.” Voltaire’s tangles with church and state began in the early 1730s, when he
published his Letters Concerning the English Nation (the English version appeared in
1733), in which he devoted several chapters to scientist Isaac Newton and philoso-
pher John Locke and used the virtues of the British as a way to attack Catholic
bigotry and government rigidity in France. He spent two years in exile in Britain
when the French state responded to his book with an order for his arrest.
Voltaire also popularized Newton’s scientific discoveries in his Elements of the
Philosophy of Newton (1738). The French state and many European theologians con-
sidered Newtonianism threatening because it glorified the human mind and seemed
to reduce God to an abstract, external, rationalistic force. So sensational was the
success of Voltaire’s book on Newton that a hostile Jesuit reported that “all Paris
resounds with Newton, all Paris stammers Newton, all Paris studies and learns New-
ton.” Before long, Voltaire was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London and
in Edinburgh as well as being admitted to twenty other scientific academies. Vol-
taire’s fame continued to grow, reaching truly astounding proportions in the 1750s
and 1760s.
Travel Literature and the Challenge to Custom and Tradition

Just as scientific method could be used to question religious and even state authority,
a more general skepticism also emerged from the expanding knowledge about the
world outside of Europe. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the number
of travel accounts dramatically increased as travel writers used the contrast between
their home societies and other cultures to criticize the customs of European society.
Travelers to the Americas found “noble savages” (native peoples) who appeared
to live in conditions of great freedom and equality; they were “naturally good” and
“happy” without taxes, lawsuits, or much organized government. In China, in con-
trast, travelers found a people who enjoyed prosperity and an ancient civilization.
Christian missionaries made little headway in China, and visitors had to admit that
China’s religious systems had flourished for four or five thousand years with no input
from Europe or from Christianity. The basic lesson of travel literature in the 1700s,
then, was that customs varied: justice, freedom, property, good government, religion,
and morality all were relative to the place. One critic complained that travel encour-
[1700–1750
] The Birth of the Enlightenment 569
Comparisons of Religions and the Rise of Skepticism

These two engravings come from Religious Customs and Ceremonies of the All the Peoples of the
World, an influential encyclopedia published in French between 1723 and 1743 in Amsterdam.
The artist Bernard Picart depicts a Brahmin who wears an iron collar to raise funds for a hospi-
tal and a Brahmin suspended over a fire in devotion. Picart and his fellow French Protestant
refugee Jean Frédéric Bernard, the author and publisher, wanted to put Christianity and espe-
cially Catholicism in a comparative light; they emphasized the similarities in religious customs
across the globe and in this way cast doubt on claims for the absolute truth of any one religion.
Their book helped inspire the early Enlightenment. (From Religious Ceremonies and Customs, c. 1724 /
Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
aged the destruction of religion: “Some complete their demoralization by extensive

travel, and lose whatever shreds of religion remained to them. Every day they see a
new religion, new customs, new rites.”
Travel literature turned explicitly political in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721).
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron of Montesquieu (1689–1755), the son of an eminent
judicial family, was a high-ranking judge in a French court. He published Persian
Letters anonymously in the Dutch Republic, and the book went into ten printings in
just one year — a best seller for the times. Montesquieu tells the fictional story of two
Persians, Rica and Usbek, who visit France in the last years of Louis XIV’s reign and
write home with their impressions. By imagining an outsider’s perspective, Montes-
quieu could satirize French customs and politics without taking them on directly.
Montesquieu chose Persians for his travelers because they came from what was widely
considered the most despotic of all governments, in which rulers had life-and-death
powers over their subjects. In the book, the Persians constantly compare France to
Persia, suggesting that the French monarchy might verge on despotism.
[ 1700–1750
]
Montesquieu’s anonymity did not last long, and in the late 1720s, he sold his
judgeship and traveled extensively in Europe, staying eighteen months in Britain. In
1748, he published a widely influential work on comparative government, The Spirit
of Laws. Like the politique Jean Bodin before him (see page 496), Montesquieu exam-
ined the various types of government, but unlike Bodin he did not favor absolute
power in a monarchy. His time in Britain made him much more favorable to con-
stitutional forms of government. The Catholic church soon listed both Persian Letters
and The Spirit of Laws on its Index (its list of forbidden books).
Raising the Woman Question

Many of the letters exchanged in Persian Letters focused on women because Mon-
tesquieu considered the position of women a sure indicator of the nature of gov-
ernment and morality. Although Montesquieu was not a feminist, his depiction of
Roxana, the favorite wife in Usbek’s harem, struck a chord with many women.
Roxana revolts against the authority of Usbek’s eunuchs and writes a final letter to
her husband announcing her impending suicide: “I may have lived in servitude, but
I have always been free, I have amended your laws according to the laws of nature,
and my mind has always remained independent.” Women writers used the same
language of tyranny and freedom to argue for concrete changes in their status. Femi-
nist ideas were not entirely new, but they were presented systematically for the first
time during the Enlightenment and represented a fundamental challenge to the ways
of traditional societies.
The most systematic and successful of these women writers was the English
author Mary Astell (1666–1731). In 1694, she published A Serious Proposal to the
Ladies, in which she advocated founding a private women’s college to remedy wom-
en’s lack of education. Addressing women, she asked, “How can you be content to
be in the World like Tulips in a Garden, to make a fine shew [show] and be good
for nothing?” In later works such as Reflections upon Marriage (1706), Astell criti-
cized the relationship between the sexes within marriage: “If absolute sovereignty be
not necessary in a state, how comes it to be so in a family? . . . If all men are born
free, how is it that all women are born slaves?”
Most male writers held that women were less capable of reasoning than men
and therefore did not need systematic education. Such opinions often rested on
biological suppositions. The long-dominant Aristotelian view of reproduction held
that only the male seed carried spirit and individuality. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century, however, scientists began to undermine this belief. Physicians
and surgeons began to champion the doctrine of ovism — that the female egg was
essential in making new humans. During
the decades that followed, male Enlight-
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
issues in the early decades of the enment writers would continue to debate
Enlightenment? women’s nature and appropriate social
roles.
[1700–1750
] Conclusion 571
Conclusion
Expansion of colonies overseas and economic development at home created greater
wealth, longer life spans, and higher expectations for Europeans in the first half of
the eighteenth century. In these better times for many, a spirit of optimism prevailed.
People could now spend money on newspapers, novels, travel literature, and music
as well as on coffee, tea, and cotton cloth. Not everyone shared equally in the ben-
efits, however: slaves toiled in misery for their masters in the Americas, eastern
European serfs found themselves ever more closely bound to their noble lords, and
rural folk almost everywhere tasted few fruits of consumer society.
Politics changed, too, as experts urged government intervention to improve pub-
lic health, and states found it in their interest to settle many international disputes
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MAPPING THE WEST Europe in 1750

By 1750, Europe had achieved a kind of diplomatic equilibrium in which no one power predomi-
nated despite repeated wars over dynastic succession. Spain, the Dutch Republic, Poland-
Lithuania, and Sweden had all declined in power and influence while Great Britain, Russia, and
Prussia gained prominence. France’s ambitions to dominate had been thwarted, but its combi-
nation of a big army and rich overseas possessions made it a major player for a long time to
come. In the War of the Austrian Succession, Austria lost its rich province of Silesia to Prussia.
[ 1700–1750
]
by diplomacy, which itself became more regular and routine. The consolidation of
the European state system allowed a tide of criticism and new thinking about society
to swell in Great Britain and France and begin to spill throughout Europe. Ultimately,
the combination of the Atlantic system and the Enlightenment would give rise to a
series of Atlantic revolutions.
Chapter 17 Review
Atlantic system (p. 541) agricultural revolution (p. 550) Westernization (p. 560)
plantation (p. 542) rococo (p. 554) War of the Austrian
mestizo (p. 547) Pietism (p. 555) Succession (p. 564)
buccaneers (p. 547) Robert Walpole (p. 559) Enlightenment (p. 566)
consumer revolution (p. 549) Peter the Great (p. 560) Voltaire (p. 568)
Review Questions
1. How was consumerism related to slavery in the early eighteenth century?
2. How were new social trends reflected in cultural life in the early 1700s?
3. What events and developments led to greater stability and more limited warfare within
Europe?
4. What were the major issues in the early decades of the Enlightenment?
Making Connections
1. How did the rise of slavery and the plantation system change European politics and
society?
2. Why was the Enlightenment born just at the moment that the Atlantic system took shape?
3. What were the major differences between the wars of the first half of the eighteenth cen-
tury and those of the seventeenth century? (Refer to Chapters 15 and 16.)
4. During the first half of the eighteenth century, what were the major issues affecting peas-
ants in France and serfs in Poland and Russia?
The slave trade Web site listed here offers the most up-to-date information about the workings
of the Atlantic system, and the Hypercities Web site allows the viewer to trace the growth of cer-
tain cities over time. The definitive study of the early Enlightenment is the book by Hazard, but
many others have contributed biographies of individual figures or studies of women writers.
Black, Jeremy. European Warfare in a Global Context, 1660–1815. 2007.
Blackburn, Robin. The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights. 2013.
Cracraft, James. The Revolution of Peter the Great. 2009.
[1700–1750
Important Events
1700s Beginning of rapid development of plantations in Caribbean

1703 Peter the Great begins construction of St. Petersburg, founds first Russian
newspaper
1713–1714 Peace of Utrecht treaties end War of Spanish Succession
1714 Elector of Hanover becomes King George I of England
1715 Death of Louis XIV
1719 Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe
1720 Last outbreak of bubonic plague in western Europe
1721 Great Northern War ends; Montesquieu publishes Persian Letters
anonymously in the Dutch Republic
1733 War of the Polish Succession; Voltaire’s Letters Concerning the English
Nation attacks French intolerance and narrow-mindedness
1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession
1741 George Frideric Handel composes Messiah
1748 Montesquieu publishes The Spirit of Laws
Consider three events: Beginning of rapid development of plantations in Caribbean

(1700s), Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe (1719), and Montesquieu publishes
Persian Letters anonymously in the Dutch Republic (1721). In what ways were these
two works of literature responses to the new global economy?
Davidson, Ian. Voltaire: A Life. 2010.

De Vries, Jan. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650
to the Present. 2008.
Dickson, Peter, George Muir, and Christopher Storrs, eds. The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-
Century Europe. 2009.
George Frideric Handel, http://www.handelhouse.org/
Hazard, Paul. The European Mind: The Critical Years, 1680–1715. 1990.
*Hill, Bridget. The First English Feminist: Reflections upon Marriage and Other Writings by Mary
Astell. 1986.
Hunt, Lynn, Margaret C. Jacob, and W. W. Mijnhardt. The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and
Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World. 2010.
Hunt, Margaret R. Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe. 2010.
Hypercities project (includes Berlin and Paris): http://hypercities.ats.ucla.edu
*Jacob, Margaret C. The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Selected Readings. 2000.
Norton, Marcy. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic
World. 2010.
Sarti, Raffaella, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500–1800. Trans. Allan Cameron.
2004.
Slave trade: http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces
*Primary source.
The Promise of
18
Enlightenment
1750–1789
I
n the summer of 1766, Empress Catherine II of Russia (known as Catherine the
Great) wrote to Voltaire, one of the leaders of the Enlightenment, praising him
for entering “into combat against the enemies of mankind” and for fighting super-
stition, fanaticism, ignorance, and “evil judges.” Catherine corresponded regularly
with Voltaire, a writer who, at home in France, found himself in constant conflict
with authorities of church and state. Her admiring letter shows how influential
Enlightenment ideas had become by the middle of the eighteenth century. Even an
absolutist ruler such as Catherine endorsed
Catherine the Great many aspects of the Enlightenment call for
In this portrait (c. 1762) by the reform.
Danish painter Vigilius Eriksen, the Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire
Russian empress Catherine the used every means at their disposal — including
Great is shown on horseback, much personal interaction with rulers — to argue for
like any male ruler of the time. Born
Sophia Augusta Frederika of Anhalt-
reform. Everything had to be examined in the
Zerbst in 1729, Catherine was the cold light of reason, and anything that did not
daughter of a minor German prince. promote the improvement of humanity was to
When she married the future tsar be jettisoned. As a result, Enlightenment writ-
Peter III in 1745, she promptly ers supported religious toleration, attacked the
learned Russian and adopted Rus-
legal use of torture to extract confessions, and
sian Orthodoxy. Peter, physically and
mentally frail, proved no match for criticized censorship by state or church. The
her; in 1762 she staged a coup book trade and new places for urban social-
against him and took his place when izing, such as coffeehouses and learned soci-
he was killed. (Musée des Beaux-Arts, eties, spread these ideas within a new elite of
Chartes, France / Bridgeman Images.)
middle- and upper-class men and women. In
contrast, the lower classes had little contact with
Enlightenment ideas. Their lives were shaped more profoundly by an increasing pop-
ulation, rising food prices, and ongoing wars among the great powers.
Rulers pursued Enlightenment reforms that they believed might enhance state
power, but they feared changes that might unleash popular discontent. All reform-
minded rulers faced potential challenges to their authority. They were right to be
575
576 Chapter 18 The Promise of Enlightenment
[ 1750–1789
]
concerned, for Enlightenment ideas paved the way for something much more radi-
cal and unexpected. The American Declaration of Independence in 1776 showed
how Enlightenment ideas could be trans-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the Enlightenment
lated into democratic political practice.
influence Western politics, culture, and society? After 1789, democracy would come to
Europe as well.
The Enlightenment at Its Height

The Enlightenment emerged as an intellectual movement before 1750 but reached
its peak in the second half of the eighteenth century. The writers of the Enlighten-
ment called themselves philosophes; the word is French for “philosophers,” but that
definition is somewhat misleading. Whereas philosophers concern themselves with
abstract theories, the philosophes were public intellectuals dedicated to solving the
real problems of the world. They wrote on subjects ranging from current affairs to
art criticism, and they wrote in every conceivable format. Between 1750 and 1789,
the Enlightenment acquired its name and, despite heated conflicts between the phi-
losophes and state and religious authorities, gained support in the highest reaches
of government.
Men and Women of the Republic of Letters

Although philosophe is a French word, the Enlightenment was distinctly cosmopoli-
tan; philosophes could be found from Philadelphia to St. Petersburg. The philosophes
considered themselves part of a grand “republic of letters” that transcended national
political boundaries. They were not republicans in the usual sense, that is, people
who supported representative government and opposed monarchy. What united
them were the ideals of reason, reform, and freedom. In 1784, the German philoso-
pher Immanuel Kant summed up the program of the Enlightenment in two Latin
words: sapere aude (“dare to know”) — have the courage to think for yourself.
The philosophes used reason to attack superstition, bigotry, and religious fanati-
cism, which they considered the chief obstacles to free thought and social reform.
Voltaire took religious fanaticism as his chief target: “Once fanaticism has corrupted
a mind, the malady is almost incurable. . . . The only remedy for this epidemic mal-
ady is the philosophical spirit.” Enlightenment writers did not necessarily oppose
organized religion, but they strenuously objected to religious intolerance. They
believed that the systematic application of reason could do what religious belief could
not: improve the human condition by pointing to needed reforms. Reason meant
critical, informed, scientific thinking about social issues and problems.
Many Enlightenment writers collaborated on the multivolume Encyclopedia (pub-
lished 1751–1772), which aimed to gather together knowledge about science, reli-
gion, industry, and society. The ancestor of all modern encyclopedias from the Ency-
clopædia Britannica to Wikipedia online, the Enlightenment version differed by
[1750–1789
] The Enlightenment at Its Height 577
Science in Action
In September 1783, the Montgolfier
brothers demonstrated their newly
invented hot air balloon at Versailles
with the royal family in attendance. The
flight reached an altitude of 1,500 feet,
covered two miles, and lasted eight min-
utes. The passengers — a sheep, a duck,
and a rooster — landed safely. Hydrogen
balloons were developed at the same
time and quickly replaced the hot air ver-
sions because they could fly higher and
longer. Thousands of people flocked to
see the launches. Colored etchings such
as the one shown here helped increase
public interest. (Private Collection / Bridgeman
Images.)
using knowledge to criticize defects

in society. The chief editor of the
Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot (1713–
1784), explained the goal: “All things
must be examined, debated, investi-
gated without exception and with-
out regard for anyone’s feelings.”
The philosophes believed that the spread of knowledge would encourage reform
in every aspect of life, from the grain trade to the penal system. Chief among their
desired reforms was intellectual freedom — the freedom to use one’s own reason to
conduct studies and to publish the results. The philosophes wanted freedom of the
press and freedom of religion, which they considered “natural rights” guaranteed by
“natural law.” In their view, progress depended on these freedoms.
Most philosophes, like Voltaire, came from the upper classes, yet the Swiss phi-
losophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau had been born to a modest watchmaker in Geneva,
and Diderot was the son of a cutlery maker. Rarely were women philosophes; one,
however, was the French noblewoman Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749), who wrote
extensively about the mathematics and physics of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and
Isaac Newton. (Châtelet’s lover Voltaire learned much of his science from her.)
Few of the leading writers held university positions. Enlightenment ideas devel-
oped instead through printed books and pamphlets, through hand-copied letters that
were circulated and sometimes published, and through informal readings of manu-
scripts. Salons — informal gatherings, usually sponsored by middle-class or aristo-
cratic women — gave intellectual life an anchor outside the royal court and the
church-controlled universities (see page 534). In the Parisian salons of the eighteenth
[ 1750–1789
]
Madame Geoffrin’s Salon in 1755

This 1812 painting by Anicet Charles Lemonnier claims to depict the best-known Parisian salon
of the 1750s. Lemonnier was only twelve years old in 1755 and so could not have based his
rendition on firsthand knowledge. Madame Geoffrin is the figure in blue on the right facing the
viewer. The bust is of Voltaire. Rousseau is the fifth person to the left of the bust (facing right),
and behind him (facing left) is Raynal. (De Agostini Picture Library / Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
century, the philosophes could discuss ideas they might hesitate to put into print.
Best known was the salon of Madame Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777), a wealthy
middle-class widow. She corresponded extensively with influential people across
Europe, including Catherine the Great. Women’s salons helped galvanize intellec-
tual life and reform movements all over Europe. Wealthy Jewish women created nine
of the fourteen salons in Berlin at the end of the eighteenth century, and Princess
Zofia Czartoryska gathered around her in Warsaw the reform leaders of Poland-
Lithuania.
Conflicts with Church and State

Madame Geoffrin did not approve of discussions that attacked the Catholic church,
but elsewhere voices against organized religion could be heard. Criticisms of religion
required daring because the church, whatever its denomination, wielded enormous
power in society, and most influential people considered religion an essential foun-
dation of good society and government. Defying such opinion, the Scottish philoso-
pher David Hume (1711–1776) boldly argued in The Natural History of Religion
(1755) that belief in God rested on superstition and fear rather than on reason.
[1750–1789
At the time, most Europeans believed in God. After Newton, however, and despite
Newton’s own deep religiosity, people could conceive of the universe as an eternally
existing, self-perpetuating machine, in which God’s intervention was unnecessary. In
short, such people could become either atheists (people who do not believe in God)
or deists (people who believe in God but give him no active role in earthly affairs).
For the first time, writers claimed the label atheist and disputed the common view
that atheism led inevitably to immorality.
Deists continued to believe in a benevolent, all-knowing God who had designed
the universe and set it in motion. But they usually rejected the idea that God directly
intercedes in the functioning of the universe, and they often criticized the churches
for their dogmatic intolerance of dissenters. Voltaire was a deist, and in his influential
Philosophical Dictionary (1764) he attacked most of the claims of organized Chris-
tianity, both Catholic and Protestant. Christianity, he argued, had been the prime
source of fanaticism and brutality among humans. Throughout his life, Voltaire’s
motto was Écrasez l’infâme — “Crush the infamous thing” (the “thing” being bigotry
and intolerance). French authorities publicly burned his Philosophical Dictionary.
Criticism of religious intolerance involved more than simply attacking the
church. Critics also had to confront the states to which churches were closely tied.
In 1762, a judicial case in Toulouse provoked an outcry throughout France that
Voltaire soon joined. When the son of a local Calvinist was found hanged (he had
probably committed suicide), magistrates accused the father, Jean Calas, of murder-
ing him to prevent his conversion to Catholicism. (Since Louis XIV’s revocation of
the Edict of Nantes in 1685, it had been illegal to practice Calvinism publicly in
France.) The all-Catholic parlement of Toulouse tried to extract the names of accom-
plices through torture — using a rope to pull up Calas’s arm while weighing down
his feet and then pouring water down his throat — but Calas refused to confess. The
torturers then executed him by breaking every bone in his body with an iron rod.
Voltaire launched a successful crusade to rehabilitate Calas’s good name and to
restore the family’s properties, which had been confiscated after his death. Voltaire’s
efforts eventually helped bring about the extension of civil rights to French Protes-
tants and encouraged campaigns to abolish the judicial use of torture.
Critics also assailed state and church support for European colonization and
slavery. One of the most popular books of the time was the Philosophical and Political
History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies, published in 1770 by
the abbé Guillaume Raynal (1713–1796), a French Catholic clergyman. Raynal and
his collaborators described in excruciating detail the destruction of native popula-
tions by Europeans and denounced the slave trade. Despite the criticism, the slave
trade continued. So did European exploration. British explorer James Cook (1728–
1779) charted the coasts of New Zealand and Australia, discovered New Caledonia,
and visited the ice fields of Antarctica.
The Enlightenment belief in natural rights helped fuel the antislavery movement,
which began to organize political campaigns against slavery in Britain, France, and
the new United States in the 1780s. Advocates of the abolition of slavery encouraged
[ 1750–1789
]
freed slaves to write the story of their enslavement. One such freed slave, Olaudah
Equiano, wrote of his kidnapping and enslavement in Africa and his long effort to
free himself. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, published in
1788, became an international best seller. Armed with such firsthand accounts of
slavery, abolitionists began to petition their governments for the abolition of the
slave trade and then of slavery itself.
Enlightenment critics of church and state usually advocated reform, not revo-
lution. For example, though he resided near the French-Swiss border in case he had
to flee, Voltaire made a fortune in financial speculations and ended up being cele-
brated in his last years as a national hero even by many former foes. Other philo-
sophes also believed that published criticism, rather than violent action, would bring
about necessary reforms. The philosophes generally regarded the lower classes — “the
people” — as ignorant, violent, and prone to superstition; as a result, they pinned
their hopes on educated elites and enlightened rulers.
The Individual and Society

The controversy created by the conflicts between the philosophes and the various
churches and states of Europe drew attention away from a subtle but profound trans-
formation in worldviews. In previous centuries, questions of theological doctrine and
church organization had been the main focus of intellectual and even political inter-
est. The Enlightenment writers shifted attention away from religious questions and
toward the secular (nonreligious) study of society and the individual’s role in it.
Religion did not drop out of sight, but the philosophes tended to make religion a
private affair of individual conscience, even while rulers and churches still consid-
ered religion very much a public concern.
The Enlightenment interest in secular society produced two major results: it
advanced the secularization of European political life that had begun after the French
Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it laid the founda-
tions for the social sciences of the modern era. Not surprisingly, then, many histo-
rians and philosophers consider the Enlightenment to be the origin of modernity,
which they define as the belief that human reason, rather than theological doctrine,
should set the patterns of social and political life. This belief in reason as the sole
foundation for secular authority has often been contested, but it has also proved to
be a powerful force for change.
Although most of the philosophes believed that humans could use reason to
understand and even remake society and politics, they disagreed about what reason
revealed. Among the many different approaches were two that proved enduringly
influential, those of the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith and the Swiss writer Jean-
Jacques Rousseau. Smith provided a theory of modern capitalist society and devoted
much of his energy to defending free markets as the best way to make the most of
individual efforts. The modern discipline of economics took shape around the ques-
[1750–1789
tions raised by Smith. Rousseau, by contrast, emphasized the needs of the community
over those of the individual. His work, which led both toward democracy and toward
communism, continues to inspire heated debate in political science and sociology.
Adam Smith (1723–1790) optimistically believed that individual interests natu-
rally harmonized with those of the whole society. To explain how this natural har-
monization worked, he published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations in 1776. In this work, commonly known as The Wealth of Nations,
Smith insisted that individual self-interest, even greed, was quite compatible with
society’s best interest: the laws of supply and demand served as an “invisible hand”
ensuring that individual interests would be synchronized with those of the whole
society. Market forces naturally brought individual and social interests in line.
Smith rejected the prevailing mercantilist views that the general welfare would be
served by accumulating national wealth through agriculture or the hoarding of gold and
silver. Instead, he argued that the division of labor in manufacturing increased produc-
tivity and generated more wealth for society and well-being for the individual. Using
the example of the ordinary pin, Smith showed that when the manufacturing process
was broken down into separate operations — one man to draw out the wire, another to
straighten it, a third to cut it, a fourth to point it, and so on — workers who could make
only one pin a day on their own could make thousands by pooling their labor.
To maximize the effects of market forces and the division of labor, Smith
endorsed a concept called laissez-faire (“to leave alone”), in which the government
neither controls nor intervenes in the economy. He insisted that governments elimi-
nate all restrictions on the sale of land, remove restraints on the grain trade, and
abandon duties on imports. Free international trade, he argued, would stimulate
production everywhere and thus ensure the growth of national wealth. Governments,
he insisted, should restrict themselves to providing “security,” that is, national defense,
internal order, and public works.
Much more pessimistic about the relation between individual self-interest and
the good of society was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). In Rousseau’s view,
society itself threatened natural rights or freedoms: “Man is born free, and every-
where he is in chains.” Rousseau first gained fame by writing a prize-winning essay
in 1749 in which he argued that the revival of science and the arts had corrupted
social morals, not improved them. This startling conclusion seemed to oppose some
of the Enlightenment’s most cherished beliefs. Rather than improving society, he
claimed, science and art raised artificial barriers between people and their natural
state. Rousseau’s works extolled the simplicity of rural life over urban society.
Whereas earlier Rousseau had argued that society corrupted the individual by
taking him out of nature, in The Social Contract (1762) he aimed to show that the
right kind of political order could make people truly moral and free. Individual
moral freedom could be achieved only by learning to subject one’s individual inter-
ests to “the general will,” that is, the good of the community. Individuals did this by
entering into a social contract not with their rulers, but with one another. If everyone
[ 1750–1789
]
followed the general will, then all would be equally free and equally moral because
they lived under a law to which they had all consented.
Like Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704) in the seven-
teenth century, Rousseau derived his social contract from human nature, not from
history, tradition, or the Bible. He went much further than Hobbes or Locke, how-
ever, when he implied that people would be most free and moral under a republican
form of government with direct democracy. Neither Hobbes nor Locke favored
republics. Moreover, Rousseau roundly condemned slavery. Authorities in both
Geneva and Paris banned The Social Contract for undermining political authority.
Rousseau’s works would become a kind of political bible for the French revolutionar-
ies of 1789, and his attacks on private property inspired the communists of the
nineteenth century such as Karl Marx. Rousseau’s rather mystical concept of the
general will remains controversial because he insisted that the individual could be
“forced to be free.” Rousseau’s version of democracy did not preserve the individual
freedoms so important to Adam Smith.
Spreading the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment flourished in places where an educated middle class provided an
eager audience for ideas of constitutionalism and reform. It therefore found its epi-
center in the triangle formed by London, Amsterdam, and Paris and diffused out-
ward to eastern and southern Europe and North America. Where constitutionalism
and guarantees of individual freedoms were most advanced, as in Great Britain and
the Dutch Republic, the movement had less of an edge because there was, in a sense,
less need for it. As a result, Scottish and English writers concentrated on economics,
philosophy, and history rather than on politics or social relations. The English his-
torian Edward Gibbon, for example, portrayed Christianity in a negative light in his
immensely influential work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776–1788), but when he served as a member of Parliament he never even gave a
speech. At the other extreme, in places with small middle classes, such as Spain and
Russia, Enlightenment ideas did not get much traction because governments imme-
diately suppressed them. France was the Enlightenment hot spot because the French
monarchy alternated between encouraging ideas for reform and harshly censuring
criticisms it found too threatening.
French writers published the most daring critiques of church and state, and they
often suffered harassment and persecution as a result. Voltaire, Diderot, and Rous-
seau all faced arrest, exile, or even imprisonment. The Catholic church and royal
authorities routinely forbade the publication of their books, and the police arrested
booksellers who ignored the warnings. Yet the French monarchy was far from the
most autocratic in Europe, and Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau all ended their lives
as cultural heroes. France seems to have been curiously caught in the middle during
the Enlightenment: with fewer constitutional guarantees of individual freedom than
Great Britain, it still enjoyed much higher levels of prosperity and cultural develop-
[1750–1789
ment than most other European countries. Major Works of the Enlightenment
In short, French elites had reason to com-
plain, the means to make their complaints 1751 Beginning of publication of the French
Encyclopedia
known, and a government torn between
1755 David Hume, The Natural History of
the desire to censor dissident ideas and the Religion
desire to appear open to modernity and
1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social
progress. Contract
By the 1760s, the French government 1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
regularly ignored the publication of many 1770 Abbé Guillaume Raynal, Philosophical
works once thought offensive or subver- and Political History of European Colo-
sive. In addition, a growing flood of works nies and Commerce in the Two Indies
printed abroad poured into France and cir- 1776 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature
culated underground. Private companies and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
in Dutch and Swiss cities made fortunes 1781 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure
Reason
smuggling illegal books into France over
mountain passes and back roads. Foreign
printers provided secret catalogs of their
offerings and sold their products through booksellers who were willing to market
forbidden books for a high price — among them not only philosophical treatises of
the Enlightenment but also pornographic books and pamphlets (some by Diderot)
lampooning the Catholic clergy and leading members of the royal court. In the 1770s
and 1780s, lurid descriptions of sexual promiscuity at the French court helped under-
mine the popularity of the throne.
Whereas the French philosophes often took a violently anticlerical and combat-
ive tone, their German counterparts avoided direct political confrontations with
authorities. Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781) complained in 1769 that Prussia was still
“the most slavish society in Europe” in its lack of freedom to criticize government
policies. Lessing promoted religious toleration for the Jews and spiritual emancipa-
tion of Germans from foreign, especially French, models of culture, which still domi-
nated. Lessing also introduced the German Jewish writer Moses Mendelssohn (1729–
1786) into Berlin salon society. Mendelssohn labored to build bridges between
German and Jewish culture by arguing that Judaism was a rational and undogmatic
religion. He believed that persecution and discrimination against the Jews would end
as reason triumphed.
Reason was also the chief focus of the most influential German thinker of the
Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). A university professor who lectured
on everything from economics to astronomy, Kant wrote one of the most important
works in the history of Western philosophy, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant
admired Smith and especially Rousseau, whose portrait he displayed proudly in his
study. Kant established the doctrine of idealism, the belief that true understanding
can come only from examining the ways in which ideas are formed in the mind. Ideas
are shaped, Kant argued, not just by sensory information (a position central to empiri-
cism, a philosophy based on John Locke’s writings) but also by the operation on that
[ 1750–1789
]
information of mental categories such as space and time. In Kant’s philosophy, these
“categories of understanding” were neither sensory nor supernatural; they were
entirely ideal and abstract and located in the human mind.
The Limits of Reason: Roots of Romanticism and Religious Revival

In reaction to what some saw as the Enlightenment’s excessive reliance on the author-
ity of human reason, a new artistic movement called romanticism took root.
Although it would not fully flower until the early nineteenth century, romanticism
traced its emphasis on individual genius, deep emotion, and the joys of nature to
thinkers like Rousseau who had scolded the philosophes for ignoring those aspects
of life that escaped and even conflicted with the power of reason.
A novel by the young German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
captured the early romantic spirit with its glorification of emotion. The Sorrows of
Young Werther (1774) told of a young man who loves nature and rural life and is
unhappy in love. When the woman he loves marries someone else, he falls into deep
melancholy and eventually kills himself. Reason cannot save him. The book spurred
a veritable Werther craze: in addition to Werther costumes, engravings, embroidery,
and medallions, there was even a perfume called Eau de Werther. The young Napo-
leon Bonaparte, who was to build an empire for France, claimed to have read Goethe’s
novel seven times.
Religious revivals sought to underline the limits of reason by emphasizing a direct
emotional connection with God. Much of the Protestant world experienced an “awak-
ening” in the 1740s. In the German states, Pietist groups founded new communities;
and in the British North American colonies, revivalist Protestant preachers drew
thousands of fervent believers in a movement called the Great Awakening. In North
America, bitter conflicts between revivalists and their opponents in the established
churches prompted the leaders on both sides to set up new colleges to support their
beliefs. These included Princeton, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth, all founded
between 1746 and 1769 by either revivalists or antirevivalists.
Revivalism also stirred eastern European Jews at about the same time. Israel ben
Eliezer (1698–1760) laid the foundation for Hasidism in the 1740s and 1750s. He
traveled the Polish countryside offering miraculous cures and became known as the
Ba’al Shem Tov (“Master of the Good Name”) because he used divine names to effect
healing and bring believers into closer personal contact with God. He emphasized
mystical contemplation of the divine, rather than study of Jewish law, and his fol-
lowers, the Hasidim (Hebrew for “most pious” Jews), often expressed their devotion
through music, dance, and fervent prayer. Their practices soon spread all over
Poland-Lithuania.
Most of the waves of Protestant revivalism ebbed after the 1750s, but in Great
Britain one movement continued to grow through the end of the century. John Wes-
ley (1703–1791), the Oxford-educated son of a cleric in the Church of England,
founded Methodism, a term evoked by Wesley’s insistence on strict self-discipline
[1750–1789
] Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment 585
George Whitefield
This colored etching depicts one of the most prominent preachers of the Great Awakening, the
English Methodist George Whitefield, preaching in the British North American colonies. White-
field visited the colonies seven times, sometimes for long periods, and drew tens of thousands
of people to his dramatic and emotional open-air sermons, which moved many listeners to
tears of repentance. Whitefield was a celebrity in his time and is considered by many to be the
founder of the Evangelical movement. (The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
and a methodical approach to religious study and observance. In 1738, Wesley began
preaching his new brand of Protestantism, which emphasized an intense personal
experience of salvation and a life of thrift, abstinence, and hard work. Traveling all
over the British Isles, Wesley preached forty thousand sermons in fifty years, an aver-
age of fifteen a week. The Church of England refused to let him preach in the churches.
In response, Wesley began to ordain his own clergy. While considered radical in
religious views, the Methodist leadership
remained politically conservative during
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major dif-
Wesley’s lifetime; Wesley himself wrote
ferences between the Enlightenment in France,
many pamphlets urging order, loyalty, and Great Britain, and the German states?
submission to higher authorities.
Society and Culture in an Age of Enlightenment

Religious revivals and the first stirrings of romanticism show that not all intellectual
currents of the eighteenth century were flowing in the same channel. Some social
and cultural developments manifested the influence of Enlightenment ideas, but oth-
ers did not. The traditional leaders of European societies — the nobles — responded
[ 1750–1789
]
to Enlightenment ideas in contradictory fashion: many simply reasserted their privi-
leges and resisted the influence of the Enlightenment, but an important minority
embraced change and actively participated in reform efforts. The expanding middle
classes saw in the Enlightenment a chance to make their claim for joining society’s
governing elite. They bought Enlightenment books, joined Masonic lodges, and patron-
ized new styles in art, music, and literature. The lower classes were more affected by
economic growth than by ideas. Trade boomed and the population grew, but people
did not benefit equally. The ranks of the poor swelled, too, and with greater mobility,
births to unmarried mothers also increased.
The Nobility’s Reassertion of Privilege

Nobles made up about 3 percent of the European population, but their numbers and
ways of life varied greatly from country to country. At least 10 percent of the popula-
tion in Poland and 7 to 8 percent in Spain was noble, in contrast to only 2 percent
in Russia and between 1 and 2 percent in the rest of western Europe. Many Polish
and Spanish nobles lived in poverty, but the wealthiest European nobles luxuriated
in almost unimaginable opulence. Many of the English peers, for example, owned
more than ten thousand acres of land; invested widely in government bonds and
trading companies; kept several country residences with scores of servants as well as
houses in London; and occasionally even had their own private orchestras to comple-
ment libraries of expensive books, greenhouses for exotic plants, kennels of pedi-
greed dogs, and collections of antiques, firearms, and scientific instruments.
To support an increasingly expensive lifestyle in a period of inflation, European
aristocrats sought to cash in on their remaining legal rights, called seigneurial dues
(from the French seigneur, “lord”). Peasants felt the squeeze as a result. French land-
lords required their peasants to pay dues to grind grain at the lord’s mill, bake bread
in his oven, press grapes at his winepress, or even pass on their own land as inheri-
tance. In addition, peasants had to work without compensation for a specified num-
ber of days every year on the public roads. They also paid taxes to the government
on salt, an essential preservative, and on the value of their land; customs duties if
they sold produce or wine in town; and the tithe on their grain (one-tenth of the
crop) to the church.
In Britain, the landed gentry could not claim these same onerous dues from their
tenants, but they tenaciously defended their exclusive right to hunt game. The game
laws kept the poor from eating meat and helped protect the social status of the rich.
The gentry enforced the game laws themselves by hiring gamekeepers who hunted
down poachers and even set traps for them in the forests. According to the law,
anyone who poached deer or rabbits while armed or disguised could be sentenced
to death. In most other countries, too, hunting was the special right of the nobility,
a cause of deep popular resentment.
Even though Enlightenment writers sharply criticized nobles’ insistence on
special privileges, most aristocrats maintained their marks of distinction. The male
[1750–1789
court nobility continued to sport swords, plumed hats, makeup, and elaborate wigs,
while middle-class men wore simpler and more somber clothing. Aristocrats had
their own seats in church and their own quarters in the universities. Frederick II of
Prussia (r. 1740–1786), who came to be known as Frederick the Great, made sure
that nobles dominated both the army officer corps and the civil bureaucracy. Russia’s
Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) granted the nobility vast tracts of land, the exclu-
sive right to own serfs, and exemption from personal taxes and corporal punishment.
Her Charter of the Nobility of 1785 codified these privileges in exchange for the
nobles’ political subservience to the state. In Austria, Spain, the Italian states, Poland-
Lithuania, and Russia, most nobles consequently cared little about Enlightenment
ideas; they did not read the books of the philosophes and feared reforms that might
challenge their dominance of rural society.
In France, Britain, and the western German states, however, the nobility proved
more open to the new ideas. Half of Rousseau’s correspondents, for example, were
nobles. The nobles of western Europe sometimes married into middle-class families
and formed with them a new mixed elite, united by common interests in reform and
new cultural tastes.
The Middle Class and the Making of a New Elite

The Enlightenment offered middle-class people an intellectual and cultural route to
social improvement. The term middle class referred to the middle position on the
social ladder; middle-class families did not have legal titles like the nobility above
them, but neither did they work with their hands like the peasants, artisans, or labor-
ers below them. Most middle-class people lived in towns or cities and earned their
living in the professions — as doctors, lawyers, or lower-level officials — or through
investment in land, trade, or manufacturing. In the eighteenth century, the ranks of
the middle class — also known as the bourgeoisie (from bourgeois, French for “city
dweller”) — grew steadily in western Europe as a result of economic expansion. In
France, for example, the overall population grew by about one-third in the 1700s,
but the bourgeoisie nearly tripled in size.
Nobles and middle-class professionals mingled in Enlightenment salons and
joined the new Masonic lodges and local learned societies. The Masonic lodges began
as social clubs organized around elaborate secret rituals of stonemasons’ guilds. They
called their members Freemasons because that was the term given to apprentice
masons when they were deemed “free” to practice as masters of their guild. Although
the Freemasons were not explicitly political in aim, their members wrote constitutions
for their lodges and elected their own officers, thus promoting a direct experience of
constitutional government.
Freemasonry arose in Great Britain and spread eastward: the first French and
Italian lodges opened in 1726; Prussia’s Frederick the Great founded a lodge in 1740;
and after 1750, Freemasonry spread in Poland, Russia, and British North America. In
France, women set up their own Masonic lodges. Despite the papacy’s condemnation
[ 1750–1789
]
of Freemasonry in 1738 as subversive of religious and civil authority, lodges contin-
ued to multiply throughout the eighteenth century. After 1789 and the outbreak of
the French Revolution, conservatives would blame the lodges for every kind of politi-
cal upheaval, but in the 1700s many high-ranking nobles became active members
and saw no conflict with their privileged status.
Nobles and middle-class professionals also met in local learned societies, whose
numbers greatly increased in this period. The societies, sometimes called academies,
brought the Enlightenment down from the realm of books and ideas to the level of
concrete reforms. They sponsored essay contests, such as the one won by Rousseau
in 1749 and the one set by the society in Metz in 1785 on the question “Are there
means for making the Jews happier and more useful in France?” The Metz society
approved essays that argued for granting civil rights to Jews.
Shared tastes in travel, architecture, the arts, and even reading helped strengthen
the links between nobles and members of the middle class. “Grand tours” of Europe
often led upper-class youths to recently discovered Greek and Roman ruins at Pom-
peii, Herculaneum, and Paestum in Italy. These excavations aroused enthusiasm for
the neoclassical style in architecture and painting, which began pushing aside the
rococo and the long-dominant baroque. Urban residences, government buildings,
furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, and even pottery soon reflected the neoclassical empha-
sis on purity and clarity of forms. Employing neoclassical motifs, the English potter
Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) almost single-handedly created a mass market for
domestic crockery and appealed to middle-class desires to emulate the rich and
royal. His designs of special tea sets for the British queen, for Catherine the Great
of Russia, and for leading aristocrats allowed him to advertise his wares as fashion-
able. His pottery was marketed in France, Russia, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and
British North America.
This period also supported artistic styles other than neoclassicism. Frederick the
Great built himself a palace outside of Berlin in the earlier rococo style, gave it the
French name of Sanssouci (“worry-free”), and filled it with the works of French masters
of the rococo. A growing taste for moralistic family scenes in painting reflected the
same middle-class preoccupation with the emotions of ordinary private life that could
be seen in novels. The middle-class public now attended the official painting exhibi-
tions in France that were held regularly every other year after 1737. Court painting
(works commissioned by rulers and nobles) nonetheless remained much in demand.
Although wealthy nobles still patronized Europe’s leading musicians, music, too,
began to reflect the broadening of the elite and the spread of Enlightenment ideals
as classical forms replaced the baroque style. Large sections of string instruments
became the backbone of professional orchestras, which now played to large audiences
of well-to-do listeners in sizable concert halls. A new attitude toward “the classics”
developed: for the first time in the 1770s and 1780s, concert groups began to play
older music rather than simply playing the latest commissioned works.
The two supreme masters of the new musical style of the eighteenth century
show that the transition from noble patronage to classical concerts was far from
[1750–1789
Neoclassical Style
In this Georgian interior of Syon House on the outskirts of London, various neoclassical motifs
are readily apparent: Greek columns, Greek-style statuary on top of the columns, and Roman-
style mosaics in the floor. The Scottish architect Robert Adam created this room for the duke
of Northumberland in the 1760s. Adam had spent four years in Italy and returned in 1758 to
London to decorate homes in the “Adam style,” meaning the neoclassical manner. (Syon House,
Middlesex, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
complete. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and his fellow Austrian Wolfgang Ama-
deus Mozart (1756–1791) both wrote for noble patrons, but by the early 1800s their
compositions had been incorporated into the canon of concert classics all over
Europe. Incredibly prolific, both excelled in combining lightness, clarity, and pro-
found emotion. Both also wrote numerous Italian operas, a genre whose popularity
continued to grow: in the 1780s, the Papal States alone boasted forty opera houses.
Haydn spent most of his career working for a Hungarian noble family, the Eszter-
házys. Asked once why he had written no string quintets (at which Mozart excelled),
he responded simply: “No one has ordered any.”
Interest in reading, like attending public concerts, took hold of the middle classes
and fed a frenzied increase in publication. By the end of the eighteenth century, six
times as many books were being published in the German states, for instance, as at
the beginning. Local newspapers, lending libraries, and book clubs multiplied.
Despite the limits of women’s education, women benefited as much as men from the
spread of print. As one Englishman observed, “By far the greatest part of ladies now
[ 1750–1789
]
have a taste for books.” Women also wrote them. Catherine Macaulay (1731–1791)
published best-selling histories of Britain, and in France Stéphanie de Genlis (1746–
1830) wrote children’s books — a genre that was growing in importance as middle-class
parents became more interested in education.
Life on the Margins

Booming foreign trade fueled a dramatic economic expansion — French colonial
trade increased tenfold in the 1700s — but the results did not necessarily trickle all
the way down the social scale. The population of Europe grew by nearly 30 percent.
Even though food production increased, shortages and crises still occurred periodi-
cally. Prices went up in many countries after the 1730s and continued to rise gradu-
ally until the early nineteenth century; wages in many trades rose as well, but less
quickly than prices. Some people prospered, but those at the bottom of the social
ladder — day laborers in the cities and peasants with small holdings — lived on the
edge of dire poverty, and when they lost their land or work, they either migrated to
the cities or wandered the roads in search of food and work. In France alone, 200,000
workers left their homes every year in search of seasonal employment elsewhere. At
least 10 percent of Europe’s urban population depended on some form of charity.
The growing numbers of poor people overwhelmed local governments. In some
countries, beggars and vagabonds had been locked up in workhouses since the mid-
1600s. The expenses for running these overcrowded institutions increased by 60
percent in England between 1760 and 1785. After 1740, most German towns created
workhouses that were part workshop, part hospital, and part prison. Such institu-
tions also appeared for the first time in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The
French government created dépôts de mendicité (“beggar houses”) in 1767. The gov-
ernment sent people to these new workhouses to labor in manufacturing, but most
were too weak or sick to work, and 20 percent of them died within a few months of
incarceration.
Those who were able to work or keep their land fared better: an increase in
literacy, especially in the cities, allowed some lower-class people to participate in new
tastes and ideas. One French observer insisted, “These days, you see a waiting-maid
in her backroom, a lackey in an ante-room reading pamphlets. People can read in
almost all classes of society.” In France, only 50 percent of men and 27 percent of
women could read and write in the 1780s, but that was twice the rate of a century
earlier. Literacy rates were higher in England and the Dutch Republic, much lower
in eastern Europe.
Whereas the new elite might attend salons, concerts, or art exhibitions, peasants
enjoyed their traditional forms of popular entertainment, such as fairs and festivals,
and the urban lower classes relaxed in cabarets and taverns. Sometimes pleasures
were cruel to animals. In Britain, bullbaiting, bearbaiting, dogfighting, and cockfight-
ing were all common forms of entertainment that provided opportunities for orga-
nized gambling.
[1750–1789
As population increased and villagers began to move to cities to better their

prospects, the rates of births out of wedlock soared, from less than 5 percent of all
births in the seventeenth century to nearly 20 percent at the end of the eighteenth.
Some detect in this change a sign of sexual liberation and the beginnings of a modern
sexual revolution: as women moved out of the control of their families, they began
to seek their own sexual fulfillment. Others view this change more bleakly, as a story
of seduction and betrayal: family and community pressure had once forced a man
to marry a woman pregnant with his child, but now a man could abandon a pregnant
lover by simply moving away.
Women who came to the city as domestic servants had little recourse against
masters or fellow servants who seduced or raped them. The result was a startling
rise in abandoned babies. Most European cities established foundling hospitals in
the 1700s, but infant and child mortality was 50 percent higher in such institutions
than for children brought up at home.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Broken Eggs (1756)

Greuze made his reputation as a painter of moralistic family scenes. In this one, an old woman
(perhaps the mother) confronts the lover of a young girl and points to the eggs that have fallen
out of a basket, a symbol of lost virginity. Denis Diderot praised Greuze’s work as “morality in
paint,” but the paintings often had an erotic subtext. (© Francis G. Mayer / Corbis.)
[ 1750–1789
]
European states had long tried to regulate sexual behavior; every country had
laws against prostitution, adultery, fornication, sodomy, and infanticide. Reformers
criticized the harshness of laws against infanticide, but they showed no mercy for
“sodomites” (as male homosexuals were called), who in some places, in particular the
Dutch Republic, were systematically persecuted and imprisoned or even executed.
Male homosexuals attracted the attention of authorities because they had begun to
develop networks and special meeting places. The stereotype of the effeminate, exclu-
sively homosexual male seems to have appeared for the first time in the eighteenth
century, perhaps as part of a growing emphasis on separate roles for men and women.
The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, self-control, and childhood innocence
made parents increasingly anxious about their children’s sexuality. Moralists and
physicians wrote books about the evils of masturbation, “proving” that it led to physi-
cal and mental degeneration and even madness.
While the Enlightenment thus encouraged excessive concern about children
being left to their own devices, it nevertheless taught the middle and upper classes
to value their children and to expect their improvement through education. Writ-
ers such as de Genlis and Rousseau drew attention to children, who were no longer
viewed only as little sinners in need of
harsh discipline. Toys, jigsaw puzzles, and
differences in the impact of the Enlightenment clothing designed for children all appeared
on the nobility, the middle classes, and the for the first time in the 1700s. Children
lower classes? were no longer considered miniature
adults.
State Power in an Era of Reform

Rulers turned to Enlightenment-inspired reforms to improve life for their subjects
and to gain commercial or military advantage over rival states. Historians label many
of the sovereigns of this time enlightened despots or enlightened absolutists, for
they aimed to promote Enlightenment reforms without giving up their absolutist
powers. Catherine the Great’s admiring relationship with Voltaire showed how even
the most absolutist rulers championed reform when it suited their own goals. Fore-
most among those goals was the expansion of a ruler’s territory.
War and Diplomacy

Europeans no longer fought devastating wars over religion that killed hundreds of
thousands of civilians; instead, professional armies and navies battled for control of
overseas empires and for dominance on the European continent. Rulers continued
to expand their armies: the Prussian army, for example, nearly tripled in size between
1740 and 1789. Widespread use of flintlock muskets required deployment in long
lines, usually three men deep, with each line in turn loading and firing on command.
Military strategy became cautious and calculating, but this did not prevent the out-
[1750–1789
] State Power in an Era of Reform 593
break of hostilities. Between 1750 and 1775, the instability of the European balance
of power resulted in a diplomatic reversal of alliances, a major international conflict,
and the partition of Poland-Lithuania among Russia, Austria, and Prussia.
In 1756, a set of events that historians call the Diplomatic Revolution reshaped
relations among the great powers. Prussia and Great Britain signed a defensive alli-
ance, prompting Austria to overlook two centuries of hostility and ally with France.
Russia and Sweden soon joined the Franco-Austrian alliance. When Frederick the
Great invaded Austria’s ally Saxony with his large, well-disciplined army, the long-
simmering hostilities between Great Britain and France over colonial boundaries
flared into a general war that became known as the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763).
Fighting soon raged around the world (Map 18.1). The French and British battled
on land and sea in North America (where the conflict was called the French and
British, 1755
British, 1763 N
W SWEDEN
French, 1763
Spanish, 1763 E
S
0 500 1,000 miles
CANADA
Quebec
Montreal
ea
North RUSSIA
ic S
Sea Balt Danzig
New York GREAT
BRITAIN PRUSSIA
PRUSSIA
ATLANTIC Berlin POLAND-
OCEAN Saxony LITHUANIA
ATL AN TIC Rossbach Silesia
O C E AN Paris 1757
Prague
WEST
Havana
INDIES
FRANCE AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
Caribbean Sea
Ad Black
r ia Danube R. Sea
PORTUGAL ti c
Se
SPAIN a
R.s
du
In
g
Gan es R.
INDIA Calcutta
Main areas of fighting
Allies: Austria, France, Russia,
Arabian Sweden, Saxony, Spain Mediterranean Sea
Sea Bay of
Madras Bengal Allies: Great Britain,
Prussia, Portugal 0 200 400 miles
0 250 500 miles
Battle
0 250 500 kilometers 0 200 400 kilometers
MAP 18.1 The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763

In what might justly be called the first worldwide war, the French and British fought each other
in Europe, the West Indies, North America, and India. Skirmishing in North America helped pre-
cipitate the war, which became more general when Austria, France, and Russia allied to check
Prussian influence in central Europe. The peace treaty between Austria and Prussia simply
restored the status quo in Europe, but the changes overseas were much more dramatic. Brit-
ain gained control over Canada and India but gave back to France the West Indian islands of
Guadeloupe and Martinique. Britain was now the dominant power of the seas.
[ 1750–1789
]
Indian War), the West Indies, and India. The two coalitions also fought each other in
central Europe. At first, in 1757, Frederick the Great surprised Europe with a spec-
tacular victory at Rossbach in Saxony over a much larger Franco-Austrian army. But
in time, Russian and Austrian armies encircled his troops. A fluke of history saved
him. Empress Elizabeth of Russia (r. 1741–1762) died and was succeeded by the
mentally unstable Peter III, a fanatical admirer of Frederick and all things Prussian.
Peter withdrew Russia from the war. (This was practically his only accomplishment
as tsar. He was soon mysteriously murdered, probably at the instigation of his wife,
Catherine the Great.) A separate peace treaty allowed Frederick to keep all his ter-
ritory, including Silesia, that had been conquered in the War of the Austrian Succes-
sion (1740–1748).
The Anglo-French overseas conflicts ended more decisively than the continental
land wars. British naval superiority, fully achieved only in the 1750s, enabled Great
Britain to rout the French in North America, India, and the West Indies. In the
Treaty of Paris of 1763, France ceded Canada to Great Britain and agreed to remove
its armies from India, in exchange for keeping its rich West Indian islands. Eagerness
to avenge this defeat would motivate France to support the British North American
colonists in their War of Independence just fifteen years later.
Although Prussia suffered great losses in the Seven Years’ War — some 160,000
Prussian soldiers died either in action or of disease — its army helped vault Prussia
to the rank of leading powers. By 1740, the Prussians had the third or fourth largest
army in Europe even though Prussia was tenth in
population and thirteenth in land area. Under
Frederick II, Prussia’s military expen-
ditures rose to two-thirds of the
state’s revenue. Virtually every
nobleman served in the army,
paying for his own support as
officer and buying a position
Dividing Poland, 1772

In this contemporary depiction,
Catherine the Great, Joseph II,
and Frederick the Great point on
the map to the portion of Poland-
Lithuania each plans to take.
The artist makes it clear that
Poland’s fate rested in the hands
of neighboring rulers, not its own
people. Can you infer the senti-
ments of the artist from the
content of this engraving? (Hulton
Archive / Getty Images.)
[1750–1789
as company commander. Once retired, the officers 0 200 400 miles
returned to their estates and served as local offi- 0 200 400 kilometers
To Russia
a
cials. This militarization of Prussian society had a
Se
c
profoundly conservative effect: it kept the peasants lti RUSSIA
Ba
enserfed to their lords and blocked the middle PRUSSIA
POLAND-
classes from access to estates or high government LITHUANIA
To Prussia
positions.
Prussia’s power grew so dramatically that in To Austria
1772 Frederick the Great proposed that large chunks
AUSTRIA
of Poland-Lithuania be divided among Austria, HUNGARY
Prussia, and Russia. Although the Austrian empress
Maria Theresa protested that the partition would The First Partition of Poland,
1772
spread “a stain over my whole reign,” she agreed to
the first partition of Poland, splitting one-third of Poland-Lithuania’s territory and
half of its people among the three powers. Russia took over most of Lithuania, effec-
tively ending the large but weak Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.
State-Sponsored Reform
In the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, all the belligerents faced pressing needs for
more money. To make tax increases more palatable to public opinion, rulers appointed
reform-minded ministers and gave them a mandate to modernize government. Such
reforms always threatened the interests of traditional groups, however, and the spread
of Enlightenment ideas aroused sometimes unpredictable desires for more change.
Monarchs dedicated to reform insisted on greater attention to merit, hard work,
and professionalism. In this view, the ruler should be a benevolent, enlightened admin-
istrator who worked for the general well-being of his or her people. Frederick the Great,
who drove himself as hard as he drove his officials, boasted, “I am the first servant of
the state.” A Freemason and supporter of religious toleration, Frederick abolished tor-
ture, reorganized taxation, and hosted leading French philosophes at his court. The
Prussian king also composed more than a hundred original pieces of music.
Legal reform, both of the judicial system and of the often disorganized and
irregular law codes, was central to the work of many reform-minded monarchs. Like
Frederick the Great, Joseph II of Austria (r. 1780–1790) ordered the compilation of
a unified law code, a project that required many years for completion. Catherine the
Great began such an undertaking even more ambitiously. In 1767, she called together
a legislative commission of 564 deputies and asked them to consider a long docu-
ment called the Instruction, which represented her hopes for legal reform based on
the ideas of Montesquieu and the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria. Montesquieu had
insisted that punishment should fit the crime; he criticized the use of torture and
brutal corporal punishment. In his influential book On Crimes and Punishments
(1764), Beccaria argued that justice should be administered in public, that judicial
torture should be abolished as inhumane, and that the accused should be presumed
[ 1750–1789
]
Maria Theresa
Like Catherine the Great, Maria The-
resa had herself painted on horseback
to emphasize her sovereign position,
which the crown over her head makes
apparent. This portrait from 1757 does
not make her seem warlike, however,
as she carries no sword. She had six-
teen children, two of whom became
Holy Roman Emperor (Joseph II and
Leopold II) and two of whom became
queens (Marie-Antoinette of France and
Maria Carolina of Naples). (Musée histo-
rique Lorraine, Nancy, France / Scala / White
Images / Art Resource, NY.)
innocent until proven guilty.

Despite much discussion and hun-
dreds of petitions and documents
about local problems, little came of
Catherine’s commission.
Rulers everywhere wanted more control over church affairs, and they used
Enlightenment criticisms of the organized churches to get their way. In Catholic
countries, many government officials resented the influence of the Jesuits, the major
Catholic teaching order. Critics mounted campaigns against the Jesuits in many
countries, and in 1773, Pope Clement XIV (r. 1769–1774) agreed under pressure to
disband the order, an edict that held until a reinvigorated papacy restored the society
in 1814. Joseph II of Austria not only applauded the suppression of the Jesuits but
also required Austrian bishops to swear fidelity and submission to him. Joseph had
become Holy Roman Emperor and co-regent with his mother, Maria Theresa, in
1765. After her death in 1780, he initiated a wide-ranging program of reform. Under
him, the Austrian state supervised Catholic seminaries, abolished contemplative
monastic orders, and confiscated monastic property to pay for education and poor
relief.
Joseph II launched the most ambitious educational reforms of the period. In
1774, once the Jesuits had been disbanded, the General School Ordinance in Austria
ordered state subsidies for local schools, which the state would regulate. By 1789,
one-quarter of the school-age children attended school. In Prussia, the school code
of 1763 required all children between the ages of five and thirteen to attend school.
Although not enforced uniformly, the Prussian law demonstrated Frederick the
Great’s belief that modernization depended on education.
No ruler pushed the principle of religious toleration as far as Joseph II of Austria,
who in 1781 granted freedom of religious worship to Protestants, Orthodox Chris-
[
1750–1789
tians, and Jews. For the first time, these groups were allowed to own property, build
schools, enter the professions, and hold political and military offices. Louis XVI
signed an edict in 1787 restoring French Protestants’ civil rights — but still, Protes-
tants could not hold political office. Great Britain continued to deny Catholics free-
dom of open worship and the right to sit in Parliament. Most European states limited
the rights and opportunities available to Jews. Even in Austria, where Joseph encour-
aged toleration, the laws forced Jews to take German-sounding names. The leading
philosophes in theory opposed persecution of the Jews but often in practice treated
them with undisguised contempt. Diderot’s comment was all too typical: the Jews,
he said, bore “all the defects peculiar to an ignorant and superstitious nation.”
Limits of Reform
When enlightened absolutist leaders introduced reforms, they often ran into resis-
tance from groups threatened by the proposed changes. Joseph II tried to remove
the burdens of serfdom in the Habsburg lands. After 1781, serfs could move freely,
enter trades, or marry without their lords’ permission. Joseph also abolished the tithe
to the church, shifted more of the tax burden to the nobility, and converted peasants’
labor services into cash payments.
The Austrian nobility furiously resisted these far-reaching reforms. When Joseph
died in 1790, his brother Leopold II (r. 1790–1792) had to revoke most reforms to
appease the nobles. Prussia’s Frederick the Great, like Joseph, encouraged such agri-
cultural innovations as planting potatoes and turnips (new crops that could help feed
a growing population), but Prussia’s noble landlords, called Junkers, continued to
expand their estates at the expense of poorer peasants and thwarted Frederick’s
attempts to improve the status of serfs.
In France, a group of economists called the physiocrats urged the government
to deregulate the grain trade and make the tax system more equitable to encourage
agricultural productivity. In the interest of establishing a free market, they also
insisted that urban guilds be abolished because the guilds prevented free entry into
the trades. The French government heeded some of this advice and gave up its sys-
tem of price controls on grain in 1763, but it had to reverse the decision in 1770
when grain shortages caused a famine.
A conflict with the parlements (the thirteen high courts of law) prompted French
king Louis XV (r. 1715–1774) to go even further in 1771. He replaced the parlements
with courts in which the judges no longer owned their offices and thus could not
sell them or pass them on as an inheritance. Justice, he hoped, would then be more
impartial. The displaced judges of the parlements succeeded in arousing widespread
opposition to what they portrayed as tyrannical royal policy. The furor calmed down
only when Louis XV died in 1774 and his successor, Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792),
yielded to aristocratic demands and restored the old parlements.
Louis XVI tried to carry out part of the program suggested by the physiocrats,
and he chose one of their disciples, Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), as his chief minister.
[ 1750–1789
]
A contributor to the Encyclopedia, Turgot pushed through several edicts that again
freed the grain trade, suppressed guilds, converted the peasants’ forced labor on
roads into a money tax payable by all landowners, and reduced court expenses. He
also began making plans to introduce a system of elected local assemblies, which
would have increased representation in the government. Faced with broad-based
resistance led by the parlements and his own courtiers as well as with riots against
rising grain prices, Louis XVI dismissed Turgot, and one of the last possibilities to
overhaul France’s government collapsed.
The failure of reform in France paradoxically reflected the power of Enlighten-
ment thinkers; everyone now endorsed Enlightenment ideas but used them for dif-
ferent ends. The nobles in the parlements blocked the French monarchy’s reform
efforts using the very same Enlightenment language spoken by the crown’s ministers.
Where Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, and even Joseph II used reform to
bolster the efficiency of absolutist govern-
ment, attempts at change in France back-
REVIEW QUESTION What prompted enlight-
ened absolutists to undertake reforms in the
fired. French kings found that their ambi-
second half of the eighteenth century? tious programs for reform succeeded only
in arousing unrealistic hopes.
Rebellions against State Power

Although traditional forms of popular discontent had not disappeared, Enlighten-
ment ideals and reforms changed the rules of the game in politics. Governments had
become accountable for their actions to a much wider range of people than ever
before. In Britain and France, ordinary people rioted when they perceived govern-
ment as failing to protect them against food shortages. The growth of informed
public opinion had its most dramatic consequences in the North American colonies,
where a struggle over the British Parliament’s right to tax turned into a full-scale war
for independence. The American War of Independence showed that, once put into
practice, Enlightenment ideals could have revolutionary implications.
Food Riots and Peasant Uprisings

Population growth, inflation, and the extension of the market system put added
pressure on the already beleaguered poor. In the last half of the eighteenth century,
the food supply became the focus of political and social conflict. Poor people in
Europe’s villages and towns believed that it was the government’s responsibility to
ensure they had enough food, and many governments did stockpile grain to make
up for the occasional bad harvest. At the same time, in keeping with Adam Smith’s
and the French physiocrats’ free-market proposals, governments wanted to allow
grain prices to rise with market demand because higher profits would motivate pro-
ducers to increase the overall supply of food.
[1750–1789
] Rebellions against State Power 599
Free trade in grain meant selling to the highest bidder, even if that bidder was
a foreign merchant. In the short run, in times of scarcity, big landowners and farmers
could make huge profits by selling grain outside their hometowns. This practice
enraged poor farmers, agricultural workers, and urban wageworkers, who could not
afford the higher prices. Lacking the political means to affect policy, the poor could
enforce their desire for old-fashioned price regulation only by rioting. Most did not
pillage or steal grain but rather forced the sale of grain or flour at a “just” price and
blocked the shipment of grain out of their villages to other markets. Women often
led these “popular price fixings,” as they were called in France, in desperate attempts
to protect the food supply for their children.
Such food riots occurred regularly in Britain and France in the last half of the
eighteenth century. One of the most turbulent was the so-called Flour War in France
in 1775. Turgot’s deregulation of the grain trade in 1774 caused prices to rise in several
provincial cities. Rioting spread from there to the Paris region, where villagers attacked
grain convoys heading to the capital city. Local officials often ordered merchants and
bakers to sell at the price the rioters demanded, only to find themselves arrested by
the central government for overriding free trade. The government brought in troops
to restore order and introduced the death penalty for rioting.
Frustrations with serfdom and hopes for a miraculous transformation provoked the
Pugachev rebellion in Russia beginning in 1773. An army deserter from the southeast
frontier region, Emelian Pugachev (1742–1775) claimed to be Tsar Peter III, the dead
husband of Catherine the Great. Pugachev’s appearance seemed to confirm peasant
hopes for a “redeemer tsar” who would save the
people from oppression. He rallied around him Cos- Area of rebellion
Pugachev’s route
sacks like himself who resented the loss of their old
0 150 300 miles
tribal independence. Nearly three million people
eventually participated, making this the largest single
rebellion in the history of tsarist Russia. When Moscow
Pugachev urged the peasants to attack the nobility RUSSIA

and seize their estates, hundreds of noble families
R.
ga
perished. Finally, the army captured the rebel leader

l
Vo
Do
R.
and brought him in an iron cage to Moscow, where
n
he was tortured and executed. In the aftermath,

Catherine tightened the nobles’ control over their
Aral
serfs with the Charter of the Nobility and harshly Black Caspian Sea
punished those who dared to criticize serfdom. Sea Sea
The Pugachev Rebellion, 1773

Public Opinion and Political Opposition
Peasant uprisings might have briefly shaken even a powerful monarchy, but the rise
of public opinion as a force independent of court society caused more enduring
changes in European politics. Across much of Europe and in the North American
[ 1750–1789
]
colonies, demands for broader political participation reflected Enlightenment notions
about individual rights. Aristocratic bodies such as the French parlements, which
had no legislative role like that of the British Parliament, insisted that the monarch
consult them on the nation’s affairs, and the new educated elite wanted more influ-
ence, too. Newspapers began to cover daily political affairs, and the public learned
the basics of political life, despite the strict limits on political participation in most
countries.
The Wilkes affair in Great Britain showed that public opinion could be mobi-
lized to challenge a government. In 1763, during the reign of George III (r. 1760–
1820), John Wilkes, a member of Parliament, attacked the government in his news-
paper, North Briton, and sued the crown when he was arrested. He won his release
as well as damages. When he was reelected, Parliament denied him his seat, not once
but three times.
The Wilkes episode soon escalated into a major campaign against the corruption
and social exclusiveness of Parliament, complaints the Levellers had first raised dur-
ing the English Revolution of the late 1640s. In one incident eleven people died when
soldiers broke up a huge gathering of Wilkes’s supporters. The slogan “Wilkes and
Liberty” appeared on walls all over London. Middle-class voters formed the Society
of Supporters of the Bill of Rights, which circulated petitions for Wilkes; they gained
the support of about one-fourth of all the voters. The more determined Wilkesites
proposed sweeping reforms of Parliament, including more frequent elections, more
representation for the counties, elimination of “rotten boroughs” (election districts
so small that they could be controlled by one big patron), and restrictions of pen-
sions used by the crown to gain support. These demands would be at the heart of
agitation for parliamentary reform in Britain for decades to come.
Popular demonstrations did not always support reforms. In 1780, the Gordon
riots devastated London. They were named after the fanatical anti-Catholic crusader
Lord George Gordon, who helped organize huge marches and petition campaigns
against a bill the House of Commons passed to grant limited toleration to Catholics.
The demonstrations culminated in a seven-day riot that left fifty buildings destroyed
and three hundred people dead. Despite the continuing limitation on voting rights
in Great Britain, British politicians were learning that they could ignore public opin-
ion only at their peril.
Political opposition also took artistic forms, particularly in countries where gov-
ernments restricted organized political activity. A striking example of a play with a
political message was The Marriage of Figaro (1784) by Pierre-Augustin Caron de
Beaumarchais (1732–1799). When finally performed publicly, the play caused a sen-
sation. The chief character, Figaro, is a clever servant who gets the better of his noble
employer, a count. When speaking of the count, Figaro cries, “What have you done
to deserve so many rewards? You went to the trouble of being born, and nothing
more.” Looking back, Napoleon would say that the play was the “revolution in
action.”
[
1750–1789
] Rebellions against State Power 601
Revolution in North America

Oppositional forms of public opinion came to a head in Great Britain’s North Ameri-
can colonies, where the result was American independence and the establishment of
a republican constitution that stood in stark contrast to most European regimes.
Many Europeans saw the American War of Independence, or the American Revolu-
tion, as a triumph for Enlightenment ideas. As one German writer exclaimed in 1777,
American victory would give “greater scope to the Enlightenment, new keenness to
the thinking of peoples and new life to the spirit of liberty.”
The American revolutionary leaders had participated in the Enlightenment and
shared political ideas with the opposition Whigs in Britain. In the 1760s and 1770s,
American opposition leaders became convinced that the British government was grow-
ing increasingly corrupt and despotic. The colonies had no representatives in Parlia-
ment, and colonists claimed that “no taxation without representation” should be allowed.
Indeed, they denied that Parliament had any jurisdiction over the colonies, insisting
that the king govern them through colonial legislatures and recognize their traditional
British liberties. The failure of the “Wilkes and Liberty” campaign to produce concrete
results convinced many Americans that Parliament was hopelessly tainted.
Parliament’s encroachment on the autonomy of the colonies transformed colo-
nial attitudes. With the British clamoring for lower taxes at the end of the Seven
Years’ War and the colonists paying only a fraction of the tax rate paid by the Britons
at home, Parliament passed new taxes on the colonies, including the Stamp Act in
1765, which required a special tax stamp on all legal documents and publications.
After violent rioting in the colonies, the British repealed the tax, but in 1773 the new
Tea Act revived colonial resistance, which culminated in the so-called Boston Tea
Party of 1773. Colonists dressed as Indians boarded British ships and dumped the
imported tea (by this time an enormously popular beverage) into Boston’s harbor.
Political opposition in the American colonies turned belligerent when Britain
threatened to use force to maintain control. After actual fighting had begun, in 1776,
the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence. An elo-
quent statement of the American cause drafted by the Virginia planter and lawyer
Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was couched in the language of
universal human rights, which enlightened Europeans could be expected to under-
stand. In 1778, France boosted the American cause by entering on the colonists’ side.
Spain declared war on Britain in 1779; in 1780, Great Britain declared war on the
Dutch Republic in retaliation for Dutch support of the rebels. The worldwide conflict
that resulted was more than Britain could handle. The American colonies achieved
their independence in the peace treaty of 1783.
The newly independent states still faced the challenge of republican self-
government. The Articles of Confederation, drawn up in 1777 as a provisional con-
stitution, proved weak because they gave the central government few powers. In 1787,
a constitutional convention met in Philadelphia to draft a new constitution, which
was ratified the following year. It established a two-house legislature, an indirectly
[ 1750–1789
]
Resistance to British Rule

To demonstrate their resistance to the 1765 Stamp Act, Boston citizens tar and feather a tax
collector. The Stamp Act is nailed upside down to a tree. (Private Collection / Peter Newark Archives /
Bridgeman Images.)
elected president, and an independent judiciary. The U.S. Constitution’s preamble

insisted explicitly, for the first time in history, that government derived its power
solely from the people and did not depend on divine right or on the tradition of
royalty or aristocracy. The new educated elite of the eighteenth century had now cre-
ated government based on a “social contract” among male, property-owning, white
citizens. It was by no means a complete democracy (women and slaves were excluded
from political participation), but the new government represented a radical depar-
ture from European models. Appended to the Constitution in 1791, the Bill of Rights
outlined the essential rights (such as freedom of speech) that the government could
never overturn. Although slavery continued in the American republic, the new empha-
sis on rights helped fuel the movement for its abolition in both Britain and the
United States.
Interest in the new republic was greatest in France. The U.S. Constitution and
various state constitutions were published in French with commentary by leading
thinkers. Even more important in the long run were the effects of the American war.
Dutch losses to Great Britain aroused a widespread movement for political reform
in the Dutch Republic, and debts incurred by France in supporting the American
colonies would soon force the French
monarchy to the edge of bankruptcy and
REVIEW QUESTION Why did public opinion
become a new factor in politics in the second then to revolution. Ultimately, the entire
half of the eighteenth century? European system of royal rule would be
challenged.
[1750–1789
] Conclusion 603
Conclusion
What began as a cosmopolitan movement of a few intellectuals in the first half of
the eighteenth century had reached a relatively wide audience among the educated
elite of men and women by the 1770s and 1780s. The spirit of Enlightenment swept
from the salons, coffeehouses, and Masonic lodges into the halls of government from
Philadelphia to Vienna. Scientific inquiry into the causes of social misery and laws
defending individual rights and freedoms gained adherents even among the rulers
and ministers responsible for censoring Enlightenment works.
For most Europeans, however, the promise of the Enlightenment did not become
a reality. Rulers such as Catherine the Great had every intention of retaining their
full, often unchecked powers even as they corresponded with leading philosophes
and entertained them at their courts. Yet even the failure of reform contributed to
the ferment in Europe after 1770. Peasant rebellions in eastern Europe, the “Wilkes
and Liberty” campaign in Great Britain, the struggle over reform in France, and the
0 1,000 2,000 miles N

W E
DENMARK
S SWEDEN
GREAT
BRITAIN RUSSIA
PRUSSIA
POLAND-
CANADA DUTCH LITHUANIA
REP. AUSTRIA
AUSTRIAN NETH. FRANCE HUNGARY
E OT
LOU
AT SPAIN ITALY TO
MA
ST PORTUGAL
ISIA
N
ED ATLANTIC
EM
PIRE
IT
NA
U N PERSIA
OCEAN
EGYPT
WEST INDIES
EW
N
SP
AI British possessions
N
French possessions
Slave-Trading Areas Spanish possessions
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the World, c. 1780

Although Great Britain lost control over part of its North American colonies, which became the
new United States, European influence on the rest of the world grew dramatically in the eigh-
teenth century. The slave trade linked European ports to African slave-trading outposts and to
plantations in the Caribbean, South America, and North America. The European countries on the
Atlantic Ocean benefited most from this trade. Yet almost all of Africa, China, Japan, and large
parts of India still resisted European incursion, and the Ottoman Empire, with its massive ter-
ritories, still presented Europe with a formidable military challenge.
[ 1750–1789
]
revolution in America all occurred around the same time, and their conjunction
convinced many Europeans that change was brewing. Just how much could change,
and whether change made life better or worse, would come into question in the next
ten years.
Chapter 18 Review
philosophes (p. 576) Jean-Jacques Rousseau enlightened despots (p. 592)
deists (p. 579) (p. 581) Seven Years’ War (p. 593)
abolitionists (p. 580) romanticism (p. 584) partition of Poland (p. 594)
laissez-faire (p. 581) Methodism (p. 584) Pugachev rebellion (p. 595)
Freemasons (p. 587)
Review Questions
1. What were the major differences between the Enlightenment in France, Great Britain, and
the German states?
2. What were the major differences in the impact of the Enlightenment on the nobility, the
middle classes, and the lower classes?
3. What prompted enlightened absolutists to undertake reforms in the second half of the
eighteenth century?
4. Why did public opinion become a new factor in politics in the second half of the eighteenth
century?
Making Connections
1. Why might rulers have felt ambivalent about the Enlightenment, supporting reform on the
one hand while clamping down on political dissidents on the other hand?
2. Which major developments in this period ran counter to the influence of the
Enlightenment?
3. In what ways had politics changed, and in what ways did they remain the same during the
Enlightenment?
4. Explain how Catherine the Great of Russia could be taken as a symbol of both the promise
and the limits of the Enlightenment.
[1750–1789
Important Events
1751–1772 Encyclopedia is published in France

1756–1763 Seven Years’ War is fought in Europe, India, and the American colonies
1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
1763 Wilkes affair begins in Great Britain
1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
1771 Louis XV of France fails to break power of French law courts
1772 First partition of Poland
1773 Pugachev rebellion of Russian peasants
1775 Flour War in France
1776 American Declaration of Independence from Great Britain; Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations
1780 Joseph II of Austria undertakes a wide-reaching reform program
1781 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
1784 Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro
1785 Catherine the Great’s Charter of the Nobility grants nobles exclusive
control over their serfs in exchange for subservience to the state
1787 Delegates from the states draft the U.S. Constitution
Consider three events: Encyclopedia published in France (1751–1772), Wilkes affair

begins in Great Britain (1763), and American Declaration of Independence from Great
Britain (1776). In what ways did the same Enlightenment ideals inform these events?
Gay’s interpretive study of the Enlightenment remains useful, but the Kors volumes offer the
most up-to-date views. Readers can find different perspectives in studies of individual rulers,
their routes to power, and their reactions to the Enlightenment.
Beales, Derek. Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe. 2005.
Cash, Arthur H. John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty. 2006.
Catherine the Great: http://russia.nypl.org/home.html
Danley, Mark, and Patrick Speelman, eds. The Seven Years’ War: Global Views. 2012.
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. 2 vols. 1966, 1969.
*Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. The Sufferings of Young Werther. Trans. Stanley Corngold. 2012.
Gray, Edward G., and Jane Kamensky, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution. 2013.
Hempton, David. Church in the Long Eighteenth Century. 2011.
Kors, Alan Charles, ed. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. 4 vols. 2003.
Melton, James Van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. 2001.
Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment. 2001.
*Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men.
Ed. Helena Rosenblatt. 2011.
Venturi, Franco. The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768–1776: The First Crisis. Trans. R. Burr
Litchfield. 1989.
*Primary source.
The Cataclysm
19
of Revolution
1789–1799
O
n October 5, 1789, a crowd of several thousand women marched in a
drenching rain from the center of Paris to Versailles, a distance of twelve
miles. They demanded the king’s help in securing more grain for the hungry
and his reassurance that he did not intend to resist the emerging revolutionary move-
ment. Joined the next morning by thousands of men who came from Paris to re-
inforce them, they broke into the royal family’s private apartments, killing two of the
royal bodyguards. To prevent further bloodshed, the king agreed to move his family
and his government to Paris. A dramatic pro-
cession of the royal family guarded by throngs
Women’s March to Versailles
of ordinary men and women made its slow way
Thousands of prints broadcast the
events of the French Revolution to back to the capital. The people’s proud dis-
the public in France and elsewhere. play of cannons and pikes underlined the fun-
This colored engraving shows a damental transformation that was occurring.
crowd of armed women marching Ordinary people had forced the king of France
to Versailles on October 5, 1789, to respond to their grievances. The French
to confront the king. The sight of
armed women frightened many
monarchy was in danger, and if such a pow-
observers and demonstrated that erful and long-lasting institution could come
the Revolution was not only a men’s under fire, then could any monarch of Europe
affair. Note the middle-class woman rest easy?
on the left being forced to join with The French Revolution first grabbed the
the others. (The Granger Collection,
attention of the entire world because it seemed
to promise human rights and broad-based
political participation. Its most famous slogan
pledged “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” for all. Even as the Revolution promised
democracy, however, it also inaugurated a cycle of violence and intimidation, seen
already in October 1789. When the revolutionaries encountered resistance to their
programs, they tried to compel obedience. Some historians therefore see in the French
Revolution the origins of modern totalitarianism — that is, a government that tries
to control every aspect of life, including daily activities, while limiting all forms of
political dissent. As events unfolded after 1789, the French Revolution became the
607
608 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
[ 1789–1799
]
model of modern revolution. Republicanism, democracy, terrorism, nationalism, and
military dictatorship all took their modern forms during the French Revolution.
The Revolution might have remained a strictly French affair if war had not
involved the rest of Europe. After 1792, huge French republican armies, fueled by
patriotic nationalism, marched across Europe, promising liberation from traditional
monarchies but often delivering old-fashioned conquest and annexation. French vic-
tories spread revolutionary ideas far and
CHAPTER FOCUS What was so revolutionary
wide, from Poland to the colonies in the
about the French Revolution? Caribbean, where the first successful slave
revolt established the republic of Haiti.
The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789

Between 1787 and 1789, revolts in the name of liberty broke out in the Dutch Repub-
lic, the Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium and Luxembourg), and Poland
as well as in France. At the same time, the newly independent United States of Amer-
ica was preparing a new federal constitution. Historians have sometimes referred to
these revolts as the Atlantic revolutions because so many protest movements arose
in countries on both shores of the North Atlantic. The French Revolution nonethe-
less differed greatly from the others. Not only was France the richest, most powerful,
and most populous state in Europe, but its revolution was also more violent, more
long-lasting, and ultimately more influential.
Protesters in the Low Countries and Poland

Political protests in the Dutch Republic attracted European attention because Dutch
banks still controlled a hefty portion of the world’s capital at the end of the eighteenth
century. The Dutch Patriots, as they chose to call themselves, wanted to reduce the
powers of the prince of Orange, the kinglike stadholder who favored close ties with
Great Britain. Government-sponsored Dutch banks owned 40 percent of the British
national debt, and by 1796 they held the entire foreign debt of the United States.
Relations with the British deteriorated during the American War of Independence,
however, and by the middle of the 1780s, agitation in favor of the Americans had
boiled over into an attack on the stadholder.
Building on support among middle-class bankers and merchants, the Dutch
Patriots soon gained a more popular audience by demanding political reforms and
organizing armed citizen militias of men, called Free Corps. Before long, the Free
Corps took on the troops of the prince of Orange and got the upper hand. In response,
Frederick William II of Prussia, whose sister had married the stadholder, intervened
in 1787 with tacit British support. Thousands of Prussian troops soon occupied
Utrecht and Amsterdam, and the house of Orange regained its former position. The
Orangists got their revenge: lower-class mobs pillaged the houses of prosperous
Dutch Patriot leaders, forcing many to flee to the United States, France, or the Aus-
[1789–1799
] The Revolutionary Wave, 1787–1789 609
trian Netherlands. Those Patriots who remained nursed their grievances until the
French republican armies invaded in 1795.
If Austrian emperor Joseph II had not tried to introduce Enlightenment-inspired
reforms, the Belgians of the ten provinces of the Austrian Netherlands might have
remained tranquil. Just as he had done previously in his own crown lands (see page
597), Joseph abolished torture, decreed toleration for Jews and Protestants (in this
resolutely Catholic area), and suppressed monasteries. His reorganization of the
administrative and judicial systems eliminated many offices that belonged to nobles
and lawyers, sparking resistance among the upper classes in 1788.
Upper-class protesters intended only to defend historic local liberties against an
overbearing government. Nonetheless, their resistance galvanized democrats, who
wanted a more representative government and organized clubs to give voice to their
demands. At the end of 1788, a secret society formed armed companies to prepare
an uprising. By late 1789, each province had separately declared its independence,
and the Austrian administration had collapsed. Delegates from the various provinces
declared themselves the United States of Belgium, a clear reference to the American
precedent.
Once again, however, social divisions doomed the rebels. When the democrats
began to challenge noble authority, aristocratic leaders drew to their side the Catholic
clergy and peasants, who had little sympathy for the democrats of the cities. Every
Sunday in May and June 1790, thousands of peasant men and women, led by their
priests, streamed into Brussels carrying crucifixes, nooses, and pitchforks to intimidate
the democrats and defend the church. Faced with the choice between the Austrian
emperor and “our current tyrants,” the democrats chose to support the return of the
Austrians under Emperor Leopold II (r. 1790–1792), who had succeeded his brother.
A reform party calling itself the Patriots also emerged in Poland, which had been
shocked by the loss of a third of its territory in the first partition of 1772. The Patri-
ots sought to overhaul the weak commonwealth along modern western European
lines and looked to King Stanislaw August Poniatowski (r. 1764–1795) to lead them.
In 1788, the Patriots got their golden chance. Bogged down in war with the Otto-
man Turks, Catherine the Great of Russia could not block the summoning of a reform-
minded parliament, which eventually enacted the constitution of May 3, 1791. It
ended the veto power that each aristocrat had over legislation, granted townspeople
limited political rights, and vaguely promised future Jewish emancipation. Abolishing
serfdom was hardly mentioned. Within a year, however, Catherine had turned her
attention to Poland and engineered the downfall of the Patriots.
Origins of the French Revolution, 1787–1789

Many French enthusiastically greeted the American experiment in republican gov-
ernment and supported the Dutch, Belgian, and Polish Patriots. After suffering
humiliation at the hands of the British in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the
French had regained international prestige by supporting the victorious Americans.
[ 1789–1799
]
Yet by the late 1780s, the French monarchy was facing a serious fiscal crisis caused
by a mounting deficit. The fiscal crisis soon provoked a constitutional crisis of epic
proportions.
About half of the French national budget went to paying interest on the debt
that had ballooned because of the American war. In contrast to the British govern-
ment, which had a national bank to help raise loans, the French government lived
off relatively short-term, high-interest loans from private sources, including Swiss
banks, government annuities, and advances from tax collectors.
For years the French government had been trying unsuccessfully to modernize
the tax system to make it more equitable. The peasants bore the greatest tax burden,
whereas the nobles and clergy were largely exempt. Tax collection was also far from
systematic: private contractors collected many taxes and pocketed a large share of
the proceeds. With the growing support of public opinion, the bond and annuity
holders from the middle and upper classes now demanded a clearer system of fiscal
accountability.
In a monarchy, the ruler’s character is always crucial. Many complained that
Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792) showed more interest in hunting and in his hobby of
making locks than in the problems of government. His wife, Marie-Antoinette, was
blond, beautiful, and much criticized for her extravagant taste in clothes, elaborate
hairdos, and supposed indifference to popular misery. It was reported that, when
told the poor had no bread, the queen
gave a reply that has come to epito-
mize oblivious cold-heartedness: “Let
them eat cake.” The queen, whom
underground writers called the “Aus-
trian bitch,” had been the target of
an increasingly nasty pamphlet cam-
paign in the 1780s. By 1789, Marie-
Antoinette had become an object of
Queen Marie-Antoinette (detail)

Marie-Louise-Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun
painted this portrait of the French queen
Marie-Antoinette and her children in 1788.
The queen appears in the most stylish
and lavish fashions of the day. When her
eldest son (not shown in this detail) died
in 1789, her second son (on her lap here)
became heir to the throne. Known to sup-
porters of the monarch as Louis XVII, the
child died in prison in 1795 and never
ruled. Vigée-Lebrun fled France in 1789
and returned only in 1805. (Château de Ver-
sailles, France / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
[
1789–1799
popular hatred. The king’s ineffectiveness and the queen’s growing unpopularity
helped undermine the monarchy as an institution.
Faced with a mounting deficit, in 1787 Louis submitted a package of reforms first
to the Assembly of Notables and then to his old rival the parlement of Paris. Both
refused to consider the reforms. Louis finally gave in to demands that he call a meet-
ing of the Estates General, which had last met 175 years before.
The calling of the Estates General electrified public opinion. The Estates General
was a body of deputies from the three estates, or orders, of France. The deputies in
the First Estate represented some 170,000 priests, monks, and nuns of the Catholic
church, which owned about 10 percent of the land in France and collected a 10 per-
cent tax (the tithe) on peasants. The deputies of the Second Estate represented the
nobility, about 140,000 men and women who owned about one-third of the land,
enjoyed many tax exemptions, and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their
peasant tenants. The deputies of the Third Estate represented everyone else, at least
95 percent of the nation. Included in the Third Estate were the vast mass of peasants,
some 75 percent of the population, and the sans-culottes (“without breeches”) and
middle classes of the cities. The sans-culottes were those who worked with their hands
and wore long trousers rather than the knee breeches of the upper classes.
Before the elections to the Estates General in 1789, the king agreed to double
the number of deputies from the Third Estate (making those deputies equal in num-
ber to the other two orders combined), but he refused to mandate voting by indi-
vidual head rather than by order. Voting by order, allowing each order to have one
vote, would conserve the traditional powers of the clergy and nobility; voting by
head, allowing each deputy one vote, would give the Third Estate an advantage since
many clergymen and even some nobles sympathized with the Third Estate.
As the state’s censorship apparatus broke down, pamphleteers by the hundreds
denounced the traditional privileges of the nobility and clergy and called for voting
by head rather than by order. In the most vitriolic of all the pamphlets, What Is the
Third Estate?, the middle-class abbé (“abbot”) Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès charged that
the nobility contributed nothing at all to the nation’s well-being; they were, he said,
“a malignant disease which preys upon and tortures the body of a sick man.” In the
winter and spring of 1789, villagers and townspeople alike held meetings to elect
deputies and write down their grievances. The effect was immediate. Although law-
yers dominated the meetings at the regional level, the humblest peasants voted in
their villages and burst forth with complaints, especially about taxes. One village
meeting summed up the frustration: “misery is so great in the country that we can-
not make enough complaints.” The long series of meetings raised expectations that
the Estates General would help the king solve all the nation’s ills.
These new hopes soared just at the moment France experienced a food shortage,
an increasingly rare but always dangerous situation. Bad weather had damaged the
harvest of 1788, causing bread prices to rise dramatically in many places in the spring
and summer of 1789 and threatening starvation for the poorest people. In addition,
a serious slump in textile production had been causing massive unemployment since
[ 1789–1799
]
1786. Hundreds of thousands of textile workers were out of work and hungry, adding
another volatile element to an already tense situation.
When some twelve hundred deputies journeyed to the king’s palace of Versailles
for the opening of the Estates General in May 1789, many readers avidly followed
the developments in newspapers that sprouted overnight. Although most nobles
insisted on voting by order, the deputies of the Third Estate refused to proceed on
that basis. After six weeks of stalemate, the deputies of the Third Estate took unilat-
eral action on June 17 and declared themselves and whoever would join them the
National Assembly, in which each deputy would vote as an individual. Two days later,
the clergy voted by a narrow margin to join them. Suddenly denied access to their
meeting hall on June 20, the deputies met on a nearby tennis court and swore an oath
not to disband until they had given France a constitution that reflected their newly
declared authority. This “tennis court oath” expressed the determination of the Third
Estate to carry through a constitutional revolution.
Fall of the Bastille

A central moment from the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, is depicted in this
colored print of a 1793 painting by Charles Thévenin. The insurgents have won the battle and
are arresting the governor of the prison; in the next moments, they will cut off his head and
parade it on a pike. The artist expresses his ambivalence about the violence by showing an
insurgent in the right foreground brutally killing one of the defenders even though the battle
is over. (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.)
[1789–1799
At first, Louis XVI appeared to agree to the new National Assembly, but he
also ordered thousands of soldiers to march to Paris. The deputies who supported
the Assembly feared a plot to arrest them and disperse the Assembly. Their fears
were confirmed when, on July 11, the king fired Jacques Necker, the Swiss Protestant
finance minister and the one high official regarded as sympathetic to the deputies’
cause.
The popular reaction in Paris changed the course of the French Revolution.
When the news spread, the sans-culottes in Paris began to arm themselves and attack
places where either grain or arms were thought to be stored. A deputy in Versailles
reported home: “Today all of the evils overwhelm France, and we are between des-
potism, carnage, and famine.” On July 14, an armed crowd marched on the Bastille,
a huge fortified prison that symbolized royal authority (even though only a few
prisoners were actually incarcerated there). After a chaotic battle in which a hundred
armed citizens died, the prison officials surrendered.
The Third Estate Awakens

This colored etching, produced after the fall of the Bastille (note the heads on pikes outside
the prison), shows a clergyman (First Estate) and a noble (Second Estate) alarmed by the awak-
ening of the commoners (Third Estate). The Third Estate breaks the chains of oppression and
arms itself. In what ways does this print draw attention to the social conflicts that lay behind
the political struggles in the Estates General? (The Awakening of the Third Estate, July 1789 [coloured
engraving] [see also 266297], French School, [18th century]/Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris,
France / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1789–1799
]
The fall of the Bastille (an event now commemorated each July 14 as the French
national holiday) set an important precedent. The common people showed them-
selves willing to intervene violently at a crucial political moment. All over France,
local governments were forced out of power and replaced by committees of “patri-
ots.” To restore order, the patriots relied on newly formed National Guard units
composed of civilians. In Paris, the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American
War of Independence and a noble deputy in the National Assembly, became com-
mander of the new National Guard. One
of Louis XVI’s brothers and many other
REVIEW QUESTION How did the beginning of
the French Revolution resemble the other revo- leading aristocrats fled into exile. The Rev-
lutions of 1787–1789? olution thus had its first heroes, its first
victims, and its first enemies.
From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793

Until July 1789, the French Revolution had followed a course much like that of the
protest movements in the Low Countries. After that point, however, events in France
escalated at a pace never before seen in history, leaving witnesses breathless with
anticipation, anxiety, even shock. The French revolutionaries first tried to establish
a constitutional monarchy based on the Enlightenment principles of human rights
and rational government. This effort failed when the king attempted to flee and raise
a counterrevolutionary army. When war broke out in 1792 and foreign soldiers
invaded, a popular uprising on August 10 led to the arrest of the king and, for the
first time in French history, the establishment of a republic.
The Revolution of Rights and Reason

Before drafting a constitution in 1789, the deputies of the National Assembly had
to confront growing violence in the countryside. As food shortages spread, peasants
feared that the beggars and vagrants crowding the roads might be part of an aristo-
cratic plot to starve the French people by burning crops or barns. In many places,
the Great Fear (the term used by historians to describe this rural panic) turned into
peasant attacks on aristocrats or on the records of peasants’ seigneurial dues kept in
lords’ castles.
Alarmed by peasant unrest, the National Assembly decided to make sweeping
changes. On the night of August 4, 1789, noble deputies announced their willingness
to give up their tax exemptions and seigneurial dues. The National Assembly decreed
the abolition of what it called the feudal regime — that is, it freed the few remaining
serfs and eliminated all special privileges in matters of taxation, including all seigneur-
ial dues on land. (A few days later the deputies insisted on financial compensation for
some of these dues, but most peasants refused to pay.) The Assembly also mandated
equality of opportunity in access to government positions. Talent, rather than birth,
was to be the key to success. Enlightenment principles were beginning to become law.
[1789–1799
] From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 615
Three weeks later, the deputies drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen as the preamble to a new constitution. In words reminiscent of the
American Declaration of Independence, whose author, Thomas Jefferson, was in
Paris at the time, it proclaimed, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.”
The Declaration granted freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equality of taxa-
tion, and equality before the law. It established the principle of national sovereignty:
the king derived his authority henceforth from the nation rather than from tradition
or divine right.
By pronouncing all men free and equal, the Declaration immediately created
new dilemmas. Did women have equal rights with men? What about free blacks in
the colonies? How could slavery be justified if all men were born free? Did religious
toleration of Protestants and Jews include equal political rights? Women never
received the right to vote during the French Revolution, though Protestant and Jew-
ish men did.
Some women did not accept their exclusion. In addition to joining demonstra-
tions, such as the march to Versailles in October 1789 (see chapter opener), women
wrote petitions, published tracts, and organized political clubs to demand more par-
ticipation. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman of 1791, writer and political
activist Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) played on the language of the official Dec-
laration to make the point that women should also be included: “Woman is born free
and lives equal to man in her rights.” De Gouges linked her complaints to a program
of social reform in which women would have equal rights to property and public
office and equal responsibilities in taxes and criminal punishment.
Unresponsive to calls for women’s equality, the National Assembly turned to pre-
paring France’s first written constitution. The deputies gave voting rights only to white
men who passed a test of wealth. Despite these limitations, France became a consti-
tutional monarchy in which the king served as the leading state functionary. A one-
house legislature was responsible for making laws. The king could postpone enact-
ment of laws but not veto them. The deputies abolished all the old administrative
divisions of the provinces and replaced them with a national system of eighty-three
departments with identical administrative and legal structures (Map 19.1). All officials
were elected; no offices could be bought or sold. The deputies also abolished the old
taxes and replaced them with new ones that were supposed to be uniformly levied.
The National Assembly had difficulty collecting taxes, however, because many people
had expected a substantial cut in the tax rate. The new administrative system survived
nonetheless, and the departments are still the basic units of the French state today.
When the deputies to the National Assembly turned to reforming the Catholic
church, however, they created enduring conflicts. Convinced that monastic life
encouraged idleness and a decline in the nation’s population, the deputies outlawed
any future monastic vows and encouraged monks and nuns to return to private life
by offering state pensions. Motivated partly by the ongoing financial crisis, the
National Assembly confiscated all the church’s property and promised to pay clerical
salaries in return. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed in July 1790, provided
[ 1789–1799
]
GREAT GREAT
BRITAIN BRITAIN
AUSTRIAN AUSTRIAN
N NETHERLANDS N
NETHERLANDS
W Boulonnais W
Pas-de-
E Artois E
Flanders & HOLY Calais
Nord HOLY
S Hainault Verdun & ROMAN S Seine-Inf Somme ROMAN
Sein Picardy Metz Sein
e EMPIRE Manche e
Aisne EMPIRE
R.
R.
Calvados Oise
Normandy Île-de-France Finistère Côtes-du- Eure Ardennes
Nord Seine-et-
Paris Orne Oise Paris Marne
Brittany Champagne Ille-et-Mayenne Moselle
& Brie MorbihanVilaine Eure-et- Seine-et- Meuse
Maine Marne Basrhin
Alsace Sarthe Loir Meurthe
Anjou Toul Lorraine & Loire- Maine-et- Loiret Aube
Orléanais Hte-
Lo ir e R . Barrois Inférieure Loire Lo i r e R . Loir-et- Marne Vosges
Yonne
Touraine Indre-et- Cher Hte- Hautrhin
Berry Vendée Deux- Loire Cher Nièvre Côte-d’Or Saône
Poitou Nivernais Indre
Franche- Sèvres Doubs
Vienne
Bourbonnais Burgundy Comté SWISS Charente- Saône-et- Jura SWISS
Allier
Saintonge & Marche CONFED. Inf Charente Hte- Creuse Loire CONFED.
Angoumois Vienne Puy-de- Ain
Limousin Lyonnaise Correze Dôme Rhône
Auvergne Gironde Dordogne Loire
Garonne R. Cantal
Ga
Hte-Loire
ne Guyenne & KINGDOM
Isère KINGDOM
ro
Lot-et- Lot
n
R. Gascony Dauphiné
OF
Ardèche OF
.
Rhône R
Landes Garonne AveyronLozere
Rhône R.
Drôme Htes-
SARDINIA Gers
Garonne Alpes SARDINIA
Basses- Gard
Béarn Hte- Tarn Basses-
P Languedoc P Pyrénées
Hte- Garonne Hérault Bouche-de-Alpes
Y Y
R É
Provence
R Pyrénées
Ariège Aude
Rhône
Foix
N É Roussillon É N Pyrénées-
Var
E S É E Orientales
SPA IN SPAIN
S
0 100 200 miles 0 100 200 miles Golo
Corsica
0 100 200 kilometers 0 100 200 kilometers
Liamone
French Provinces, 1789 French Departments, 1791
MAP 19.1 Redrawing the Map of France, 1789–1791

Before 1789, France had been divided into provinces named after the territories owned by
dukes and counts in the Middle Ages. Many provinces had their own law codes and separate
systems of taxation. As it began its deliberations, the new National Assembly determined to
install uniform administrations and laws for the entire country. Discussion of the administrative
reforms began in October 1789 and became law on February 15, 1790, when the Assembly
voted to divide the provinces into eighty-three departments, with names based on their geo-
graphical characteristics: Basses-Pyrénées, Haute-Pyrénées, and Pyrénées-Orientales for
regions containing the Pyrénées Mountains; Marne and Haute-Marne for areas containing the
Marne River; and so on. How did this redrawing of the administrative map reflect the deputies’
emphasis on reason over history?
that the voters elect their own parish priests and bishops just as they elected other
officials. The impounded property served as a guarantee for the new paper money,
called assignats, issued by the government. The assignats soon became subject to
inflation because the government printed more and more money even as it sold the
church lands to the highest bidders in state auctions.
Faced with resistance to these changes, the National Assembly in November
1790 required all clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy. Pope Pius VI in Rome condemned the constitution, and half of the French
clergy refused to take the oath. The oath of allegiance permanently divided the
Catholic population. The revolutionary government lost many supporters by passing
laws against the clergy who refused the oath and by sending them into exile, deport-
ing them forcibly, or executing them as traitors.
[1789–1799
] From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 617
The End of Monarchy

The reorganization of the Catholic church offended Louis XVI and gave added
weight to those pushing him to organize resistance. On June 20, 1791, the royal
family escaped in disguise from Paris and fled toward the eastern border of France,
where they hoped to gather support from Austrian emperor Leopold II, the brother
of Marie-Antoinette. The plans went awry when a postmaster recognized the king
from his portrait on the new French money, and the royal family was arrested at
Varennes, forty miles from the Austrian Netherlands border. The “flight to Varennes”
touched off demonstrations in Paris against the royal family. Cartoons circulated
depicting the royal family as animals being returned “to the stable.”
The constitution, finally completed in 1791, provided for the immediate election
of a new legislature. The status of the king might have remained uncertain if war
had not intervened, but by early 1792 everyone seemed intent on war with Austria.
Louis and Marie-Antoinette hoped that such a war would lead to the defeat of the
Revolution, whereas the deputies who favored a republic believed that war would
lead to the king’s downfall. On April 21, 1792, Louis declared war on Austria. Prussia
immediately entered on the Austrian side. Thousands of French aristocrats, including
both of the king’s brothers and two-thirds of the army officer corps, had already
emigrated and were gathering along France’s eastern border in expectation of joining
a counterrevolutionary army.
The King as a Farmyard Animal

This simple print makes a powerful point: King Louis XVI has lost not only his authority but also
the respect of his subjects. Engravings and etchings like this one appeared in reaction to the
attempted flight of the king and queen in June 1791. (The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
[ 1789–1799
]
When the fighting broke out, all the powers expected a short, relatively con-
tained war. Instead, it would continue despite brief interruptions for the next twenty-
three years. War had an immediate radicalizing effect on French politics. When the
French armies proved woefully unprepared for battle, the authority of the new leg-
islature came under fire. In June 1792, an angry crowd invaded the hall of the leg-
islature in Paris and threatened the royal family. The Prussian commander, the duke
of Brunswick, issued a manifesto announcing that Paris would be totally destroyed
if the royal family suffered any violence.
The sans-culottes of Paris did not passively await their fate. Faced with the threat
of military retaliation and frustrated with the inaction of the deputies, on August 10
the sans-culottes organized an insurrection and attacked the Tuileries palace, the
residence of the king. The king and his family had to seek refuge in the meeting
room of the legislature, where the frightened deputies ordered elections for a con-
stitutional convention. By abolishing the property qualifications for voting, the depu-
ties instituted universal male suffrage for the first time.
Violence soon exploded again when early in September 1792 the Prussians
approached Paris. Hastily gathered mobs stormed the overflowing prisons to seek
out traitors, and eleven hundred inmates were killed, including many ordinary and
completely innocent people. The princess of Lamballe, one of the queen’s favorites,
was hacked to pieces and her mutilated body displayed beneath the windows where
the royal family was kept under guard. These “September massacres” showed the
dark side of popular revolution, in which the common people demanded retribution
against supposed enemies and conspirators.
When it met, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and on Septem-
ber 22 established the first republic in French history. The republic would answer
only to the people, not to any royal authority. Many of the deputies in the Conven-
tion belonged to the devotedly republican (and therefore left-wing) Jacobin Club,
named after the former monastery in Paris where the club had first met in 1789.
The Jacobin Club in Paris headed a national political network of clubs that linked
all the major towns and cities. Lafayette and other liberal aristocrats who had sup-
ported the constitutional monarchy fled into exile.
The National Convention faced a dire situation. It needed to write a new con-
stitution for the republic while fighting a war with external enemies and confronting
increasing resistance at home. The French people had never known any government
other than monarchy. Only half the population could read and write at even a basic
level. In this situation, symbolic actions became very important. Revolutionaries
soon pulled down statues of kings and burned reminders of the former regime.
The fate of Louis XVI and the direction of the republic divided the deputies
elected to the National Convention. Most of the deputies were middle-class lawyers
and professionals who had developed their ardent republican beliefs in the network
of Jacobin Clubs. After the fall of the monarchy in August 1792, however, the Jaco-
bins had divided into two factions. The Girondins (named after a department in
southwestern France, the Gironde, which provided some of its leading orators) met
[1789–1799
] Terror and Resistance 619
regularly at the salon of Jeanne Roland, the wife of a minister. They resented the
growing power of Parisian militants and tried to appeal to the departments outside
of Paris. The Mountain (so called because its deputies sat in the highest seats of the
National Convention), in contrast, was closely allied with the Paris militants.
The first showdown between the Girondins and the Mountain was the trial of
the king in December 1792. Although the Girondins agreed that the king was guilty
of treason, many of them argued for clemency, exile, or a popular referendum on his
fate. After a long and difficult debate, the National Convention supported the Moun-
tain and voted by a very narrow majority
to execute the king. Louis XVI went to the REVIEW QUESTION Why did the French Revo-
guillotine on January 21, 1793, sharing the lution turn in an increasingly radical direction
fate of Charles I of England in 1649. after 1789?
Terror and Resistance

The execution of the king did not solve the new regime’s
problems. The continuing war required even more men and
money, and the introduction of a national draft provoked
massive resistance. In response to growing pressures, the
National Convention named a Committee of Public Safety
to supervise food distribution, direct the war effort, and
root out counterrevolutionaries. The leader of the commit-
tee, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), wanted to go
The Guillotine
Before 1789, only nobles were decapitated if condemned to death;
commoners were usually hanged. Equalization of the death pen-
alty was first proposed by J. I. Guillotin, a professor of anatomy
and a deputy in the National Assembly. He also suggested that a
mechanical device be constructed for decapitation, leading to the
instrument’s association with his name. The Assembly decreed
decapitation as the death penalty in June 1791 and another physi-
cian, A. Louis, actually invented the guillotine. The executioner
pulled up the blade by a cord and then released it. Use of the
guillotine began in April 1792 and did not end until 1981,
when the French government abolished the death penalty.
The guillotine fascinated as much as it repelled. Repro-
duced in miniature, painted onto snuffboxes and
china, worn as jewelry, and even serving as a toy, the
guillotine became a part of popular culture. How could
the guillotine be simultaneously celebrated as the
people’s avenger by supporters of the Revolution
and vilified as the preeminent symbol of the Terror
by opponents? (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet,
Paris, France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.)
[ 1789–1799
]
beyond these stopgap measures and create a “republic of virtue,” in which the gov-
ernment would teach, or force, citizens to become virtuous republicans through a
massive program of political reeducation. Thus began the Terror, in which the guil-
lotine became the most terrifying instrument of a government that suppressed almost
every form of dissent.
Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety

The conflict between the more moderate Girondins and the more radical Mountain
came to a head in spring 1793. Militants in Paris agitated for the removal of the
deputies who had proposed a referendum on the king, and in retaliation the Giron-
dins engineered the arrest of Jean-Paul Marat, a deputy allied with the Mountain
who in his newspaper had been calling for more and more executions. Marat was
acquitted, and Parisian militants marched into the National Convention on June 2,
forcing the deputies to decree the arrest of their twenty-nine Girondin colleagues.
The Convention consented to the establishment of paramilitary bands called revo-
lutionary armies to hunt down political suspects and hoarders of grain. The deputies
also agreed to speed up the operation of special revolutionary courts.
Setting the course for government and the war increasingly fell to the twelve-
member Committee of Public Safety. When Robespierre was elected to the commit-
tee in July 1793, he became the chief spokesman. A lawyer from northern France
known as “the incorruptible” for his stern honesty and fierce dedication to democratic
ideals, Robespierre remains one of the most controversial figures in world history
because of his association with the Terror. Although he originally opposed the death
penalty and the war, he was convinced that the emergency situation of 1793 required
severe measures, including death for those, such as the Girondins, who opposed the
committee’s policies.
Robespierre defended the people’s right to democratic government, while in
practice he supported many emergency measures that restricted their liberties. He
personally favored a free-market economy, as did almost all middle-class deputies,
but in this time of crisis he was willing to enact price controls and requisitioning.
In an effort to stabilize prices, the National Convention established the General
Maximum on September 29, 1793, which set limits on the prices of thirty-nine essen-
tial commodities and on wages. In a speech to the Convention, Robespierre explained
the necessity of government by terror: “The first maxim of your policies must be to
lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror. . . . Without virtue,
terror is deadly; without terror, virtue is impotent.” Terror was not an idle term; it
seemed to imply that the goal of democracy justified what we now call totalitarian
means, that is, the suppression of all dissent.
Through a series of desperate measures, the Committee of Public Safety set the
machinery of the Terror in motion. It sent deputies out “on mission” to purge unre-
liable officials and organize the war effort. Revolutionary tribunals tried political
suspects. In October 1793, the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris convicted Marie-
[1789–1799
Antoinette of treason and sent her to the guillotine. The Girondin leaders and Jeanne
Roland were also guillotined, as was Olympe de Gouges.
The new republic won its greatest success on the battlefield. As of April 1793,
France faced war with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Sardinia, and the Dutch
Republic — all fearful of the impact of revolutionary ideals on their own populations.
The execution of Louis XVI, in particular, galvanized European governments; accord-
ing to William Pitt, the British prime minister, it was “the foulest and most atrocious
act the world has ever seen.” To face this daunting coalition of forces, the French
republic ordered the first universal draft of men in history. Every unmarried man
and childless widower between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five was declared
eligible for conscription. The government also tapped a new and potent source of
power — nationalist pride.
Forges were set up in the parks and gardens of Paris to produce thousands of
guns, and citizens everywhere helped collect saltpeter to make gunpowder. By the
end of 1793, the French nation in arms had stopped the advance of the allied powers,
and in the summer of 1794 it invaded the Austrian Netherlands and crossed the
Rhine River. The army was ready to carry the gospel of revolution and republicanism
to the rest of Europe.
The Republic of Virtue, 1793–1794

The program of the Terror went beyond pragmatic measures to fight the war and
internal enemies to include efforts to “republicanize everything” — in other words, to
effect a cultural revolution. The republic left no stone unturned in its endeavor to get
its message across. Songs — especially the new national anthem, “La Marseillaise” —
and placards, posters, pamphlets, books, engravings, paintings, sculpture, even every-
day crockery, chamber pots, and playing cards conveyed revolutionary slogans and
symbols. Foremost among the symbols was the figure of Liberty, which appeared on
coins and bills, on letterheads and seals, and as statues in festivals. Hundreds of new
plays were produced and old classics revised. To encourage the production of patriotic
and republican works, the government sponsored state competitions for artists.
At the center of this elaborate cultural campaign were the revolutionary festi-
vals modeled on Rousseau’s plans for a civic religion. The Festival of Federation
on July 14, 1790, marked the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Under the
National Convention, the well-known painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825),
who was a deputy and an associate of Robespierre, took over festival planning. David
aimed to destroy the mystique of monarchy and to make the republic sacred. His
Festival of Unity on August 10, 1793, for example, celebrated the first anniversary
of the overthrow of the monarchy. In front of the statue of Liberty built for the occa-
sion, a bonfire consumed crowns and scepters symbolizing royalty while a cloud of
three thousand white doves rose into the sky. This was all part of preaching the
“moral order of the Republic . . . that will make us a people of brothers, a people of
philosophers.”
[ 1789–1799
]
Representing Liberty
Liberty was represented by a female figure because in French the noun is feminine (la liberté).
This painting from 1793–1794, by Jeanne-Louise Vallain, captures the usual attributes of
Liberty: she is soberly seated, wearing a Roman-style toga and holding a pike with a Roman
liberty cap on top. Her Roman appearance signals that she represents an abstract quality. The
fact that she holds an instrument of battle suggests that women might be active participants.
The Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, given by the French to the United States, is a late-
nineteenth-century version of the same figure, but without any suggestion of battle. (Allegory of
Liberty by Nanine Vallain, 1794 / De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images.)
Some revolutionaries hoped the festival system would replace the Catholic church
altogether. They initiated a campaign of de-Christianization that included closing
churches (Protestant as well as Catholic), selling many church buildings to the high-
est bidder, and trying to force even those clergy who had taken the oath of loyalty
to abandon their clerical vocations and marry. Great churches became storehouses
for arms or grain, or their stones were sold off to contractors. The medieval statues
of kings on the facade of Notre Dame cathedral were beheaded. Church bells were
dismantled and church treasures melted down for government use.
[
1789–1799
In the ultimate step in de-Christianization, extremists tried to establish what

they called the Cult of Reason to supplant Christianity. In Paris in the fall of 1793,
a goddess of Liberty, played by an actress, presided over the Festival of Reason in
Notre Dame cathedral. Robespierre objected to the de-Christianization campaign’s
atheism; he favored a Rousseau-inspired deistic religion without the supposedly
superstitious trappings of Catholicism. The Committee of Public Safety halted the
de-Christianization campaign, and Robespierre, with David’s help, tried to institute
an alternative, the Cult of the Supreme Being, in June 1794. Neither the Cult of
Reason nor the Cult of the Supreme Being attracted many followers, but both show
the depth of the commitment to overturning the old order and all its traditional
institutions.
In principle, the best way to ensure the future of the republic was through the
education of the young. The deputy Georges-Jacques Danton (1759–1794), Robes-
pierre’s main competitor, maintained that “after bread, the first need of the people
is education.” The National Convention voted to make primary schooling free and
compulsory for both boys and girls. It took control of education away from the
Catholic church and tried to set up a system of state schools at both the primary
and secondary levels, but it lacked trained teachers to replace those the Catholic
religious orders had provided. As a result, opportunities for learning how to read
and write may have diminished. In 1799, only one-fifth as many boys were enrolled
in the state secondary schools as had studied in church schools ten years earlier.
Although many of the ambitious republican programs failed, colors, clothing,
and daily speech were all politicized. The tricolor — the combination of red, white,
and blue that was to become the flag of France — was devised in July 1789, and by
1793 everyone had to wear a tricolor cockade (a badge made of ribbons). Using the
formal forms of speech — vous for “you” or the title monsieur or madame — might
identify someone as an aristocrat; true patriots used the informal tu and citoyen or
citoyenne (“citizen”) instead. Some people changed their names or gave their children
new kinds of names. Biblical and saints’ names such as John, Peter, Joseph, and Mary
gave way to names recalling heroes of the ancient Roman republic (Brutus, Gracchus,
Cornelia), revolutionary heroes, or flowers and plants. Such changes symbolized
adherence to the republic and to Enlightenment ideals rather than to Catholicism.
Even the measures of time and space were revolutionized. In October 1793, the
National Convention introduced a new calendar to replace the Christian one. Its
bases were reason and republican principles. Year I dated from the beginning of the
republic on September 22, 1792. Twelve months of exactly thirty days each received
new names derived from nature — for example, Pluviôse (roughly equivalent to Feb-
ruary) recalled the rain (la pluie) of late winter. Instead of seven-day weeks, ten-day
décades provided only one day of rest every ten days and pointedly eliminated the
Sunday of the Christian calendar. The calendar remained in force for twelve years
despite continuing resistance to it. More enduring was the new metric system based
on units of ten that was invented to replace the hundreds of local variations in
[ 1789–1799
]
weights and measures. Other countries in Europe and throughout the world eventu-
ally adopted the metric system.
Revolutionary laws also changed the rules of family life. The state took respon-
sibility for all family matters away from the Catholic church: people now registered
births, deaths, and marriages at city hall, not the parish church. Marriage became a
civil contract and as such could be broken and thereby nullified. The new divorce
law of September 1792 was the most far-reaching in Europe: a couple could divorce
by mutual consent or for reasons such as insanity, abandonment, battering, or crimi-
nal conviction. Thousands of men and women took advantage of the law to dissolve
unhappy marriages, even though the pope had condemned the measure. (In 1816,
the government revoked the right to divorce, and not until the 1970s did French
divorce laws return to the principles of the 1792 legislation.) In one of its most
influential actions, the National Convention passed a series of laws that created equal
inheritance among all children in the family, including girls. The father’s right to
favor one child, especially the oldest male, was considered aristocratic and hence
antirepublican.
Resisting the Revolution

By intruding into religion, culture, and daily life, the republic inevitably provoked
resistance. Shouting curses against the republic, uprooting liberty trees, carrying stat-
ues of the Virgin Mary in procession, hiding a priest who would not take the oath,
singing a royalist song — all these expressed dissent with the new symbols, rituals,
and policies. Long bread lines in the cities exhausted the patience of women, and
their constant grumbling occasionally turned into spontaneous demonstrations or
riots over high prices or food shortages.
Other forms of resistance were more individual. One young woman, Charlotte
Corday, assassinated the outspoken deputy Jean-Paul Marat in July 1793. Corday
fervently supported the Girondins, and she considered it her patriotic duty to kill
the deputy who, in the columns of his paper, had constantly demanded more heads
and more blood. Marat was immediately eulogized as a great martyr, and Corday
went to the guillotine vilified as a monster but confident that she had “avenged many
innocent victims.”
Organized resistance against the republic broke out in many parts of France. The
arrest of the Girondin deputies in June 1793 sparked insurrections in several depart-
ments. After the government retook the city of Lyon, one of the centers of the revolt,
the deputy on mission ordered sixteen hundred houses demolished and the name of
the city changed to Liberated City. Special courts sentenced almost two thousand
people to death.
In the Vendée region of western France, resistance turned into a bloody and pro-
longed civil war. Between March and December 1793, peasants, artisans, and weavers
joined under noble leadership to form a “Catholic and Royal Army.” One rebel group
[1789–1799
explained its motives: “They [the republicans] have killed our king, chased away our
priests, sold the goods of our church, eaten everything we have and now they want
to take our bodies [in the draft].” The rebels stormed the largest towns in the region.
Both sides committed horrible atrocities. At the small town of Machecoul, for
example, the rebels massacred five hundred republicans, including administrators
and National Guard members; many were tied together, shoved into freshly dug
graves, and shot. By the fall, however, republican soldiers had turned back the rebels.
Military courts ordered thousands executed, and republican soldiers massacred
thousands of others. In one especially gruesome incident, the deputy Jean-Baptiste
Carrier supervised the drowning of some two thousand Vendée rebels, including a
number of priests. Barges loaded with prisoners were floated into the Loire River
near Nantes and then sunk. Controversy still rages about the rebellion’s death toll
because no accurate count could be taken. Estimates of rebel deaths alone range from
about 20,000 to higher than 250,000. Many thousands of republican soldiers and civil-
ians also lost their lives in fighting that continued on and off for years. Even the low
estimates reveal the carnage of this catastrophic confrontation between the republic
and its opponents.
The Fall of Robespierre and the End of the Terror

In the atmosphere of fear of conspiracy that the outbreaks of rebellion fueled, Robes-
pierre tried simultaneously to exert the National Convention’s control over popular
political activities and to weed out opposition among the deputies. As a result, the
Terror intensified until July 1794, when a group of deputies joined within the Con-
vention to order the arrest and execution of Robespierre and his followers. The
Convention then ordered elections and drew up a new republican constitution that
gave executive power to five directors. This “Directory government” maintained
power during four years of seesaw battles between royalists and former Jacobins.
In the fall of 1793, the National Convention cracked down on popular clubs and
societies. First to be suppressed were women’s political clubs. Founded in early 1793,
the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women urged harsher measures against the
republic’s enemies and insisted that women have a voice in politics even if they did
not have the vote. Women had set up their own clubs in many provincial towns and
also attended the meetings of local men’s organizations. Using traditional arguments
about women’s inherent unsuitability for politics, the deputies abolished women’s
political clubs. The closing of women’s clubs marked an important turning point in
the Revolution. From then on, the sans-culottes and their political organizations came
increasingly under the thumb of the Jacobin deputies in the National Convention.
In the spring of 1794, the Committee of Public Safety moved against its critics
among leaders in Paris and deputies in the National Convention itself. First, a hand-
ful of “ultrarevolutionaries” — a collection of local Parisian politicians — were arrested
and executed. Next came the other side, the “indulgents,” so called because they
[ 1789–1799
]
favored a moderation of the Terror. Included among them was the deputy Danton,
himself once a member of the Committee of Public Safety and a friend of Robes-
pierre. Danton was the Revolution’s most flamboyant orator and, unlike Robespierre,
a high-living, high-spending politician. At every critical turning point in national
politics, his booming voice had swayed opinion. Now, under pressure from the Com-
mittee of Public Safety, the Revolutionary Tribunal convicted him and his friends of
treason and sentenced them to death.
“The Revolution,” as one of the Girondin victims of 1793 had remarked, “was
devouring its own children.” Even after the major threats to the Committee of Public
Safety’s power had been eliminated, the Terror not only continued but worsened. A
law passed in June 1794 denied the accused the right of legal counsel, reduced the
number of jurors necessary for conviction, and allowed only two judgments: acquit-
tal or death. The category of political crimes expanded to include “slandering patrio-
tism” and “seeking to inspire discouragement.” Ordinary people risked the guillotine
if they expressed any discontent. The rate of executions in Paris rose from five a day
in the spring of 1794 to twenty-six a day in the summer. The political atmosphere
darkened even though the military situation improved. At the end of June, the
French armies decisively defeated the main Austrian army and advanced through
the Austrian Netherlands to Brussels and Antwerp. The emergency measures for
fighting the war were working, yet Robespierre and his inner circle had made so
many enemies that they could not afford to loosen the grip of the Terror.
The Terror hardly touched many parts of France, but overall the experience was
undeniably traumatic. Across the country, the official Terror cost the lives of at least
40,000 French people, most of them living in the regions of major insurrections or
near the borders with foreign enemies, where suspicion of collaboration ran high.
As many as 300,000 French people — 1 out of every 50 — went to prison as suspects
between March 1793 and August 1794. The toll for the aristocracy and the clergy was
especially high. Many leading nobles perished under the guillotine, and thousands
emigrated. Thirty thousand to forty thousand clergy who refused the oath left the
country, at least two thousand (including many nuns) were executed, and thousands
were imprisoned. The clergy were singled out in particular in the civil war zones: 135
priests were massacred at Lyon in November 1793, and 83 were shot in one day during
the Vendée revolt. Yet many victims of the Terror were peasants or sans-culottes.
The final crisis of the Terror came as conflicts within the Committee of Public
Safety and the National Convention left Robespierre isolated. On July 27, 1794 (the
ninth of Thermidor, Year II, according to the revolutionary calendar), Robespierre
appeared before the Convention with yet another list of deputies to be arrested. Many
feared they would be named, and they shouted him down and ordered him arrested
along with the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris and the commander
of the Parisian National Guard. An armed uprising led by the Paris city government
failed to save Robespierre when most of the National Guard took the side of the
Convention. Robespierre tried to kill himself with a pistol but only broke his jaw.
The next day he and scores of followers went to the guillotine.
[
1789–1799
Major Events of the French Revolution
May 5, 1789 The Estates General opens at Versailles

June 17, 1789 Third Estate decides to call itself the National Assembly
June 20, 1789 Tennis court oath demonstrates resolve of deputies to carry out
constitutional revolution
July 14, 1789 Fall of the Bastille
August 4, 1789 National Assembly abolishes feudalism
August 26, 1789 National Assembly passes Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizen
October 5–6, 1789 Women march to Versailles, joined by men in bringing royal family
back to Paris
July 12, 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy
June 20, 1791 Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette attempt to flee in disguise but are
captured at Varennes
April 20, 1792 Declaration of war on Austria
August 10, 1792 Insurrection in Paris and attack on Tuileries palace lead to removal
of king’s authority
September 2–6, 1792 Prisoners murdered in September massacres in Paris
September 22, 1792 Establishment of republic
January 21, 1793 Execution of Louis XVI
March 11, 1793 Beginning of uprising in Vendée
May 31–June 2, 1793 Insurrection leading to arrest of Girondins
July 27, 1793 Robespierre named to Committee of Public Safety
September 29, 1793 Convention establishes General Maximum on prices and wages
October 16, 1793 Execution of Marie-Antoinette
February 4, 1794 Slavery abolished in French colonies
March 13–24, 1794 Arrest, trial, and executions of so-called ultrarevolutionaries
March 30–April 5, 1794 Arrest, trial, and executions of Danton and his followers
July 27, 1794 Arrest of Robespierre and his supporters (executed July 28–29);
beginning of end of the Terror
October 26, 1795 Directory government takes office
April 1796–October 1797 Succession of Italian victories by Bonaparte
The men who led the July 27 attack on Robespierre did not intend to reverse all
his policies, but that happened nonetheless because of a violent backlash known
as the Thermidorian Reaction. The new government released hundreds of sus-
pects and arranged a temporary truce in the Vendée. It purged Jacobins from local
bodies and replaced them with their opponents. It arrested some of the most notori-
ous “terrorists” in the National Convention, such as Carrier, and put them to death.
[ 1789–1799
]
Within the year, the new leaders abolished the Revolutionary Tribunal and closed
the Jacobin Club in Paris. Popular demonstrations met severe repression. In south-
eastern France, in particular, the “White Terror” replaced the Jacobins’ “Red Terror.”
Former officials and local Jacobin leaders were harassed, beaten, and often murdered
by paramilitary bands that had tacit support from the new authorities. Those who
remained in the National Convention prepared yet another constitution in 1795,
setting up a two-house legislature and an executive body — the Directory, headed by
five directors.
The Directory regime tenuously held on to power for four years, all the while
trying to fend off challenges from the remaining Jacobins and the resurgent royal-
ists. The puritanical atmosphere of the Terror gave way to the pursuit of pleasure —
low-cut dresses of transparent materials, the reappearance of prostitutes in the streets,
and “victims’ balls” where guests wore red ribbons around their necks as reminders
of the guillotine. Bands of young men dressed in knee breeches and rich fabrics
picked fights with known Jacobins and disrupted theater performances with loud
antirevolutionary songs. All over France, people petitioned to reopen churches closed
during the Terror. If necessary, they broke into a church to hold services with a priest
who had been in hiding or a lay schoolteacher who was willing to say Mass.
Although the Terror had ended, the Revolution had not. Both the most demo-
cratic and the most repressive phases of
the Revolution had ended at once in July
REVIEW QUESTION What factors can explain
the Terror? To what extent was it simply a
1794. Between 1795 and 1799, the republic
response to a national emergency or a reflec- endured in France, but it directed a war
tion of deeper problems within the French effort abroad that would ultimately bring
Revolution? to power the man who would dismantle
the republic itself.
Revolution on the March

War raged almost constantly from 1792 to 1815. At one time or another, and some-
times all at once, France faced every principal power in Europe. The French republic —
and later the French Empire under its supreme commander, Emperor Napoleon
Bonaparte — proved an even more formidable opponent than the France of Louis XIV.
New means of mobilizing and organizing soldiers enabled the French to dominate
Europe for a generation. The influence of the French Revolution as a political model
and the threat of French military conquest combined to challenge the traditional
order in Europe and offer new prospects to the rest of the world as well.
Arms and Conquests

The powers allied against France squandered their best chance to triumph in early
1793, when the French armies verged on chaos because of the emigration of noble
[1789–1799
] Revolution on the March 629
army officers and the problems of integrating new draftees. By the end of 1793, the
French had a huge and powerful fighting force of 700,000 men. But the army still
faced many problems in the field. As many as a third of the recent draftees deserted
before or during battle. Generals might pay with their lives if they lost a key battle
and their loyalty to the Revolution came under suspicion. Although France had built
up a relatively large navy, the dominance of Great Britain on the seas meant that
France had to seek victory on the land.
France nevertheless had one overwhelming advantage: those soldiers who agreed
to serve fought for a revolution that they and their brothers and sisters had helped
make. The republic was their government, and the army was in large measure theirs,
too; many officers had risen through the ranks by skill and talent rather than by
inheriting or purchasing their positions. One young peasant boy wrote to his parents,
“Either you will see me return bathed in glory, or you will have a son who is a worthy
citizen of France who knows how to die for the defense of his country.”
When the French armies invaded the Austrian Netherlands and crossed the
Rhine in the summer of 1794, they proclaimed a war of liberation (Map 19.2). In
the Austrian Netherlands, Mainz, Savoy, and Nice, French officers organized Jacobin
Clubs that attracted locals. The clubs petitioned for annexation to France, and French
legislation was then introduced, including the abolition of seigneurial dues. As the
French annexed more and more territory, however, “liberated” people in many places
began to view them as an army of occupation. Despite resistance, especially in the
Austrian Netherlands, these areas remained part of France until 1815, and the legal
changes were permanent.
The Directory government that came to power in 1795 launched an even more
aggressive policy of creating semi-independent “sister republics” wherever the armies
succeeded. When Prussia declared neutrality in 1795, the French armies swarmed
into the Dutch Republic, abolished the stadholderate, and — with the revolutionary
penchant for renaming — created the new Batavian Republic, a satellite of France.
The brilliant young general Napoleon Bonaparte gained a reputation by defeating
the Austrian armies in northern Italy in 1797 and then created the Cisalpine Repub-
lic. Next he overwhelmed Venice and then handed it over to the Austrians in exchange
for a peace agreement that lasted less than two years. After the French attacked the
Swiss cantons in 1798, they set up the Helvetic Republic and curtailed many of the
Catholic church’s privileges. They conquered the Papal States in 1798 and installed
a Roman Republic, forcing the pope to flee to Siena.
The revolutionary wars had an immediate impact on European life at all levels
of society. Thousands of men died in every country involved, with perhaps as many
as 200,000 casualties in the French armies alone in 1794 and 1795. More soldiers
died in hospitals as a result of their wounds than on the battlefields. Constant warfare
hampered world commerce and especially disrupted French overseas shipping. Times
were now hard almost everywhere, because the dislocations of internal and external
commerce provoked constant shortages.
[ 1789–1799
]
Nort h
Se a
GREAT Batavian
BRITAIN Republic PRUSSIA
1795
Austrian Netherlands GERMAN

(Belgium) 1795 STATES
Se Mainz
in Paris
eR
.
.
eR
Rhin
Da
nub
e R.
F R E NC H AUSTRIAN
REPUBLIC Helvetic Republic EMPIRE
Savoy 1798
1792 A L P S Venice
1797
R.
Ga
Rhône
on Po R.
Piedmont Cisalpine Venice
r
ne Papal
R.
Territories ParmaRepublic
PY 1791 Nice 1797
RÉ 1792
NÉ Marseille
Ligurian Siena
Ad
ES Republic TuscanyRoman ria
N 1797 Republic tic
SPAIN 1798 Se
Corsica a
W
E Rome
Neapolitan
S Republic
1799
Sardinia
Me d it e rra n e a n Se a
Areas annexed by France

Areas occupied by France
States established by revolutionary France
0 200 400 miles
Venetian lands given to Austria by France
MAP 19.2 French Expansion, 1791–1799

The influence of the French Revolution on neighboring territories is dramatically evident in this
map. The French directly annexed the papal territories in southern France in 1791, Nice and
Savoy in 1792, and the Austrian Netherlands in 1795. They set up a series of sister republics
in the former Dutch Republic and in various Italian states. Local people did not always welcome
these changes. For example, the French made the Dutch pay a huge war indemnity, support a
French occupying army of 25,000 soldiers, and give up some southern territories. The sister
republics faced a future of subordination to French national interests.
Poland Extinguished, 1793–1795

France had survived in 1793 in part because its enemies were busy elsewhere. Fearing
French influence, Prussia joined Russia in dividing up generous new slices of terri-
tory in the second partition of Poland (Map 19.3). As might be expected, Poland’s
reform movement became even more pro-French. Some leaders fled abroad, includ-
[ 1789–1799
MAP 19.3 The Second and Third

Boundary of Poland in 1772 To Russia Partitions of Poland, 1793 and 1795
To Austria 1793 Year territory seized In 1793, Prussia took over territory that
To Prussia Revolt included 1.1 million Poles while Russia
N Riga gained 3 million new inhabitants. Aus-
RUSSIA
W ea tria gave up any claims to Poland in
E
lti cS exchange for help from Russia and
S Ba Königsberg Prussia in acquiring Bavaria. In the final
Dnieper R.
Danzig Vilnius
division of 1795, Prussia absorbed an
PRUSSIA 1795
1795 additional 900,000 Polish subjects,
Berlin Vi
st KINGDOM OF
u la
R. Warsaw POLAND including those in Warsaw; Austria incor-
Od 1793 porated 1 million Poles and the city of
Bug
er 1795 1793
R Kiev Cracow; Russia gained another 2 million
.R
.
Cracow Poles. The three powers determined

never to use the term Kingdom of
Dnies Poland again. How had Poland become
ter
R
Danube R
. AUSTRIAN such a prey to the other powers?
.
0 200 400 miles

EMPIRE 0 200 400 kilometers
ing Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817), an officer who had been a foreign volunteer
in the War of American Independence and who now escaped to Paris. In the spring
of 1794, Kościuszko returned from France to lead a nationalist revolt.
The uprising failed. Kościuszko won a few victories, but when the Russian empress
Catherine the Great’s forces regrouped, they routed the Poles and Lithuanians.
Kościuszko and other Polish Patriot leaders languished for years in Russian and
Austrian prisons. Taking no further chances, Russia, Prussia, and Austria wiped
Poland completely from the map in the third partition (1795). “The Polish question”
would plague international relations for more than a century as Polish rebels flocked
to any international upheaval that might undo the partitions. Beyond all this maneu-
vering lay the unsolved problem of Polish serfdom, which isolated the nation’s gentry
and townspeople from the rural masses.
Revolution in the Colonies

The revolution that produced so much upheaval in continental Europe transformed
life in France’s Caribbean colonies, too. These colonies were crucial to the French
economy. Twice the size in land area of the neighboring British colonies, they also
produced nearly twice as much revenue in exports. The slave population had dou-
bled in the French colonies in the twenty years before 1789. St. Domingue (present-
day Haiti) was the most important French colony. Occupying the western half of the
island of Hispaniola, it was inhabited not only by 465,000 slaves and 30,000 whites
but also by 28,000 free people of color, whose primary job was to apprehend runaway
slaves and ensure plantation security.
[ 1789–1799
]
Despite the efforts of a Paris club called the
Cuba
Puerto Friends of Blacks, most French revolutionaries did
Santo Rico
Port-au-Prince Domingo not consider slavery a pressing problem. In August
Jamaica 1791, however, the slaves in northern St. Domingue
St. Domingue Colonial
(Haiti, 1804) possessions organized a large-scale revolt. To restore authority
Caribbean Sea British over the slaves, the deputies in Paris granted civil
0 100 200 miles
French and political rights to the free blacks. This action
Spanish
0 100 200 kilometers infuriated white planters and merchants, who in
1793 signed an agreement with Great Britain, now
St. Domingue on the Eve France’s enemy in war, declaring British sover-
of the Revolt, 1791
eignty over St. Domingue. To complicate matters
further, Spain, which controlled the rest of the island and had entered on Great
Britain’s side in the war with France, offered freedom to individual slave rebels who
joined the Spanish armies as long as they agreed to maintain the slave regime for
the other blacks.
The few thousand French republican troops on St. Domingue were outnum-
bered, and to prevent complete military disaster, the French commissioner freed all
Toussaint L’Ouverture
The leader of the St. Domingue
slave uprising appears on horse-
back, in his general’s uniform,
sword in hand. His depiction in
this colored print from the early
nineteenth century makes him
seem much like other military
heroes from the time, including
Napoleon Bonaparte. (Bibliothèque
nationale, Paris, France / Archives
Charmet / Bridgeman Images.)
[1789–1799
the slaves in his jurisdiction in August 1793 without permission from the govern-
ment in Paris. In February 1794, the National Convention formally abolished slavery
and granted full rights to all black men in the colonies. These actions had the desired
effect. One of the ablest black generals allied with the Spanish, the ex-slave François
Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743–1803), changed sides and committed his
troops to the French. Toussaint remained in charge until 1802, when Napoleon sent
French armies to regain control of the island. They arrested Toussaint and transported
him to France, where he died in prison. Toussaint became a hero to abolitionists
everywhere, a potent symbol of black struggles to win freedom. Napoleon attempted
to restore slavery, as he had in the other French Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe
and Martinique, but the remaining black generals defeated his armies and in 1804
proclaimed the Republic of Haiti.
Worldwide Reactions to Revolutionary Change

As the example of the colonies shows, the French Revolution inflamed politics and
social relations far beyond Europe. It soon became one of the most divisive political
issues in the United States. Thomas Jefferson wrote in January 1793 that “the liberty of
the whole earth” depended on the Revolution’s success; John Adams, in contrast, believed
that the French Revolution had set back human progress hundreds of years. In India,
the ruler of the southern kingdom of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, planted a liberty tree and
set up a Jacobin Club in the futile hope of gaining French allies against the British.
Many had greeted the events of 1789 with unabashed enthusiasm. The English
Unitarian minister Richard Price had exulted, “Behold, the light . . . after setting
AMERICA free, reflected to FRANCE, and there kindled into a blaze that lays des-
potism in ashes, and warms and illuminates EUROPE.” Democrats and reformers
from many countries flooded to Paris to witness events firsthand. Supporters of the
French Revolution in Great Britain joined constitutional and reform societies that
sprang up in many cities. Pro-French feeling ran even stronger in Ireland. Catholics
and Presbyterians, both excluded from the vote, came together in 1791 in the Society
of United Irishmen, which eventually pressed for secession from England.
European elites became alarmed when the French abolished monarchy and
nobility and encouraged popular participation in politics. The British government,
for example, quickly suppressed the corresponding societies, charging that their con-
tacts with the French were seditious. When the Society of United Irishmen timed a
rebellion to coincide with an attempted French invasion in 1798, the British merci-
lessly repressed them, killing thirty thousand rebels.
Many leading intellectuals in the German states, including the philosopher
Immanuel Kant, initially supported the revolutionary cause, but after 1793 most of
them turned against the popular violence and military aggressiveness of the Revolu-
tion. The German states, still run by many separate rulers, experienced a profound
artistic and intellectual revival, which eventually stimulated anti-French nationalism.
This renaissance included a resurgence of intellectual life in the universities, a thriving
[ 1789–1799
]
press (1,225 journals were launched in the 1780s alone), and the multiplication of
Masonic lodges and literary clubs.
Despite the turn in opinion, European rulers still dreaded the mere mention of
revolution. Spain’s royal government simply suppressed all news from France, fearing
that it might ignite the spirit of revolt. Despite similar government controls on news
in Russia, 278 outbreaks of peasant unrest occurred there between 1796 and 1798.
When Naples revolted under French influence in 1799, 100 republicans, including
leading intellectuals, were executed when the royalists returned to power.
Conclusion
Growing out of aspirations for freedom that also inspired the Dutch, Belgians, and
Poles, the revolution that shook France permanently altered the political landscape
of the Western world. Between 1789 and 1799, monarchy as a form of government
gave way in France to a republic whose leaders were elected. Aristocracy based on
rank and birth was undermined in favor of civil equality and the promotion of merit.
Thousands of men held elective office for the first time. A revolutionary government
tried to teach new values with a refashioned calendar, state festivals, and a civic
religion. Its example inspired would-be revolutionaries everywhere.
But the French Revolution also had its darker side. The divisions created by the
Revolution within France endured in many cases until after World War II. Even now,
when asked by public-opinion surveys if it was right to execute the king in 1793,
most French respondents say they believe that Louis XVI was guilty of treason but
should not have been executed. The revolutionaries proclaimed human rights and
democratic government as universal goals, but they also explicitly excluded women,
even though they admitted Protestant, Jewish, and eventually black men. They used
the new spirit of national pride to inspire armies and then used those armies to
conquer other peoples. Their ideals of universal education, religious toleration, and
democratic participation could not prevent the institution of new forms of govern-
ment terror to persecute, imprison, and
kill dissidents. These paradoxes created an
REVIEW QUESTION Why did some groups opening for Napoleon Bonaparte, who
outside of France embrace the French Revolu- rushed in with his remarkable military and
tion while others resisted it?
political skills to push France — and with
it all of Europe — in new directions.
[ 1789–1799
] Conclusion 635
AY
States established by revolutionary France
SWEDEN
NORW
AND
N SCOTLAND
DENMARK
W
a
Se
E Moscow
N orth
ic
S t
IRELAND GREAT
Se a
B al
BRITAIN Batavian RUSSIA
Republic
ENGLAND
Amsterdam Berlin PRUSSIA
London Warsaw
Utrecht
Brussels
Mainz
HOLY
Paris
ATL A NTI C Versailles
Se R. ROMAN
ine
OCEAN
ne
EMPIRE
Rhi
R.
FRENCH
Helvetic
REPUBLIC Lyon Republic AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
Savoy Venice
Piedmont
Toulouse ParmaCisalpine
Nice Republic Venice R.
D a n u be Black
Siena Ad Sea
Ligurian Tuscany Roman ria
PORTUGAL Republic tic O
Republic
Corsica Se T
a T
SPAI N Neapolitan O Constantinople
Rome
M
Republic AN
Naples EM
Sardinia PIR
E
Mediterranean Sea
NORTH AFRICA 0 200 400 miles


France’s expansion during the revolutionary wars threatened to upset the balance of power in
Europe. A century earlier, the English and Dutch had allied and formed a Europe-wide coalition
to check the territorial ambitions of Louis XIV. Thwarting French ambitions after 1799 would
prove to be even more of a challenge to the other European powers. The Dutch had been
reduced to satellite status, as had most of the Italian states. Even Austria and Prussia would
suffer devastating losses to the French on the battlefield. Only a new coalition of European pow-
ers could stop France in the future.
Chapter 19 Review
Louis XVI (p. 610) Declaration of the Rights of Terror (p. 620)
Marie-Antoinette (p. 610) Man and Citizen (p. 615) de-Christianization (p. 622)
Estates General (p. 611) Jacobin Club (p. 618) Thermidorian Reaction
Great Fear (p. 614) Maximilien Robespierre (p. 627)
(p. 619)
Review Questions
1. How did the beginning of the French Revolution resemble the other revolutions of
1787–1789?
2. Why did the French Revolution turn in an increasingly radical direction after 1789?
3. What factors can explain the Terror? To what extent was it simply a response to a national
emergency or a reflection of deeper problems within the French Revolution?
4. Why did some groups outside of France embrace the French Revolution while others
resisted it?
Making Connections
1. Should the French Revolution be viewed as the origin of democracy or the origin of
totalitarianism (a government in which no dissent is allowed)? Explain.
2. Why did other European rulers find the French Revolution so threatening?
3. What made the French revolutionary armies so powerful in this period?
4. How was the French Revolution related to the Enlightenment that preceded it?
The most influential book on the meaning of the French Revolution is still the classic study
by Tocqueville, who insisted that the Revolution continued the process of state centralization
undertaken by the monarchy. The revolutions in the colonies are now the subject of many new
and important studies.
Andress, David, ed. Experiencing the French Revolution. 2013.
Chickering, Roger, and Stig Förster, eds. War in an Age of Revolution, 1775–1815. 2010.
Desan, Suzanne. The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France. 2006.
———, Lynn Hunt, and William Max Nelson, eds. The French Revolution in Global Perspective.
2013.
*Dubois, Laurent, and John D. Garrigus, eds. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804:
A Brief History with Documents. 2006.
*Hunt, Lynn, ed. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History. 1996.
*Levy, Darline Gay, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, eds. Women in
Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795. 1979.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution: http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/
*Primary source.
636
[1789–1799
Important Events
1787 Dutch Patriot revolt is stifled by Prussian invasion

1788 Beginning of Austrian Netherlands resistance against reforms of Joseph
II; opening of reform parliament in Poland
1789 French Revolution begins
1790 Internal divisions lead to collapse of resistance in Austrian Netherlands
1791 Beginning of slave revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti)
1792 Beginning of war between France and rest of Europe; second revolution of
August 10 overthrows monarchy
1793 Second partition of Poland by Austria and Russia; Louis XVI of France is
executed for treason
1794 Abolition of slavery in French colonies; Robespierre’s government by terror
falls
1795 Third (final) partition of Poland; France annexes Austrian Netherlands
1797–1798 Creation of “sister republics” in Italian states and Switzerland
Consider three events: Dutch patriot revolt is stifled by Prussian invasion (1787),
French Revolution begins (1789), and Beginning of slave revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti)
(1791). How would you explain the relationships among these three uprisings? How were
they similar and different in their inspirations, ideologies, tactics, and results?
McPhee, Peter. Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life. 2012.

———, ed. A Companion to the French Revolution. 2013.
Palmer, R. R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America,
1760–1800. Vol. 2, The Struggle. 1964.
Popkin, Jeremy D. A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution. 2012.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. 1856;
repr. 1955.
Napoleon and the
20
Revolutionary Legacy
1800–1830
I
n her novel Frankenstein (1818), the prototype for modern thrillers, Mary
Shelley tells the story of a Swiss inventor, Dr. Frankenstein, who creates a human-
like monster. The monster terrifies all who encounter him and ends by destroying
Frankenstein’s own loved ones. Despite desperate chases across deserts and frozen
landscapes, Frankenstein never manages to trap the monster, who is last seen hunched
over his creator’s deathbed.
Those who witnessed Napoleon Bona-
Napoleon as Military Hero parte’s stunning rise to European dominance
In this painting from 1800–1801, might have cast him as either Frankenstein or
Napoleon Crossing the Alps at St. Ber- his monster. Like the scientist Frankenstein,
nard, Jacques-Louis David reminds Bonaparte created something dramatically
the French of Napoleon’s heroic mili- new: the French Empire with himself as
tary exploits. Napoleon is a picture of
calm and composure while his horse
emperor. Like the former kings of France, he
shows the fright and energy of the ruled under his first name. This Corsican artil-
moment. David painted this propa- lery officer who spoke French with an Italian
gandistic image shortly after one accent ended the French Revolution even
of his former students went to the while maintaining some of its most impor-
guillotine on a trumped-up charge
tant innovations.
of plotting to assassinate the new
French leader. The former organizer of Bonaparte continued the revolutionary
republican festivals during the Terror policy of conquest and annexation until it
had become a kind of court painter reached grotesque dimensions. His foreign
for the new regime. (Schloss Charlotten- policies made many see him as a monster hun-
burg, Berlin, Germany / Bridgeman Images.)
gry for dominion; he turned the sister repub-
lics of the revolutionary era into kingdoms
personally ruled by his relatives, and he exacted tribute wherever he triumphed.
Eventually, resistance to the French armies and the ever-mounting costs of military
glory toppled Napoleon. The powers allied against him met and agreed to restore the
monarchical governments that had been overthrown by the French, shrink France
back to its prerevolutionary boundaries, and maintain this settlement against future
demands for change.
639
640 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
[ 1800–1830
]
Although the people of Europe longed for peace and stability in the aftermath
of the Napoleonic whirlwind, they lived in a deeply unsettled world. Profoundly
affected by French military occupation, many groups of people organized to demand
ethnic and cultural autonomy, first from Napoleon and then from the restored gov-
ernments after 1815. In 1830, a new round
of revolutions broke out in France, Bel-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did Napoleon Bona-
parte’s actions force other European rulers to gium, Poland, and some of the Italian
change their policies? states. The revolutionary legacy was far
from exhausted.
The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte

In 1799, a charismatic young general took over the French republic and set France
on a new course. Within a year, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) had effectively
ended the French Revolution and steered France toward an authoritarian state. As
emperor after 1804, Bonaparte dreamed of European integration in the tradition of
Augustus and Charlemagne. To achieve his goals, he compromised with the Catholic
church and with exiled aristocrats willing to return to France. His most enduring
accomplishment, the new Civil Code, tempered the principles of the Enlightenment
and the Revolution with an insistence on the powers of fathers over children, hus-
bands over wives, and employers over workers. His influence spread into many
spheres as he personally patronized scientific inquiry and encouraged artistic styles
in line with his vision of imperial greatness.
A General Takes Over

It would have seemed astonishing in 1795 that the twenty-six-year-old son of a noble
family from the island of Corsica off the Italian coast would within four years become
the supreme ruler of France and one of the greatest military leaders in world history.
That year, Bonaparte was a penniless artillery officer, only recently released from
prison as a presumed Robespierrist. Thanks to some early military successes and links
to Parisian politicians, however, he was named commander of the French army in
Italy in 1796.
Bonaparte’s astounding success in the Italian campaigns of 1796–1797 launched
his meteoric career. With an army of fewer than fifty thousand men, he defeated the
Piedmontese and the Austrians. In quick order, he established client republics depen-
dent on his own authority, negotiated with the Austrians himself, and molded the
army into his personal force by paying the soldiers in cash taken as tribute from the
newly conquered territories. He pleased the Directory government by sending home
wagonloads of Italian masterpieces of art, which were added to Parisian museum
collections (most are still there) after being paraded in victory festivals.
In 1798, the Directory set aside its plans to invade England, gave Bonaparte com-
mand of the army raised for that purpose, and sent him across the Mediterranean
[
1800–1830
] The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 641
Sea to Egypt. The Directory government hoped that French occupation of Egypt
would strike a blow at British trade by cutting the route to India. Although the
French defeated a much larger Egyptian army, the British admiral Lord Horatio
Nelson destroyed the French fleet while it was anchored in Aboukir Bay, cutting the
French off from home. Bonaparte insisted that he aimed to liberate the Egyptians
from the Ottoman Turks, but though he proclaimed his respect for Islam, he also
forced through Enlightenment-inspired legal reforms such as equality before the law
and religious toleration. In the face of determined resistance and an outbreak of the
bubonic plague, the French armies retreated from a further expedition in Syria.
Even the failures of the Egyptian campaign did not dull Bonaparte’s luster.
Bonaparte had taken France’s leading scientists with him on the expedition, and his
soldiers had discovered a slab of black basalt dating from 196 b.c.e. written in both
hieroglyphic and Greek. Called the Rosetta stone after a nearby town, it enabled
scholars to finally decipher the hieroglyphs used by the ancient Egyptians.
With his army pinned down by Nelson’s victory at sea, Bonaparte slipped out of
Egypt and made his way secretly to southern France in October 1799. He arrived
home at just the right moment: the war in Europe was going badly. The territories
of the former Austrian Netherlands had revolted against French conscription laws,
and deserters swelled the ranks of rebels in western France. Disillusioned members
of the government saw in Bonaparte’s return an occasion to overturn the constitution
of 1795. They got their wish on November 9, 1799, when troops guarding the legis-
lature ejected those who opposed Bonaparte and left the remaining ones to vote to
abolish the Directory and establish a new three-man executive called the consulate.
Bonaparte became First Consul, a title revived from the ancient Roman repub-
lic. A new constitution — with no declaration of rights — was submitted to the voters.
Millions abstained from voting, and the government falsified the results to give an
appearance of even greater support to the new regime.
From Republic to Empire

When the constitution of 1799 made Napoleon the First Consul (of three), it gave
him the right to pick the Council of State, which drew up all laws. The French gov-
ernment was no longer representative in any real sense: the new constitution elimi-
nated direct elections for deputies and granted no independent powers to the three
houses of the legislature. Napoleon and his advisers chose the legislature’s members
out of a small pool of “notables.” Almost all men over twenty-one could vote in the
plebiscite (referendum) to approve the constitution, but their only option was to
choose yes or no.
Napoleon’s most urgent task was to reconcile to his regime Catholics who had
been alienated by revolutionary policies. Although nominally Catholic, Napoleon held
no deep religious convictions. “How can there be order in the state without religion?”
he asked cynically. “When a man is dying of hunger beside another who is stuffing
himself, he cannot accept this difference if there is not an authority who tells him:
[ 1800–1830
]
‘God wishes it so.’ ” In 1801, a concordat with Pope Pius VII (r. 1800–1823) ended
a decade of church-state conflict in France. The pope validated all sales of church
lands, and the government agreed to pay the salaries of bishops and priests who
would swear loyalty to the state. Catholicism was officially recognized as the religion
of “the great majority of French citizens.” (The state also paid Protestant pastors’
salaries.)
Napoleon continued the centralization of state power that had begun under the
absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV. As First Consul, he appointed prefects who
directly supervised local affairs in every department in the country. He created the
Bank of France to facilitate government borrowing and relied on gold and silver
coinage rather than paper money. He improved tax collection but balanced the bud-
get only by exacting tribute from the territories he conquered.
Napoleon never relied on mass executions to maintain control, but he refused
to allow those who opposed him to meet in clubs, influence elections, or publish
newspapers. A decree reduced the number of newspapers in Paris from seventy-three
to thirteen (and then finally to four). Government censors had to approve all operas
and plays, and they banned “offensive” artistic works even more frequently than their
royal predecessors had. The minister of police, Joseph Fouché, once a leading figure
in the Terror of 1793–1794, imposed house arrest, arbitrary imprisonment, and sur-
veillance of political dissidents. Political contest and debate shriveled to almost noth-
ing. When a bomb attack on Napoleon’s carriage failed in 1800, Fouché suppressed
the evidence of a royalist plot and instead arrested hundreds of former Jacobins.
When it suited him, Napoleon also struck against royalist conspirators. In 1804,
he ordered his police to kidnap the duke d’Enghien from his residence in Germany.
Napoleon had intelligence, which proved to be false, that d’Enghien had joined a
plot in Paris against him. Even when he learned the truth, he insisted that a military
tribunal try d’Enghien, a close relative of the dead king Louis XVI. After a summary
trial, d’Enghien was shot on the spot.
By then, Napoleon’s political intentions had become clear. He had named himself
First Consul for life in 1802, and in 1804, with the pope’s blessing, he crowned him-
self emperor. Once again, plebiscites approved his decisions but only yes/no alterna-
tives were offered.
Napoleon’s face and name soon adorned coins, engravings, histories, paintings,
and public monuments. His favorite painters embellished his legend by depicting
him as a warrior-hero of mythic proportions even though he was short and physi-
cally unimpressive in person. He embarked on ostentatious building projects, includ-
ing the Arc de Triomphe and the Stock Exchange.
Napoleon worked hard at establishing his reputation as an efficient adminis-
trator with broad intellectual interests. When not on military campaigns, he worked
on state affairs, usually until 10:00 p.m., taking only a few minutes for each meal.
To establish his authority, Napoleon relied on men who had served with him in the
army. His bureaucracy was based on a patron-client relationship, with Napoleon as
the ultimate patron.
[1800–1830
Napoleon’s Coronation as Emperor

In this detail from The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (1805–1807), Jacques-Louis David
shows Napoleon crowning his wife at the ceremony of 1804. Napoleon orchestrated the entire
event and took the only active role in it: Pope Pius VII gave his blessing to the ceremony (he can
be seen seated behind Napoleon), but Napoleon crowned himself. What is the significance of
Napoleon crowning himself? (Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images.)
Combining aristocratic and revolutionary values in a new social hierarchy that

rewarded merit and talent, Napoleon personally chose as senators the nation’s most
illustrious men, among them former nobles. Intending to replace both the old nobil-
ity of birth and the republic’s strict emphasis on equality, in 1802 he took the first
step toward creating a new nobility by founding the Legion of Honor. (Members of
the legion received lifetime pensions along with their titles.) In 1808, Napoleon
introduced a complete hierarchy of noble titles, ranging from princes down to barons
and chevaliers. To go along with their new titles, Napoleon gave his favorite generals
huge fortunes, often in the form of estates in the conquered territories.
Napoleon’s own family reaped the greatest benefits. He made his older brother,
Joseph, ruler of the newly established kingdom of Naples in 1806, the same year he
installed his younger brother Louis as king of Holland. He proclaimed his twenty-
three-year-old stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy in 1805 and estab-
lished his sister Caroline and brother-in-law General Joachim Murat as king and
queen of Naples in 1808 when he moved Joseph to the throne of Spain. Napoleon
wanted to establish an imperial succession, but he lacked an heir. In thirteen years
[ 1800–1830
]
of marriage, his wife, Josephine, had borne no children, so in 1809 he divorced her
and in 1810 married the eighteen-year-old princess Marie-Louise of Austria. The next
year Marie-Louise gave birth to a son, to whom Napoleon immediately gave the title
king of Rome.
The New Paternalism: The Civil Code

As part of his restoration of order, Napoleon brought a paternalistic model of power
to his state. He successfully established a new Civil Code, completed in 1804. Called
the Napoleonic Code as a way of further exalting the emperor’s image, it reasserted
the Old Regime’s patriarchal system of male domination over women and insisted
on a father’s control over his children, which revolutionary legislation had limited.
For example, a child under age sixteen who refused to follow his or her father’s com-
mands could be sent to prison for up to a month with no hearing of any sort. Still,
the Civil Code protected many of the gains of the French Revolution by defining
and ensuring property rights, guaranteeing religious liberty, and establishing a uni-
form system of law that provided equal treatment for all adult males and affirmed
the right of men to choose their professions.
Although the code maintained the equal division of family property between all
children, both male and female, it sharply curtailed women’s rights in other respects.
Napoleon wanted to restrict women to the private sphere of the home. The law
obligated a husband to support his wife, but the husband alone controlled any prop-
erty held in common; a wife could not sue in court, sell or mortgage her own prop-
erty, or contract a debt without her husband’s consent. Divorce was severely restricted.
A wife could petition for divorce only if her husband brought his mistress to live
in the family home. In contrast, a wife convicted of adultery could be imprisoned
for up to two years. The code’s framers saw these discrepancies as a way to reinforce
the family and make women responsible for private virtue, while leaving public deci-
sions to men. Not until 1965 did French wives gain legal status equal to that of their
husbands.
Napoleon took little interest in girls’ education, believing that girls should spend
most of their time at home learning religion, manners, and such “female occupations”
as sewing and music. For boys, by contrast, the government set up a new system of
lycées, state-run secondary schools in which students wore military uniforms and
drumrolls signaled the beginning and end of classes. The lycées offered wider access
to education and thus helped achieve Napoleon’s goal of opening careers to those
with talent, regardless of their social origins. (The lycées have dropped the military
trappings and are now coeducational, but they are still the heart of the French edu-
cational system.)
The new paternalism extended to relations between employers and employees.
The state required all workers to carry a work card attesting to their good conduct,
and it prohibited all workers’ organizations. After 1806, arbitration boards settled
labor disputes, but they took employers at their word while treating workers as
[1800–1830
minors, demanding that foremen and shop superintendents represent them. The
limitations on workers’ rights won Napoleon the support of French business.
Patronage of Science and Intellectual Life

An impressive outpouring of new theoretical and practical scientific work rewarded
Napoleon’s efforts to promote science. Experiments with balloons led to the discov-
ery of laws about the expansion of gases, and research on fossil shells prepared the
way for new theories of evolutionary change later in the nineteenth century. The
surgeon Dominique-Jean Larrey developed new techniques of battlefield amputation
and medical care during Napoleon’s wars, winning an appointment as an officer in
the Legion of Honor and becoming a baron with a pension.
Napoleon aimed to modernize French society through science, but he could not
tolerate criticism. Napoleon considered most writers useless or dangerous. Among
those forced into exile was Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), the daugh-
ter of Louis XVI’s finance minister, Jacques Necker. When explaining his desire to
banish her, Napoleon exclaimed, “She is a machine in motion who stirs up the salons.”
While exiled in the German states, de Staël wrote Corinne (1807), a novel whose
heroine is a brilliant woman thwarted by a patriarchal system, and On Germany
(1810), an account of the important new literary currents east of the Rhine. Her books
were banned in France.
Although Napoleon restored the strong authority of state and religion in France,
many royalists and Catholics still criticized him as an impious usurper. François-
Germaine de Staël
One of the most fascinating intel-
lectuals of her time, Anne-Louise-
Germaine de Staël seemed to
irritate Napoleon more than any
other person did. Daughter of
Louis XVI’s Swiss Protestant
finance minister, Jacques Necker,
and wife of a Swedish diplomat,
Madame de Staël frequently criti-
cized Napoleon’s policies. She
published best-selling novels and
influential literary criticism, and
whenever allowed to reside in
Paris she encouraged the intellec-
tual and political dissidents from
Napoleon’s regime. In this paint-
ing from 1809, Élisabeth Vigée-
Lebrun depicts her as Corinne,
the heroine of one of her novels.
(Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva,
Switzerland / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1800–1830
]
René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) admired Napoleon as “the strong man who has
saved us from the abyss,” but he preferred a restored Bourbon monarchy. In his view,
Napoleon had not properly understood the need to defend Christian values against
the Enlightenment’s excessive reliance on
reason. Chateaubriand wrote his Genius of
REVIEW QUESTION In what ways did Christianity (1802) to draw attention to
Napoleon continue the French Revolution,
the power and mystery of faith. His book
and in what ways did he break with it?
appeared during a rare lull in wars that
soon engulfed much of Europe.
“Europe Was at My Feet”: Napoleon’s Conquests

Napoleon revolutionized the art of war with tactics and strategies based on a highly
mobile army. By 1812, he was ruling a European empire more extensive than any
since ancient Rome (Map 20.1). Yet that empire had already begun to crumble, and
with it went Napoleon’s power at home. Napoleon’s empire failed because it was
based on a contradiction: Napoleon tried to reduce virtually all nations of Europe
to the status of colonial dependents when Europe had long consisted of independent
states. The result, inevitably, was a great upsurge in nationalist feeling that has domi-
nated European politics to the present.
The Grand Army and Its Victories, 1800–1807

Napoleon attributed his military success “three-quarters to morale” and the rest to
leadership and superiority of numbers at the point of attack. Conscription provided
the large numbers: 1.3 million men ages twenty to twenty-four were drafted between
1800 and 1812, another 1 million in 1813–1814. Military service was a means of
social mobility. The men who rose through the ranks to become officers were young,
ambitious, and accustomed to the new ways of war. Consequently, the French army
had higher morale than the armies of other powers, most of which rejected conscrip-
tion as too democratic and continued to restrict their officer corps to the nobility.
To end squabbling among his generals, Napoleon united all the French armies
into one — the Grand Army — under his personal command. By 1812, he was com-
manding 700,000 troops; while 250,000 soldiers fought in Spain, others remained
garrisoned in France. In any given battle, between 70,000 and 180,000 men, not all
of them French, fought for France. Napoleon inspired almost fanatical loyalty. He
fought alongside his soldiers in some sixty battles and had nineteen horses shot from
under him. One opponent said that Napoleon’s presence alone was worth fifty thou-
sand men.
A brilliant strategist who carefully studied the demands of war, Napoleon out-
maneuvered virtually all his opponents. He went directly for the main body of the
opposing army and tried to crush it in a lightning campaign. He gathered the largest
possible army for one great and decisive battle and then followed with a relentless
[ 1800–1830
] “Europe Was at My Feet”: Napoleon’s Conquests 647
0 200 400 miles

St. Petersburg
0 200 400 kilometers KINGDOM OF KINGDOM OF
SWEDEN
SCOTLAND
NORWAY AND Invasion of Borodino
Moscow
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Russia, 1812 1812
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1809
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1800 Danube R
KINGDOM OF 1812 Saragossa Ad
PORTUGAL Madrid 1809
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1809 Badajos
Rome Se
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1812 Valencia
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KINGDOM 1808 Sardinia

Naples KINGDOM AN
OF NAPLES EM
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France’s Retreat from America
French lands sold
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ST. DOMINGUE 1798
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(Haiti after 1804)
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MAP 20.1 Napoleon’s Empire at Its Height, 1812

In 1812, Napoleon had at least nominal control of almost all of western Europe. Even before
he made his fatal mistake of invading Russia, however, his authority had been undermined in
Spain and seriously weakened in the Italian and German states. Still earlier, he had given up
his dreams of a worldwide empire. French armies withdrew from Egypt in 1801 and from St.
Domingue (Haiti) in 1802. In 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States.
pursuit to break enemy morale altogether. His military command, like his rule within
France, was personal and highly centralized. He essentially served as his own opera-
tions officer. This style worked as long as Napoleon could be on the battlefield, but
he failed to train independent subordinates to take over in his absence. He also faced
constant difficulties in supplying a rapidly moving army, which, because of its size,
could not always live off the land.
[ 1800–1830
]
One of Napoleon’s greatest advantages was the lack of coordination among his
enemies. Britain dominated the seas but did not want to field huge land armies. On
the continent, the French republic had already set up satellites in the Netherlands
and Italy, which served as a buffer against the big powers to the east — Austria, Prus-
sia, and Russia. By maneuvering diplomatically and militarily, Napoleon could usu-
ally take these on one by one. He won striking victories against the Austrians at
Marengo and Hohenlinden in 1800, forcing them to agree to peace terms. Once the
Austrians had withdrawn, Britain agreed to the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, effectively
ending hostilities on the continent. Napoleon considered the peace with Great Brit-
ain merely a truce, however, and it lasted only until 1803.
Napoleon used the breathing space not only to consolidate his position before
taking up arms again but also to send an expeditionary force to the Caribbean colony
of St. Domingue to regain control of the island. Continuing resistance among the
black population and an epidemic of yellow fever forced Napoleon to withdraw his
troops from St. Domingue and abandon his plans to extend his empire to the West-
ern Hemisphere. As part of his retreat, he sold the Louisiana Territory to the United
States in 1803.
When war resumed in Europe, the British navy once more proved its superiority
by blocking an attempted French invasion and by defeating the French and their
Spanish allies in a huge naval battle at Trafalgar in 1805. France lost many ships; the
Napoleon Visiting the

Battlefield
Antoine-Jean Gros painted
this scene of the battle of
Eylau (now in northwestern
Russia, then in East Prussia)
shortly after Napoleon’s vic-
tory against the Russian
army in 1807. The painter
aims to show the compas-
sion of Napoleon for his
men, but he also draws
attention to the sheer
carnage of war. Each side
lost 25,000 men, killed or
wounded, in this battle.
What would you conclude
from the way the ordinary
soldiers are depicted here?
(Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman
Images.)
[1800–1830
British lost no vessels, but their renowned admiral Lord Horatio Nelson died in the
battle.
On land, Napoleon remained invincible. In 1805, Austria took up arms again
when Napoleon demanded that it declare neutrality in the conflict with Britain. Napo-
leon promptly captured twenty-five thousand Austrian soldiers at Ulm, in Bavaria,
in 1805. After marching on to Vienna, he again trounced the Austrians, who had
been joined by their new ally, Russia. The battle of Austerlitz, often considered Napo-
leon’s greatest victory, was fought on December 2, 1805, the first anniversary of his
coronation.
After maintaining neutrality for a decade, Prussia now declared war on France.
In 1806, the French routed the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt. In 1807, Napo-
leon defeated the Russians at Friedland. Personal negotiations between Napoleon
and the young tsar Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) resulted in a humiliating settlement
imposed on Prussia, which paid the price for temporary reconciliation between
France and Russia; the Treaties of Tilsit turned Prussian lands west of the Elbe River
into the kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon’s brother Jerome, and Prussia’s Pol-
ish provinces became the duchy of Warsaw.
The Impact of French Victories

By annexing some territories and setting up others as satellite kingdoms with much-
reduced autonomy, Napoleon attempted to colonize large parts of Europe (see Map
20.1, page 647). He brought the disparate German and Italian states together so that
he could rule them more effectively and exploit their resources for his own ends. In
July 1806, he established the Confederation of the Rhine, which soon included almost
all the German states except Austria and Prussia. The Holy Roman Emperor gave up
his title, held since the thirteenth century, and became simply the emperor of Austria.
Napoleon established three units in Italy: the territories directly annexed to France
and the satellite kingdoms of Italy and Naples. Italy had not been so unified since
the Roman Empire.
Napoleon forced French-style reforms on both the annexed territories, which
were ruled directly from France, and the satellite kingdoms, which were usually ruled
by one or another of Napoleon’s relatives but with a certain autonomy. French-style
reforms included abolishing serfdom, eliminating seigneurial dues, introducing the
Napoleonic Code, suppressing monasteries, and subordinating church to state, as
well as extending civil rights to Jews and other religious minorities. Yet almost every-
one had some cause for complaint. Republicans regretted Napoleon’s conversion of
the sister republics into kingdoms. Tax increases and ever-rising conscription quotas
fomented discontent as well. The annexed territories and satellite kingdoms paid half
the cost of Napoleon’s wars.
Almost everywhere, conflicts arose between Napoleon’s desire for a standard-
ized, centralized government and local insistence on maintaining customs and tradi-
tions. Sometimes his own relatives sided with the countries they ruled. Napoleon’s
[ 1800–1830
]
brother Louis, for instance, would not allow conscription in the Netherlands because
the Dutch had never had compulsory military ser vice. When Napoleon tried to
introduce an economic policy banning trade with Great Britain, Louis’s lax enforce-
ment infuriated the emperor, and Napoleon annexed the satellite kingdom in 1810.
Napoleon’s victories forced defeated rulers to rethink their political and cultural
assumptions. After the crushing defeat of Prussia in 1806 left his country greatly
reduced in territory, Frederick William III (r. 1797–1840) abolished serfdom and
allowed non-nobles to buy and enclose land. Peasants gained their personal inde-
pendence from their noble landlords, who could no longer sell them to pay gambling
debts, for example, or refuse them permission to marry. Yet the lives of the former
serfs remained bleak; they were left without land, and their landlords no longer had
to care for them in hard times. The king’s advisers also overhauled the army to make
the high command more efficient and to open the way to the appointment of middle-
class officers. Prussia instituted these reforms to try to compete with the French, not
to promote democracy. As one reformer wrote to Frederick William, “We must do
from above what the French have done from below.”
Reform received lip service in Russia. Tsar Alexander I had gained his throne
after an aristocratic coup deposed and killed his autocratic and capricious father,
Paul (r. 1796–1801), and in the early years of his reign the remorseful young ruler
created Western-style ministries, lifted restrictions on importing foreign books, and
founded six new universities. In addition, reform commissions studied abuses, nobles
were encouraged to free their serfs voluntarily (a few actually did so), and there was
even talk of drafting a constitution. But none of these efforts reached beneath the
surface of Russian life, and by the second decade of his reign Alexander began to
reject the Enlightenment spirit that his grandmother Catherine the Great had instilled
in him.
The one power always standing between Napoleon and total dominance of
Europe was Great Britain. The British ruled the seas and financed anyone who would
oppose Napoleon. In an effort to bankrupt this “nation of shopkeepers” by choking
its trade, Napoleon inaugurated the Continental System in 1806. It prohibited all
commerce between Great Britain and France or France’s dependent states and allies.
At first, the system worked: in 1807–1808, British exports dropped by 20 percent
and manufacturing by 10 percent. The British retaliated by confiscating merchandise
from ships that sailed into or out of the prohibited ports — they even took merchan-
dise from powers that were neutral in the wars.
In the midst of continuing wars, moreover, the Continental System proved
impossible to enforce, and widespread smuggling brought British goods into the
European market. British growth continued, despite some setbacks; calico-printing
works, for example, quadrupled their production, and imports of raw cotton increased
by 40 percent. At the same time, French and other continental industries benefited
from the temporary protection from British competition.
Smuggling British goods was only one way of opposing the French. Almost every-
where in Europe, resistance began as local opposition to French demands for money
[1800–1830
or draftees but eventually prompted a more nationalistic patriotic defense. Italians

formed a network of secret societies called the carbonari (“charcoal burners”), which
got its name from the practice of marking each new member’s forehead with a char-
coal mark. Throughout the nineteenth century, the carbonari played a leading role in
Italian nationalism. In the German states, intellectuals wrote passionate defenses of
the virtues of the German nation and of the superiority of German literature.
No nations bucked under Napoleon’s reins more than Spain and Portugal. In
1807, Napoleon sent 100,000 troops through Spain to invade Portugal, Great Britain’s
ally. The royal family fled to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, but fighting continued,
aided by a British army. When Napoleon got his brother Joseph named king of Spain
in place of the senile Charles IV (r. 1788–1808), the Spanish clergy and nobles raised
bands of peasants to fight the French occupiers. Even Napoleon’s taking personal
command of the French forces failed to quell the Spanish, who for six years fought
a war of national independence that pinned down thousands of French soldiers.
French Atrocities in Spain

In 1814, the Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was inspired to depict a popu-
lar rebellion that took place in Madrid in 1808. The Spanish rebelled against the invading
French when they learned that the French armies were forcing members of the Spanish royal
family to leave Madrid. In this detail of the painting The Second of May, 1808, Mamelukes of the
French army charge the rioting Spanish. (Mamelukes were Muslim soldiers who had originally
been slaves.) (Prado, Madrid, Spain / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1800–1830
]
Germaine de Staël commented that Napoleon “never understood that a war might be
a crusade. . . . He never reckoned with the one power that no arms could overcome —
the enthusiasm of a whole people.”
Spanish peasants hated French requisitioning of their food supplies and sought
to defend their priests against French anticlericalism. Spanish nobles feared revolu-
tionary reforms and were willing to defend the old monarchy in the person of the
young Ferdinand VII, heir to Charles IV, even while Ferdinand himself was congratu-
lating Napoleon on his victories. The Spanish Catholic church spread anti-French
propaganda that equated Napoleon with heresy. As the former archbishop of Seville
wrote to the archbishop of Granada in 1808, “You realize that we must not recognize
as king a Freemason, heretic, Lutheran, as are all the Bonapartes and the French
nation.” The Spanish peasant rebels, assisted by the British, countered every French
massacre with atrocities of their own. They tortured their French prisoners (boiling
one general alive) and lynched collaborators.
From Russian Winter to Final Defeat, 1812–1815

Despite opposition, Napoleon ruled over an extensive empire by 1812. Only two
major European states remained fully independent — Great Britain and Russia — but
once allied they would successfully challenge his dominion and draw many other
states to their side. Britain sent aid to the Portuguese and Spanish rebels, while Russia
once again prepared for war. Tsar Alexander I made peace with the Ottoman Turks
and allied himself with Great Britain and Sweden. In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia
with 250,000 horses and 680,000 men, including contingents of Italians, Poles, Swiss,
Dutch, and Germans. This daring move proved to be his undoing.
Napoleon followed his usual strategy of trying to strike quickly, but the Russian
generals avoided confrontation and retreated eastward, destroying anything that
might be useful to the invaders. In September, on the road to Moscow, Napoleon finally
engaged the main Russian force in the gigantic battle of Borodino (see Map 20.1,
page 647). In just that one day the French casualties numbered 30,000 men; the
Russians lost 45,000. Once again the Russians retreated, leaving Moscow undefended.
When Napoleon approached, the departing Russians set the wooden city on fire.
Within a week, three-fourths of it had burned to the ground. Still Alexander refused
to negotiate, and French morale plunged with worsening problems of supply. Weeks
of constant marching in the dirt and heat had worn down the foot soldiers, who
were dying of disease or deserting in large numbers.
In October, Napoleon began his retreat; in November came the cold. A German
soldier in the Grand Army described trying to cook fistfuls of raw bran with snow
to make something like bread. Within a week the Grand Army lost 30,000 horses
and had to abandon most of its artillery and food supplies. Russian forces harassed
the retreating army, now more pathetic than grand. By December only 100,000 troops
remained, less than one-sixth the original number, and the retreat had turned into
a rout: the Russians had captured 200,000 soldiers, including 3,000 officers.
[
1800–1830
Napoleon had made a classic military mistake that would be repeated by Adolf
Hitler in World War II: fighting a war on two distant fronts simultaneously. The
Spanish war tied down 250,000 French troops and forced Napoleon to bully Prussia
and Austria into supplying soldiers of dubious loyalty for the Moscow campaign;
those soldiers deserted at the first opportunity. The fighting in Spain and Portugal
also exacerbated the already substantial logistical and communications problems
involved in marching to Moscow.
Napoleon’s humiliation might have been temporary if the British and Russians
had not successfully organized a coalition to complete the job. By the spring of 1813,
Napoleon had replenished his army with another 250,000 men. With British financial
support, Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and Swedish armies met the French outside
Leipzig in October 1813 and defeated Napoleon in the Battle of the Nations. One by
one, Napoleon’s German allies deserted him to join the German nationalist “war of
liberation.” The Confederation of the Rhine dissolved, and the Dutch revolted and
restored the prince of Orange. Joseph Bonaparte fled Spain, and a combined Spanish-
Portuguese army under British command invaded France. In only a few months, the
allied powers crossed the Rhine and marched toward Paris. In March 1814, the French
Senate deposed Napoleon, who abdicated when his remaining generals refused to
fight. Napoleon went into exile on the island of Elba off the Italian coast. His wife,
Marie-Louise, refused to accompany him. The allies restored to the throne Louis XVIII
(r. 1814–1824), the brother of Louis XVI, beheaded during the Revolution. (Louis XVI’s
son was known as Louis XVII even though he died in prison in 1795 without ever
ruling.)
Napoleon had one last chance to regain power. Louis XVIII was caught between
nobles returning from exile, who demanded a complete restoration of their lands
and powers, and the vast majority of ordinary people, who had supported either the
republic or Napoleon during the previous twenty-five years. Sensing an opportunity,
Napoleon escaped from Elba in early 1815 and, landing in southern France, made
swift progress to Paris. Although he had left in ignominy, now crowds cheered him
and former soldiers volunteered to serve him. The period eventually known as the
Hundred Days (the length of time between Napoleon’s escape and his final defeat)
had begun. Louis XVIII fled across the border, waiting for help from the powers
allied against Napoleon.
Napoleon quickly moved his reconstituted army of 74,000 men into present-day
Belgium. At first, it seemed that he might succeed in separately fighting the two
armies arrayed against him — a Prussian army of some 60,000 men and a joint force
of 68,000 Belgian, Dutch, German, and British troops led by British general Sir
Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), duke of Wellington. The decisive battle of Waterloo
took place on June 18, 1815, less than ten miles from Brussels. Napoleon’s forces
attacked but failed to dislodge their opponents. Late in the afternoon, the Prussians
arrived and completed the rout. Napoleon had no choice but to abdicate again. This
time the victorious allies banished him permanently to the remote island of St. Hel-
ena, far off the coast of West Africa, where he died in 1821 at the age of fifty-two.
[ 1800–1830
]
The cost of Napoleon’s rule was high: 750,000 French soldiers and 400,000 others
from annexed and satellite states died between 1800 and 1815. Yet his impact on
world history was undeniable. Napoleon’s plans for a united Europe, his insistence on
spreading the legal reforms of the French
Revolution, his social welfare programs,
REVIEW QUESTION Why was Napoleon able
to gain control over so much of Europe’s and even his inadvertent awakening of
territory? national sentiment set the agenda for Euro-
pean history in the modern era.
The “Restoration” of Europe

Even while Napoleon was making his last desperate bid for power, his enemies were
meeting in the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) to decide the fate of postrevolu-
tionary, post-Napoleonic Europe. Although interrupted by the Hundred Days, the
Congress of Vienna settled the boundaries of European states, determined who
would rule each nation, and established a new framework for international relations
based on periodic meetings, or congresses, between the major powers. The doctrine
of conservatism that emerged in reaction to the events of the French Revolution
bolstered this post-Napoleonic order and in some places went hand in hand with a
revival of religion.
The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815

In addition to determining the boundaries of France, the congress had to decide the
fate of Napoleon’s duchy of Warsaw, the German province of Saxony, the Nether-
lands, the states once part of the Confederation of the Rhine, and various Italian
territories. All had either changed hands or been created during the wars. These
issues were resolved by face-to-face negotiations among representatives of the five
major powers: Austria, Russia, Prussia, Britain, and France. With its aim to establish
a long-lasting, negotiated peace endorsed by all parties, both winners and losers, the
Congress of Vienna provided a model for the twentieth-century League of Nations
and United Nations. The congress system, or “concert of Europe,” helped prevent
another major war until the 1850s, and no conflict comparable to the Napoleonic
wars would occur again until 1914.
Austria’s chief negotiator, Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859), took
the lead in devising the settlement and shaping the post-Napoleonic order. A well-
educated nobleman who spoke five languages, Metternich served as a minister in the
Austrian cabinet from 1809 to 1848. He aimed to return as much as possible to the
pre-1789 political order, but to do so he also needed to maintain France’s great-power
status as a counter to Russia and Prussia. He therefore worked with the British prime
minister Robert Castlereagh (1769–1822) to ensure a moderate agreement. Metter-
nich and Castlereagh believed that French aggression must be contained, because it
had threatened the European peace since the days of Louis XIV, but at the same time
[1800–1830
] The “Restoration” of Europe 655
Congress of Vienna
An unknown French engraver caricatured the efforts of the diplomats at the Congress of Vienna,
complaining that they used the occasion to divide the spoils of European territory. What ele-
ments in this engraving make it a caricature? (Photo: akg-images.)
that France must remain a major player to prevent any one European power from
dominating the others. Castlereagh hoped to make Britain the arbiter of European
affairs, but he knew this could be accomplished only through adroit diplomacy
because the British constitutional monarchy had little in common with most of its
more absolutist continental counterparts.
The task of ensuring France’s status at the Congress of Vienna fell to Prince
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838), an aristocrat and former bishop who had
embraced the French Revolution, served as Napoleon’s foreign minister, and ended
as foreign minister to Louis XVIII after helping arrange the emperor’s overthrow.
When the French army failed to oppose Napoleon’s return to power in the Hundred
Days, the allies took away all territory conquered since 1790, levied an indemnity
against France, and required it to support an army of occupation until it had paid.
The goal of the Congress of Vienna was to achieve postwar stability by establish-
ing secure states with guaranteed borders (Map 20.2). Because the congress aimed
to “restore” as many regimes as possible to their former rulers, this epoch is some-
times labeled the restoration. But simple restoration was not always feasible. The
congress turned the duchy of Warsaw, for example, into a new Polish kingdom but
[ 1800–1830
]
Prussia A=Parma FINLAND
Austrian Empire B=Modena SWEDEN AND NORWAY
France C=Lucca St. Petersburg
Piedmont-Sardinia D=Tuscany
Russia E=San Marino
a
German States Moscow
Se
N o rt h
Boundary of S ea i
c
German Confederation DENMARK lt
Ba
GREAT S
N BRITAIN D Hamburg PRUSSIA RUSSIA
N
Amsterdam
LA
W
ER
London Berlin Warsaw
E
TH
KINGDOM OF
S English Channel NE
POLAND
Saxony
ATLANTIC Paris GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
OCEAN
Bavaria Vienna
F R ANC E SWITZ. AU S T R IA N E M P I R E
Savoy
Lombardy etia
Genoa A B en D
Nice
V E al
m Black Sea
C at
D PAPAL ia
PORTUGAL STATES O
T
Madrid
Corsica TO
PIEDMONT- M Constantinople
Lisbon SPA IN
Rome AN
SARDINIA EM
Naples
PI
KINGDOM RE
OF THE
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a TWO SICILIES
0 200 400 miles
MAP 20.2 Europe after the Congress of Vienna, 1815

The Congress of Vienna forced France to return to its 1789 borders. The Austrian Netherlands
and the Dutch Republic were united in a new kingdom of the Netherlands, the German states
were joined in a German Confederation that built on Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine,
and Napoleon’s duchy of Warsaw became the kingdom of Poland with the tsar of Russia as
king. To compensate for its losses in Poland, Prussia gained territory in Saxony and on the left
bank of the Rhine. Austria reclaimed the Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia and the
Dalmatian coast.
made the tsar of Russia its king. (Poland would not regain its independence until
1918.) The former Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands, both annexed to
France, were now united as the new kingdom of the Netherlands under the restored
stadholder. Austria took charge of the German Confederation, which replaced the
defunct Holy Roman Empire and also included Prussia.
The Congress of Vienna also resolved various international trade issues. Great
Britain, which had abolished its slave trade in 1807, urged the congress to condemn
that trade for other nations. The congress agreed in principle; in reality, however,
the slave trade continued in many places until 1850. Nearly three million Africans
[1800–1830
] The “Restoration” of Europe 657
were sold into slavery between 1800 and 1850, and most were transported on either
Portuguese or Brazilian slave ships.
To impart spiritual substance to this very calculated settlement of political
affairs, Tsar Alexander proposed the Holy Alliance, which called on divine assistance
in upholding religion, peace, and justice. Prussia and Austria signed the agreement,
but Great Britain refused to accede to what Castlereagh called “a piece of sublime
mysticism and nonsense.” Despite the reassertion of traditional religious principles,
the congress had in fact given birth to a new diplomatic order: in the future, the
legitimacy of states depended on the treaty system, not on “divine right.”
The Emergence of Conservatism

The French Revolution and Napoleonic domination of Europe had shown contem-
poraries that government could be changed overnight, that the old hierarchies could
be overthrown in the name of reason, and that even Christianity could be written
off or at least profoundly altered with the stroke of a pen. After the French Revolu-
tion and the Napoleonic domination of Europe, the old order no longer commanded
automatic obedience. It was now merely old, no longer “natural” and “timeless.” It had
been ousted once and therefore might fall again. People needed reasons to believe in
their restored governments. The political doctrine that justified the restoration was
conservatism.
Conservatives benefited from the disillusionment that permeated Europe after
1815. They saw a logical progression in recent history: the Enlightenment, based on
reason, led to the French Revolution, with its bloody guillotine and horrifying Terror,
which in turn spawned the authoritarian and militaristic Napoleon. Therefore, those
who espoused conservatism rejected both the Enlightenment and the French Revolu-
tion. They favored monarchies over republics, tradition over revolution, and estab-
lished religion over Enlightenment skepticism.
The original British critic of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke (1729–1799),
inspired many of the conservatives who followed. He had argued that the revolu-
tionaries erred in thinking they could construct an entirely new government based
on reason. Government, Burke said, had to be rooted in long experience, which
evolved over generations. All change must be gradual and must respect national and
historical traditions. Like Burke, later conservatives believed that religious and other
major traditions were an essential foundation for any society. Most of them took their
resistance to change even further, however, and tried to restore the pre-1789 social
order.
Conservatives blamed the French Revolution’s attack on religion on the skepti-
cism and anticlericalism of such Enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire, and they
defended both hereditary monarchy and the authority of the church, whether Catho-
lic or Protestant. Louis de Bonald, an official under the restored French monarchy,
insisted that “the revolution began with the declaration of the rights of man and will
only finish when the rights of God are declared.” In this view, an enduring social
[ 1800–1830
]
order could be constructed only on the foundations provided by the church, the
state, and the patriarchal family. Faith, sentiment, history, and tradition must fill the
vacuum left by the failures of reason and excessive belief in individual rights. Across
Europe, these views were taken up and elaborated by government advisers, profes-
sors, and writers.
The restored French monarchy provided a major test for conservatism because
the returning Bourbons had to confront the legacy of twenty-five years of upheaval.
Louis XVIII tried to ensure a measure of continuity by maintaining Napoleon’s Civil
Code. He also guaranteed the rights of ownership to church lands sold during the
revolutionary period and created a parliament composed of the Chamber of Peers,
nominated by the king, and the Chamber of Deputies, elected by very restricted
suffrage (fewer than 100,000 voters in a population of 30 million). In making these
concessions, the king tried to follow a moderate course of compromise, but the
Ultras (ultraroyalists) pushed for complete repudiation of the revolutionary past.
When Louis returned to power after Napoleon’s final defeat, armed royalist bands
attacked and murdered hundreds of Bonapartists and former revolutionaries. In
1816, the Ultras insisted on abolishing divorce and set up special courts to punish
opponents of the regime. When an assassin killed Louis XVIII’s nephew in 1820, the
Ultras successfully demanded even more extreme measures.
The Revival of Religion

The experience of revolutionary upheaval and nearly constant warfare prompted
many to renew their religious faith once peace returned. In France, the Catholic church
sent missionaries to hold open-air “ceremonies of reparation” to express repentance
for the outrages of revolution. In Rome, the papacy reestablished the Jesuit order,
which had been disbanded during the Enlightenment.
In parts of Protestant Germany and Britain, religious revival had begun in the
eighteenth century with the rise of Pietism and Methodism, movements that stressed
individual religious experience. The English Methodists followed John Wesley (1703–
1791), who had preached an emotional, morally austere, and very personal “method”
of gaining salvation. The Methodists, or Wesleyans, gradually separated from the
Church of England and in the early decades of the nineteenth century attracted
thousands of members in huge revival meetings that lasted for days. Shopkeepers,
artisans, agricultural laborers, miners, and workers in cottage industries, both male
and female, flocked to the new denomination. In their hostility to elaborate ritual
and their encouragement of popular preaching, the Methodists in England fostered
a sense of democratic community and even a rudimentary sexual equality. From the
beginning, women preachers traveled on horseback to preach in barns, town halls,
and textile dye houses. The Methodist Sunday schools that taught thousands of poor
children to read and write eventually helped create greater demands for working-
class political participation.
[1800–1830
] Challenges to the Conservative Order 659
The religious revival was not limited to Europe. In the United States, the second
Great Awakening began around 1790 with huge camp meetings that brought together
thousands of worshippers and scores of evangelical preachers, many of them Meth-
odist. (The original Great Awakening had taken place in the 1730s and 1740s,
sparked by the preaching of George Whitefield, a young English evangelist and fol-
lower of John Wesley — see the illustration on page 585.) Men and women danced
to exhaustion, fell into trances, and spoke in tongues. During this period, Protestant
sects began systematic missionary activity in other parts of the world. In the British
colony of India, for example, Protestant missionaries pushed the British administra-
tion to abolish the Hindu custom of sati — the burning of widows on the funeral
pyres of their husbands — in 1829. The missionaries hoped such actions would make
Indians more likely to embrace Chris-
tianity. Missionary activity by Protestants
and Catholics would become one of the REVIEW QUESTION To what extent did the
Congress of Vienna restore the old order?
arms of European imperialism and cultural
influence in the nineteenth century.
Challenges to the Conservative Order

Conservatives hoped to clamp a lid on European affairs, but the lid kept threatening
to fly off. Drawing on the turmoil in society and politics was romanticism, the bur-
geoning international movement in the arts and literature that dominated artistic
expression in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although romantics shared
with conservatives a distrust of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, romanti-
cism did not translate into a unified political position. Isolated revolts threatened
the hold of some conservative governments in the 1820s, but most of these rebellions
were quickly bottled up. Then, in 1830, successive uprisings briefly overwhelmed the
established order. Across Europe, angry protesters sought constitutional guarantees
of individual liberties and national unity and autonomy. The revolutionary legacy
came back to life again.
Romanticism
As an artistic movement, romanticism encompassed poetry, music, painting, history,
and literature. (See page 584 on the origins of romanticism.) It glorified nature, emo-
tion, genius, and imagination as antidotes to the Enlightenment and to classicism in
the arts, challenging the reliance on reason, symmetry, and cool geometric spaces.
Classicism idealized models from Roman history; romanticism turned to folklore
and medieval legends. Classicism celebrated orderly, crisp lines; romantics sought
out all that was wild, fevered, and disorderly. Romantics might take any political
position, but they exerted the most political influence when they expressed national-
ist feelings.
[ 1800–1830
]
Romantic poetry celebrated overwhelming emotion and creative imagination.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), explained his aims in writing poetry:
For what is Poesy but to create
From overfeeling, Good and Ill, and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new man.
Prometheus was the mythological figure who brought fire from the Greek gods to
human beings. Byron did not seek the new Prometheus among political leaders or
military men; he sought him within his own “overfeeling,” his own intense emotions.
Byron became a romantic hero himself when he rushed off to act on his emotions
by fighting and dying in the Greek war for independence from the Turks.
Romantic poetry elevated the wonders of nature almost to the supernatural. In
a poem that became one of the most beloved exemplars of romanticism, “Tintern
Abbey” (1798), the English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) compared him-
self to a deer even while making nature seem filled with human emotions. Words-
worth had greeted the French Revolution with joy but had gradually become disen-
chanted and celebrated British nationalism instead.
Their emphasis on authentic self-expression at times drew romantics to exotic,
mystical, or even reckless experiences. Some romantics depicted the artist as pos-
sessed by demons and obsessed with hallucinations. This more nightmarish side was
captured, and perhaps criticized, by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein. In his old age,
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) likewise denounced the
extremes of romanticism, calling it “everything that is sick.”
Romanticism in painting similarly idealized nature and the individual of deep
feelings. The German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) depicted
scenes — often far away in the mountains — that captured the romantic fascination
with the sublime power of nature. His melancholy individual figures looked lost in
the vastness of an overpowering nature. Friedrich hated the modern world. His land-
scapes often had religious meaning as well, as in his controversial painting The Cross
in the Mountains (1808), which showed a Christian cross standing alone in a moun-
tain scene. It symbolized the steadfastness of faith but seemed to separate religion
from the churches and attach it to mystical experience.
The English painter Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–1851) depicted his vision of
nature in mysterious, misty seascapes, anticipating later artists by blurring the out-
lines of objects. The French painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) chose contem-
porary as well as medieval scenes of great turbulence to emphasize light and color
and break away from what he saw as “the servile copies repeated ad nauseum in
academies of art.” Critics denounced his techniques as “painting with a drunken
broom.” To broaden his experience of light and color, Delacroix traveled in the 1830s
to North Africa and painted many exotic scenes in Morocco and Algeria.
The towering presence of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–
1827) in early-nineteenth-century music helped establish the direction for musical
[1800–1830
Caspar David Friedrich, The Cross

in the Mountains (1808)
Caspar David Friedrich’s first major oil paint-
ing captures one of the most important
characteristics of romanticism: the glori-
fication of nature, which in this case
becomes a kind of altar for Christ
crucified on the cross. The German
artist painted it as an altarpiece
on commission from an aristocratic
woman, but it broke with most
religious conventions, and many
reviewers criticized it. In his other
paintings, Friedrich often focused
on a solitary individual overwhelmed
by the majesty of nature. (Oil on
canvas by Caspar David Friedrich [1774–
1840] / Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden,
Germany / © Staaliche Kunstsammlungen
Dresden / Bridgeman Images.)
romanticism. His music, according to one leading German romantic, “sets in motion
the lever of fear, of awe, of horror, of suffering, and awakens just that infinite longing
which is the essence of Romanticism.” Beethoven transformed the symphony into a
connected work with recurring and evolving musical themes. Some of his work was
explicitly political; his Ninth Symphony (1824) employed a chorus to sing the Ger-
man poet Friedrich Schiller’s verses in praise of universal human solidarity. Beethoven
had admired Napoleon and even dedicated his Third Symphony, the Eroica (1804),
to him, but when he learned of Napoleon’s decision to name himself emperor, the
composer tore up the dedication in disgust.
If romantics had any common political thread, it was the support of nationalist
aspirations, especially through the search for the historical origins of national iden-
tity. Romantic poets and writers collected old legends and folktales that expressed a
shared cultural and linguistic heritage stretching back to the Middle Ages. These
collections showed that Germany, for example, had always existed even if it did not
currently take the form of a single unified state. Italian nationalists took The Betrothed
(1825–1827), a novel by Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), as a kind of bible. Man-
zoni, the grandson of the Italian Enlightenment hero Cesare Beccaria, set his novel
in the seventeenth century, when Spain controlled Italy’s destiny, but his readers
[ 1800–1830
]
Eugène Delacroix,
Massacre at Chios (1824)
More than any other painter
associated with romanti-
cism, Delacroix focused on
dramatic events of his time.
Here he shows sick and
dying Greek civilians about
to be massacred by the
Turks. He aims to elicit
sympathy for the Greek cam-
paign for independence, a
cause that had many follow-
ers in France and the rest
of Europe. (Oil on canvas by
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix
[1798–1863] / Louvre, Paris,
France / Giraudon / Bridgeman
Images.)
understood that he intended to attack the Austrians who ruled northern Italy in his
own day.
Manzoni had been inspired to write his novel by the most influential of all his-
torical novelists, Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). While working as a lawyer and then
judge in Scotland, Scott first collected and published traditional Scottish ballads that
he had heard as a child. After achieving immediate success with his own poetry,
especially The Lady of the Lake (1810), he switched to historical novels. His novels
are almost all renditions of historical events, from Rob Roy (1817), with its account
of Scottish resistance to the English in the early eighteenth century, to Ivanhoe (1819),
with its tales of medieval England. Readers snatched them up the minute they
appeared; the first printing of Rob Roy sold out in two weeks. Very much a man of
his time, Scott also published a successful biography of Napoleon only five years after
the emperor’s death.
Political Revolts in the 1820s

The restoration of regimes after Napoleon’s fall disappointed those who dreamed of
constitutional freedoms and national independence. Membership grew in secret
societies such as the carbonari, attracting tens of thousands of members. Revolts
[1800–1830
St. Petersburg MAP 20.3 Revolutionary

Territories with revolts
Boundary of
1825 Movements of the 1820s
German Confederation N The revolts of the 1820s took
Revolt
Sea
1825 Date of revolution W
E place on the periphery of Europe,
ic
lt in Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia, and
GREAT
North Ba S
BRITAIN Sea in the Spanish and Portuguese col-

PRUSSIA RUSSIA
onies of Latin America. Rebels in
ATLANTIC
OCEAN Spain and Russia wanted constitu-
Vienna tional reforms. Although the Italian
FRANCE
AUSTRIAN EMPIRE revolts failed, as did the uprisings
Turin in Spain and Russia, the Greek
OT Black
PORT.
Lisbon Madrid TO Sea and Latin American independence
1821
MA
Barcelona NE movements eventually succeeded.
SPAIN Naples MP
1820–1821 IRE
PIEDMONT- KINGDOM GREECE
Cadiz SARDINIA OF THE TWO
SICILIES 1821 Morea
0 200 400 miles
0 200 400 kilometers Mediterranean Sea
broke out in the 1820s in Spain, Italy, Russia, and Greece (Map 20.3), as well as across
the Atlantic in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America (see page 665).
When Ferdinand VII regained the Spanish crown in 1814, he ordered foreign
books and newspapers to be confiscated at the frontier and allowed the publication
of only two newspapers. Many army officers who had encountered French ideas
responded by joining secret societies. In 1820, disgruntled soldiers demanded that
Ferdinand proclaim his adherence to the constitution of 1812, which he had abol-
ished in 1814. Ferdinand bided his time, and in 1823 a French army invaded and
restored him to absolute power. The French acted with the consent of the other great
powers. The restored Spanish government tortured and executed hundreds of rebels;
thousands were imprisoned or forced into exile.
Hearing of the Spanish uprising, rebellious soldiers in the kingdom of Naples
joined forces with the carbonari and demanded a constitution. The promise of
reform sparked rebellion in the northern Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia,
where rebels urged Charles Albert, the young heir to the Piedmont throne, to fight
the Austrians for Italian unification. After the rulers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia
met and agreed on intervention in 1821, the Austrians defeated the rebels in Naples
and Piedmont. Although Great Britain condemned the indiscriminate suppression
of revolutionary movements, Metternich convinced the other powers to agree to his
silencing the Italian opposition to Austrian rule.
Metternich acted quickly to suppress any sign of dissent closer to home. Uni-
versity students had formed nationalist student societies called Burschenschaften,
and in 1817 they held a mass rally at which they burned books they did not like,
including Napoleon’s Civil Code. Metternich was convinced — incorrectly — that the
Burschenschaften in the German states and the carbonari in Italy were linked in an
international conspiracy. In 1819, when a student assassinated the playwright August
Kotzebue because he had ridiculed the student movement, Metternich convinced the
[ 1800–1830
]
leaders of the biggest German states to pass the Carlsbad Decrees, dissolving the
student societies and more strictly censoring the press. Professors who criticized
their rulers were immediately fired.
Aspirations for constitutional government surfaced in Russia when Alexander I
died suddenly in 1825. In December, when the troops assembled in St. Petersburg to
take an oath of loyalty to Alexander’s brother Nicholas as the new tsar, rebel officers
insisted that the crown belonged to another brother, Constantine, whom they hoped
would be more favorable to constitutional reform. Constantine, though next in the
line of succession after Alexander, had refused the crown. Soldiers loyal to Nicholas
easily suppressed the Decembrist Revolt (so called after the month of the uprising).
The subsequent trial, however, made the rebels into legendary heroes. For the next
thirty years, Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) used a new political police, the Third Section,
to spy on potential opponents and stamp out rebelliousness.
The Ottoman Turks faced growing nationalist challenges in the Balkans. The
Serbs revolted against Turkish rule and won virtual independence by 1817. A Greek
general in the Russian army, Prince Alexander
0 200 400 miles
Ypsilanti, tried to lead a revolt against the Turks in
1820 but failed when the tsar, urged on by Met-
ternich, disavowed him. Metternich feared rebel-
AU ST R IAN EMPIR E lion even by Christians against their Turkish rul-
DANUBIAN
BOSNIA PRINCIPALITIES ers. A second revolt, this time by Greek peasants,
SERBIA 1829 . Black
1817 D anu b e
R Sea sparked a wave of atrocities in 1821 and 1822. The
MONTENEGRO
Adrianople
Greeks killed every Turk who did not escape; in
BALKANS
OT Constantinople
retaliation, the Turks hanged the Greek patriarch
TOM of Constantinople and, in the areas they still con-
AN EM
PIRE
trolled, pillaged churches, massacred thousands of
GREECE
1830 men, and sold the women into slavery.
Western opinion turned against the Turks;
Navarino Bay
1827 Greece, after all, was the birthplace of Western civi-
1830 Dates of autonomy
lization. While the great powers negotiated, Greeks
or independence and pro-Greece committees around the world sent
Battle food and military supplies; like the English poet
Byron, a few enthusiastic European and American
Nationalistic Movements in the volunteers joined the Greeks. The Greeks held on
Balkans, 1815–1830
until the great powers were willing to intervene. In
1827, a combined force of British, French, and Russian ships destroyed the Turkish
fleet at Navarino Bay; and in 1828, Russia declared war on Turkey and advanced close
to Constantinople. The Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 gave Russia a protectorate over
the Danubian principalities in the Balkans and provided for a conference among
representatives of Britain, Russia, and France, all of whom had broken with Austria
in support of the Greeks. In 1830, Greece was declared an independent kingdom
under the guarantee of the three powers; in 1833, the second son of King Ludwig of
[1800–1830
Simón Bolívar
This watercolor by Fernandez Luis Cancino celebrates Bolívar’s promise to abolish slavery in
territories he freed from Spanish rule. Although Bolívar liberated his own slaves in 1820, he
was unable to persuade the legislators of the newly independent countries to act immediately.
They insisted on gradual emancipation. (Watercolor on paper by Luis Fernandez Cancino [19th century],
Casa-Museo 20 de Julio de 1810, Bogotá, Colombia / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
Bavaria became Otto I of Greece. Greek independence, supported by European public

opinion, showed that Metternich’s systematic suppression of nationalism was reaching
its limits.
Across the Atlantic, national revolts also succeeded after a series of bloody wars
of independence. Taking advantage of the upheavals in Spain and Portugal that
began under Napoleon, restive colonists from Mexico to Argentina rebelled. One
leader who stood out was Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), born in Caracas (present-day
Venezuela) to an aristocratic slave-owning family of Spanish descent. He was edu-
cated in Europe on the works of Voltaire and Rousseau. Although Bolívar fancied
himself a Latin American Napoleon, he had to acquiesce to the formation of a series
of independent republics between 1821 and 1823, even in Bolivia, which is named
after him.
By 1825, Portugal had lost all its American colonies, including Brazil, and Spain
was left with only Cuba and Puerto Rico (Map 20.4). Brazil declared its independence
[ 1800–1830
]
0 500 1,000 miles MAP 20.4 Latin American
Independence, 1804–1830
UNITED STATES Napoleon’s occupation of Spain
ATLANTIC OCEAN and Portugal seriously weakened
MEXICO Haiti Santo Domingo those countries’ hold on their Latin
1821 1804 1821 American colonies. Despite the
Mexico restoration of the Spanish and Por-
City Cuba Puerto Rico
tuguese rulers in 1814, most of
BRITISH BRITISH GUIANA
HONDURAS Caracas SURINAME their colonies successfully broke
UNITED PROVINCES VENEZUELA
OF CENTRAL AMERICA 1830 FRENCH away in a wave of rebellions
Bogotá GUIANA
1823 COLOMBIA between 1811 and 1830.
1819
Quito
PACIFIC ECUADOR
OCEAN N 1822 PERU
BRAZIL
1824
W E
1822
Lima BOLIVIA
S 1825
Rio de
PARAGUAY Janeiro
Independent countries 1811
Spanish CHILE Asunción São Paulo
URUGUAY
British 1818 ARGENTINA
1828
1816
Dutch Santiago Montevideo
French Buenos
Portuguese Aires
Date of independence
1821
(color indicates
colonial power prior
to independence)
under the banner of the Portuguese king’s own son and therefore maintained a
monarchical form of government along with slavery. In contrast, the new republics
freed those slaves who fought on their side, abolished the slave trade, and gradually
eliminated slavery. The United States and Great Britain recognized the new states,
and in 1823 U.S. president James Monroe announced his Monroe Doctrine, closing
the Americas to European intervention — a prohibition that depended on British
naval power and British willingness to declare neutrality.
Revolution and Reform, 1830–1832

In 1830, a new wave of liberal and nationalist revolts broke out. The revolts of the
1820s had served as warning shots but had been largely confined to the peripheries
of Europe. Now revolution once again threatened the established order in western
Europe.
French king Louis XVIII’s younger brother and successor, Charles X (r. 1824–
1830), brought about his own downfall by steering the monarchy in an increasingly
repressive direction. In 1825, he agreed to compensate nobles who had emigrated
during the French Revolution for the loss of their estates and imposed the death
penalty for such offenses as stealing religious objects from churches. He further
[
1800–1830
enraged liberals when he dissolved the legislature and imposed strict censorship. On
July 26, 1830, spontaneous demonstrations in Paris turned into street battles that,
over three days, left 500 citizens and 150 soldiers dead. A group of moderate liberal
leaders, fearing the reestablishment of a republic, offered the crown to Charles X’s
cousin Louis-Philippe, duke of Orléans, and sent Charles into exile in England.
Though the new king doubled it, the number of men eligible to vote was still
minuscule: 170,000 in a country of 30 million. Revolution had broken the hold of
those who wanted to restore the pre-1789 monarchy and nobility, but it had gone
no further this time than installing a more liberal, constitutional monarchy.
Even so, news of the July revolution in Paris ignited the Belgians, whose country
had been annexed to the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. Differences in tradi-
tions, language, and religion separated the largely Catholic Belgians from the Dutch.
An opera about a seventeenth-century insurrection in Naples provided the spark,
and students in Brussels rioted, shouting “Down with the Dutch!”
The riot turned into revolt. King William of the Netherlands appealed to the
great powers to intervene; after all, the Congress of Vienna had established his king-
dom. But Great Britain and France opposed intervention and invited Russia, Austria,
and Prussia to a conference that guaranteed Belgium independence in exchange for
its neutrality in international affairs. Belgian neutrality would remain a cornerstone
of European diplomacy for a century. After much maneuvering, the crown of the
new kingdom of Belgium was offered to a German prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg,
in 1831. The choice, like that of Otto I of Greece, ensured the influence of the great
European powers without favoring any one of them in particular. Belgium, like
France and Britain, now had a constitutional monarchy.
The Austrian emperor and the Russian tsar would have supported intervention
in Belgium had they not been preoccupied with their own revolts. While the car-
bonari inspired a revolt in Naples in favor of a constitution and an uprising in
Palermo demanded independence for Sicily (both were part of the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies), in the north, rebels in Piedmont fought for an Italy independent of
Austria. Metternich sent Austrian armies to quell the unrest.
The Polish revolt was more serious. In 1830, in response to news of revolution
in France, students raised the banner of rebellion. Polish aristocrats formed a pro-
visional government, but it was defeated by the Russian army. In reprisal, Tsar Nicho-
las abolished the Polish constitution that his brother Alexander had granted in 1815
and ordered thousands of Poles executed or banished. The independence movements
in Poland and Italy went underground only to reemerge later.
Reform of Parliament rather than revolution preoccupied the British. In August
1819, sixty thousand people attended an illegal political meeting held in St. Peter’s
Fields in Manchester to demand reform of parliamentary elections, which had long
been controlled by aristocratic landowners. When the local authorities sent the cav-
alry to arrest the speaker, panic resulted; eleven people were killed and many hun-
dreds injured. Punsters called it the battle of Peterloo or the Peterloo massacre. An
[ 1800–1830
]
alarmed government passed the Six Acts, which forbade large political meetings and
restricted press criticism.
In the 1820s, however, new men came into government. Sir Robert Peel (1788–
1850), the secretary for home affairs, revised the criminal code to reduce the number
of crimes punishable by death and introduced a municipal police force in London,
called the Bobbies after him. In 1824, the laws prohibiting labor unions were repealed,
and though restrictions on strikes remained, workers could now organize themselves
legally to confront their employers collectively. In 1828, the appointment of the duke
of Wellington, the hero of Waterloo, as prime minister kept the Tories in power.
Wellington’s government pushed through a bill in 1829 allowing Catholics to sit in
Parliament and hold most public offices.
When in 1830, and again in 1831, the Whigs in Parliament proposed an exten-
sion of the right to vote, Tory diehards, principally in the House of Lords, dug in
their heels and predicted that even the most modest proposals would doom civiliza-
tion itself. Even though the proposed law would grant only limited, not universal,
male suffrage, mass demonstrations in favor of it took place in many cities. In this
“state of diseased and feverish excitement” (according to its opponents), the Reform
Bill of 1832 passed, after the king threatened to create enough new peers to obtain
its passage in the House of Lords.
Although the Reform Bill altered Britain’s political structure in significant ways,
the gains were not revolutionary. One of the bill’s foremost backers, historian and
member of Parliament Thomas Macaulay, explained, “I am opposed to Universal
Suffrage, because I think that it would produce a destructive revolution. I support
this plan, because I am sure that it is our best security against a revolution.” Although
the number of male voters nearly doubled,
only 8 percent of the population qualified
REVIEW QUESTION Why were independence to vote. Nevertheless, the bill set a prece-
movements thwarted in Italy and Poland in this dent for widening suffrage further. Those
era, but not in Greece, Belgium, and Latin
disappointed with the outcome would
America?
organize with renewed vigor in the 1830s
and 1840s.
Conclusion
The agitations and uprisings of the 1820s and early 1830s showed that the revo-
lutionary legacy still smoldered and might erupt into flames again at any moment.
Napoleon Bonaparte transformed the legacy but also kept it alive. He reshaped
French institutions and left a lasting imprint in many European countries. Moreover,
like Frankenstein’s monster, he bounced back from numerous reversals; between the
French retreat from Moscow in 1812 and his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napo-
leon lost many battles yet managed to raise an army again and again.
[1800–1830
] Conclusion 669
FINLAND
SWEDEN AND NORWAY
Revolt sites St. Petersburg
SCOTLAND
a
Moscow
Nor th
Se
GREAT S ea
IRELAND lti
c
BRITAIN DENMARK
Liverpool Manchester
Ba
N ENGLAND NETH.
Hamburg PRUSSIA RUSSIA
W Amsterdam
Berlin Warsaw
London
E BELGIUM
S 1831 Kingdom of
English Channel Poland
Brussels Saxony
AT L A N T I C Paris GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
OCEAN
Bavaria
Vienna
FR ANCE SWITZ. AU S T R IA N E M P I R E
Lyon HUNGARY Transylvania
Lombardy Venetia
DANUBIAN
PRINCIPALITIES
SERBIA Black Sea
PAPAL 1817
PORTUGAL STATES O
T
Madrid TO
PIEDMONT- Constantinople
Lisbon
SARDINIA M
SPAIN
Rome AN
Naples EM
PI
KINGDOM RE
OF THE
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a TWO SICILIES GREECE
1830
0 200 400 miles

By 1830, the fragilities of the Congress of Vienna settlement had become apparent. Rebellion
in Poland failed, but Belgium won its independence from the kingdom of the Netherlands, and a
French revolution in July chased out the Bourbon ruler and installed Louis-Philippe, who prom-
ised constitutional reform. Most European rulers held on to their positions in this period of fer-
ment, but they had to accommodate new desires for constitutional guarantees of rights and
growing nationalist sentiment.
The powers that eventually defeated Napoleon tried to maintain the European
peace by shoring up monarchical governments and damping down aspirations for
constitutional freedoms and national autonomy. Nevertheless, Belgium separated
from the Netherlands, Greece achieved independence from the Turks, Latin Amer-
ican countries shook off the rule of Spain and Portugal, and the French installed
a more liberal monarchy than the one envisioned by the Congress of Vienna.
Metternich’s vision of a conservative Europe still held, but in the next two decades
dramatic social changes would prompt a new and much more deadly round of
revolutions.
Chapter 20 Review
Napoleon Bonaparte (p. 640) Congress of Vienna (p. 654) Ludwig van Beethoven
First Consul (p. 641) Klemens von Metternich (p. 660)
Civil Code (p. 644) (p. 654) Sir Walter Scott (p. 662)
Continental System (p. 650) restoration (p. 655) Simón Bolívar (p. 665)
battle of Waterloo (p. 653) conservatism (p. 657) Reform Bill of 1832 (p. 668)
Review Questions
1. In what ways did Napoleon continue the French Revolution, and in what ways did he
break with it?
2. Why was Napoleon able to gain control over so much of Europe’s territory?
3. To what extent did the Congress of Vienna restore the old order?
4. Why were independence movements thwarted in Italy and Poland in this era, but not in
Greece, Belgium, and Latin America?
Making Connections
1. What was the long-term significance of Napoleon for Europe?
2. What best explains Napoleon’s fall from power: apathy at home, resistance to his rule,
or military defeat?
3. In what ways did Metternich succeed in holding back the revolutionary legacy? In what
ways did he fail?
4. How did the revolts and rebellions of the 1820s reflect the revolutionary legacy? In what
ways did they move in new directions?
Napoleon and his wars have always been subjects of great interest, but recent scholars have
devoted more attention to the long-term influence of the wars. The years between 1815 and
1830 have not attracted as much scholarship, even though those years are arguably more sig-
nificant than the Napoleonic era for their long-term cultural and political effects.
Bell, David A. The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. 2007.
Black, Jeremy. The Battle of Waterloo. 2010.
Blanning, Tim. The Romantic Revolution: A History. 2011.
*Blaufarb, Rafe. Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age. A Brief Biography with Documents. 2008.
Cole, Juan. Napoléon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East. 2007.
Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. 2004.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. 1996.
Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815–1830. 1991.
Napoleon Foundation: http://www.napoleon.org
Sandeman, G. A. C. Metternich. 2006.
Schroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. 1996.
The Walter Scott Digital Archive: http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/
Zamoyski, Adam. Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. 2012.
*Primary source.
670
[
1800–1830
Important Events
1799 Coup against Directory government in France; Napoleon Bonaparte is

named First Consul
1801 Napoleon signs concordat with the pope
1804 Napoleon is crowned emperor of France, issues new Civil Code
1805 British naval forces defeat French at the battle of Trafalgar; Napoleon
wins his greatest victory at the battle of Austerlitz
1807–1814 French invade and occupy Spain and Portugal
1812 Napoleon invades Russia
1814–1815 Congress of Vienna
1815 Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo and exiled to island of St. Helena,
where he dies in 1821
1818 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
1820 Revolt of liberal army officers against Spanish crown
1824 Ludwig van Beethoven, Ninth Symphony
1825 Russian army officers demand constitutional reform in Decembrist Revolt
1830 Greece gains its independence from Ottoman Turks; rebels overthrow
Charles X of France and install Louis-Philippe; rebellion in Poland against
Russia fails
1832 English Parliament passes Reform Bill
Consider three events: Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

(1818), and Ludwig van Beethoven, Ninth Symphony (1824). How did the peace
established by the Congress of Vienna help foster these works? How might things have
been different if Napoleon had not been defeated?
Industrialization and
21
Social Ferment
1830–1850
I
n 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Line opened to the cheers of
crowds and the congratulations of government officials, including the duke of
Wellington, the hero of Waterloo who had been named British prime minister. In
the excitement, some of the dignitaries gathered on a parallel track. Another engine,
George Stephenson’s Rocket, approached at high speed — the engine could go as fast
as twenty-seven miles per hour. Most of the gentlemen scattered to safety, but former
cabinet minister William Huskisson fell and
was hit. A few hours later he died, the first
Inauguration of the Railway Line
from Naples to Portici, Italy, 1839
official casualty of the newfangled railroad.
People of all classes flocked to the Dramatic and expensive, railroads were
inauguration of new railway lines. the most striking symbol of the new industrial
This lithograph by the Italian artist age. Industrialization and its by-product of
Salvatore Fergola depicts the open- rapid urban growth fundamentally changed
ing of the first railway line in Italy,
political conflicts, social relations, cultural con-
which ran from Naples to Portici, a
town five miles south of Naples. Por- cerns, and even the landscape. So great were
tici housed a royal palace and the changes that they are collectively labeled
offered access to Herculaneum, an the Industrial Revolution. Although this revo-
important classical ruin visited by lution did not take place in a single decade
many foreigners. (By Salvatore Fergola, like the French Revolution, the introduction of
Museum San Martino, Naples, Italy / photo
© Roger Viollet / The Image Works.) steam-driven machinery, large factories, and
a new working class transformed life in the
Western world.
The shock of industrial and urban growth generated an outpouring of com-
mentary on the need for social reforms. Many who wrote on social issues expected
middle-class women to organize their homes as a domestic haven from the heartless
process of upheaval. Yet despite the emphasis on domesticity, middle-class women
participated in public issues, too: they set up reform societies that fought prostitution
and helped poor mothers, they agitated for temperance (abstention from alcohol),
and they joined the campaigns to abolish slavery.
673
674 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
Social ferment set the ideological pots to a boil. A word coined during the French
Revolution, ideology refers to a coherent set of beliefs about the way the social and
political order should be organized. The dual impact of the French Revolution and
the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of a whole spectrum of ideolo-
gies to explain the meaning of the changes taking place. Nationalists, liberals, social-
ists, and communists offered competing visions of the social order they desired: they
all agreed that change was necessary, but they disagreed about both the means and
the ends of change. Their contest came to
a head in 1848 when the rapid transforma-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the Industrial
Revolution create new social and political tion of European society led to a new set
conflicts? of revolutionary outbreaks, more consum-
ing than any since 1789.
The Industrial Revolution

French and English writers of the 1820s invented the term Industrial Revolution to
capture the drama of contemporary change and to draw a parallel with the French
Revolution. The chief components of the Industrial Revolution, industrialization and
urbanization, are long-term processes that have continued to the present. The Indus-
trial Revolution began in England in the 1770s and 1780s in textile manufacturing
and spread from there across the continent. In the 1830s and 1840s, industrialization
and urbanization both accelerated quite suddenly, as governments across Europe
encouraged railroad construction and the mechanization of manufacturing. Many
officials, preachers, and intellectuals worried that unchecked growth would destroy
traditional social relationships and create disorder.
Roots of Industrialization
British inventors had been steadily perfecting steam engines for five decades before
George Stephenson built his Rocket. A key breakthrough took place in 1776 when
Scottish engineer James Watt developed an efficient steam engine that could be used
to pump water from coal mines or drive machinery in textile factories. Since coal
fired the steam engines that drove new textile machinery, innovations tended to
reinforce one another. This kind of synergy built on previous changes in the textile
industry. In 1733, the Englishman John Kay had patented the flying shuttle, which
enabled weavers to “throw” yarn across the loom rather than draw it back and forth
by hand. Weavers began producing cloth more quickly than spinners could produce
the thread. The resulting shortage of spun thread propelled the invention of the
spinning jenny, a spinning wheel that enabled one worker to run eight spools at once.
The increased output of yarn then stimulated the mechanization of weaving. Using
the engines produced by James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton, Edmund
Cartwright designed a mechanized loom in the 1780s that, when perfected, could
[1830–1850
] The Industrial Revolution 675
be run by a small boy and yet yield fifteen times the output of a skilled adult working
a handloom. By the end of the century, manufacturers were assembling new power
machinery in large factories that hired semiskilled men, women, and children to
replace skilled weavers.
Several factors interacted to make England the first site of the Industrial Revo-
lution. England had a good supply of private investment capital from overseas trade
and commercial profits, ready access to raw cotton from the plantations of its Carib-
bean colonies and the southern United States, and the necessary natural resources
at home such as coal and iron. Good opportunities for social mobility provided an
environment that fostered the pragmatism of the English and Scottish inventors
who designed the machinery. The agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century
had enabled England to produce food more efficiently, freeing some agricultural
workers to move to the new sites of manufacturing. Cotton textile production
skyrocketed.
Elsewhere in Europe, textile manufacturing — long a linchpin in the European
economy — expanded even without the introduction of new machines and factories
because of the spread of the “putting-out,” or “domestic,” system. Under the putting-
out system, manufacturers supplied the raw materials, such as woolen or cotton
fibers, to families working at home. The mother and her children washed, carded,
and combed the fibers. Then the mother and oldest daughters spun them into thread.
The father, assisted by the children, wove the cloth. The cloth was then finished
(bleached, dyed, smoothed, and so on) under the supervision of the manufacturer
in a large workshop, located either in town or in the countryside. This system had
existed in the textile industry for hundreds of years, but it grew dramatically in the
eighteenth century, and the manufacture of other products — such as glassware,
baskets, nails, and guns — followed suit. The spread of the putting-out system of
manufacturing is sometimes called proto-industrialization to signify that the process
helped pave the way for the full-scale Industrial Revolution. Because of the increase
in textile production, ordinary people began to wear underclothes and nightclothes,
both rare in the past. White, red, blue, yellow, green, and even pastel shades of cotton
now replaced the black, gray, or brown of traditional wool.
Workers in the textile industry enjoyed few protections against fluctuations in
the market. Hundreds of thousands of families might be reduced to bankruptcy in
periods of overproduction. Handloom weavers sometimes violently resisted the
establishment of the factory power looms that would force them out of work. In
England in 1811 and 1812, for example, bands of handloom weavers wrecked fac-
tory machinery and burned mills in the Midlands, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. To
restore order and protect industry, the government sent in an army of twelve thou-
sand regular soldiers and made machine wrecking punishable by death. The rioters
were called Luddites after the fictitious figure Ned Ludd, whose signature appeared
on their manifestos. (The term is still used to describe those who resist new
technology.)
[ 1830–1850
]
Engines of Change
Steam-driven engines took on a dramatic new form in the 1820s when the English
engineer George Stephenson perfected an engine to pull wagons along rail tracks.
The idea of a railroad was not new: iron tracks had been used since the seventeenth
century to haul coal from mines in wagons pulled by horses. A railroad system as a
mode of human transport, however, developed only after Stephenson’s invention of
a steam-powered locomotive. Placed on the new tracks, steam-driven carriages could
transport people and goods to the cities and link coal and iron deposits to the new
factories. In the 1840s alone, railroad track mileage more than doubled in Great
Britain, and British investment in railways jumped tenfold. The British also began
to build railroads in India. Private investment that had been going into the building
of thousands of miles of canals now went into railroads. Britain’s success with rail
transportation led other countries to develop their own projects. Railroads grew
spectacularly in the United States in the 1830s and 1840s, reaching 9,000 miles of
track by midcentury. In 1835, Belgium (newly independent in 1830) opened the first
continental European railroad with state bonds backed by British capital. By 1850,
the world had 23,500 miles of track, most of it in western Europe.
Railroad building spurred both industrial development and state power (Map 21.1).
Governments everywhere participated in the construction of railroads, which depended
on both private and state funds to pay for the massive amounts of iron, coal, heavy
machinery, and human labor required to build and run them. Demand for iron prod-
ucts accelerated industrial development. Until the 1840s, cotton had led industrial
production; between 1816 and 1840, cotton output more than quadrupled in Great
Britain. But from 1830 to 1850, Britain’s output of iron and coal doubled. Similarly,
Austrian output of iron doubled between the 1820s and the 1840s. One-third of all
investment in the German states in the 1840s went into railroads.
Steam-powered engines made Britain the world leader in manufacturing. By
midcentury, more than half of Britain’s national income came from manufacturing
and trade. The number of steamboats in Great Britain rose from two in 1812 to six
hundred in 1840. Between 1840 and 1850, steam-engine power doubled in Great Brit-
ain and increased even more rapidly elsewhere in Europe, as those adopting British
inventions strove to catch up. The power applied in German manufacturing, for
example, grew sixfold during the 1840s but still amounted to only a little more than
a quarter of the British figure.
Although Great Britain consciously strove to protect its industrial supremacy,
thousands of British engineers defied laws against the export of machinery or the
emigration of artisans. Only slowly, thanks to the pirating of British methods and to
new technical schools, did most continental countries begin closing the gap. Belgium
became the fastest-growing industrial power on the continent: between 1830 and
1844, the number of steam engines in Belgium quadrupled, and Belgians exported
seven times as many steam engines as they imported.
Industrialization spread slowly east from key areas in Prussia (near Berlin), Sax-
ony, and Bohemia. Cotton production in the Austrian Empire tripled between 1831
[ 1830–1850
Major industrial areas

SWEDEN AND NORWAY
No peasant emancipation
before 1848
St. Petersburg
Railroad development
by 1850
Iron ore fields
Glasgow
Coalfields
North
GREAT
a
Sea
Se
BRITAIN c
Manchester DENMARK lti
Liverpool
Ba
Birmingham
N
PRUSSIA RUSSIA
Amsterdam
W London Berlin Warsaw
E Brussels GERMAN Poland
Breslau
S CONFEDERATION
Rh
BELGIUM Frankfurt Saxony
ine Cracow
R
.
ATLANTIC
OCEAN Bohemia
Vienna
FR A NC E Munich
Buda Pest
Lyon AU S T R IA N E M P I R E
Milan
.
Florence Danube R
Marseille
PORTUGAL OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Madrid
Barcelona
Lisbon SPA I N Rome
Naples
Mediterranean Sea
0 200 400 miles
MAP 21.1 Industrialization in Europe, c. 1850

Industrialization (mainly mechanized textile production) first spread in a band across northern
Europe that included Great Britain, northern France, Belgium, the northern German states, the
region around Milan in northern Italy, and Bohemia. Although railroads were not the only factor
in promoting industrialization, the map makes clear the interrelationship between railroad build-
ing and the development of new industrial sites of coal mining and textile production.
and 1845, and coal production increased fourfold from 1827 to 1847. Even so, by
1850, continental Europe still lagged almost twenty years behind Great Britain in
industrial development.
The advance of industrialization in eastern Europe was slow, in large part because
serfdom still survived there, hindering labor mobility and tying up investment capi-
tal: as long as peasants were legally tied to the land as serfs, they could not migrate
to the new factory towns and landlords felt little incentive to invest their income in
[ 1830–1850
]
manufacturing. The problem was worst in Russia, where industrialization would not
take off until the end of the nineteenth century.
Despite the spread of industrialization, factory workers remained a minority
everywhere. In the 1840s, factories in England employed only 5 percent of the work-
ers; in France, 3 percent; in Prussia, 2 percent. The putting-out system remained
strong, employing two-thirds of the manufacturing workers in Prussia and Saxony,
for example, in the 1840s. Many peasants kept their options open by combining fac-
tory work or putting-out work with agricultural labor. From Switzerland to Russia,
people worked in agriculture during the spring and summer and in manufacturing
in the fall and winter.
Even though factories employed only a small percentage of the population, they
attracted much attention. Already by 1830, more than a million people in Britain
depended on the cotton industry for employment, and cotton cloth constituted 50
percent of the country’s exports. Factories sprang up in urban areas, where the grow-
ing population provided a ready source of labor. The rapid expansion of the British
textile industry had a colonial corollary: the destruction of the hand manufacture of
textiles in India. The British put high import duties on Indian cloth entering Britain
and kept such duties very low for British cloth entering India. The effects were cata-
strophic for Indian manufacturing: in 1813, the Indian city of Calcutta exported to
England £2 million worth of cotton cloth; by 1830, Calcutta was importing from
England £2 million worth of the product. When Britain abolished slavery in its Carib-
bean colonies in 1833, British manufacturers began to buy raw cotton in the southern
United States, where slavery still flourished.
Factories drew workers from the urban population surge, which had begun in
the eighteenth century and now accelerated. The number of agricultural laborers
also increased during industrialization in Britain, suggesting that a growing birth-
rate created a larger population and fed workers into the new factory system. Factory
employment resembled labor on family farms or in the putting-out system: entire
families came to toil for a single wage, although family members performed different
tasks. Workdays of twelve to seventeen hours were typical, even for children, and
the work was grueling.
As urban factories grew, their workers gradually came to constitute a new socio-
economic class with a distinctive culture and traditions. The term working class, like
middle class, came into use for the first time in the early nineteenth century. It
referred to the laborers in the new factories. In the past, urban workers had labored
in isolated trades: water and wood carrying, gardening, laundry, and building. In
contrast, factories brought working people together with machines, under close
supervision by their employers. Soon developing a sense of common interests, they
organized societies for mutual help and political reform. From these would come the
first labor unions.
Industry returned unheard-of riches to factory owners and managers even as it
caused pollution and created new forms of poverty for exhausted workers. “From this
foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole
[1830–1850
world,” wrote the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville after visiting the new English
industrial city of Manchester in the 1830s. “From this filthy sewer pure gold flows.”
Studies by physicians set the life expectancy of workers in Manchester at just seven-
teen years (partly because of high rates of infant mortality), whereas the average life
expectancy in England was forty years in 1840. In some parts of Europe, city leaders
banned factories, hoping to insulate their towns from the effects of industrial growth.
Investigators detailed the pitiful condition of workers. A physician in the town
of Mulhouse, in eastern France, described the “pale, emaciated women who walk
barefooted through the dirt” to reach the factory. The young children who worked
in the factory appeared “clothed in rags which are greasy with the oil from the looms
and frames.” A report to the city government in Lille, France, in 1832 described the
“dark cellars” where the cotton workers lived: “The air is never renewed, it is infected;
the walls are plastered with garbage.”
Government inquiries often focused on women and children. In Great Britain,
the Factory Act of 1833 outlawed the employment of children under the age of nine
in textile mills (except in the lace and silk industries); it also limited the workdays
for those ages nine to thirteen to nine hours a day, and those ages thirteen to eighteen
Child Labor in Coal Mines

The passage of legislation in 1842 against women and girls working underground did nothing to
prevent boys from continuing to perform essential tasks in cramped spaces in British coal mines.
Lithographs such as this one from 1844 accompanied campaigns against these practices.
(akg-images.)
[ 1830–1850
]
to twelve hours. Adults worked even longer hours. Women and young children,
sometimes under age six, hauled coal trucks through low, cramped passageways in
coal mines. One nine-year-old girl, Margaret Gomley, described her typical day in the
mines as beginning at 7:00 a.m. and ending at 6:00 p.m.: “I get my dinner at 12 o’clock,
which is a dry muffin, and sometimes butter on, but have no time allowed to stop
to eat it, I eat it while I am thrusting the load.”
In 1842, the British Parliament prohibited the employment of women and girls
underground. In 1847, the Central Short Time Committee, one of Britain’s many
social reform organizations, successfully pressured Parliament to limit the workday
of women and children to ten hours. The continental countries followed the British
lead, but since most did not insist on government inspection, enforcement was lax.
Urbanization and Its Consequences

Industrial development spurred urban growth, yet cities with little industry grew as
well. Urbanization is the growth of towns and cities due to the movement of people
from rural to urban areas. Here, too, Great Britain led the way: half the population
of England and Wales was living in towns by 1850, while in France and the German
states only about a quarter of the total population was urban. Both old and new cities
teemed with rising numbers in the 1830s and 1840s; the population of Vienna bal-
looned by 125,000 between 1827 and 1847, and the new industrial city of Manchester
grew by 70,000 just in the 1830s.
Massive emigration from rural areas, rather than births to women already living
in cities, accounted for this remarkable increase. City life and new factories beckoned
those faced with hunger and poverty, including immigrants from other lands: thou-
sands of Irish emigrated to English cities, Italians went to French cities, and Poles
flocked to German cities. Settlements sprang up outside the old city limits but gradu-
ally became part of the urban area. Cities incorporated parks, cemeteries, zoos, and
greenways — all imitations of the countryside, which itself was being industrialized
by railroads and factories.
The rapid influx of people caused serious overcrowding in the cities because the
housing stock expanded much more slowly than the population did. In Paris, thirty
thousand workers lived in lodging houses, eight or nine to a room, with no separa-
tion of the sexes. In 1847, in St. Giles, the Irish quarter of London, 461 people lived
in just twelve houses. Men, women, and children with no money for fuel huddled
together for warmth on piles of filthy rotting straw or potato peels.
Severe crowding worsened already dire sanitation conditions. Residents dumped
refuse into streets or courtyards, and human excrement collected in cesspools under
apartment houses. At midcentury, London’s approximately 250,000 cesspools were
emptied only once or twice a year. Water was scarce and had to be fetched daily from
nearby fountains. Parisians, on average, had enough water for only two baths annu-
ally per person (the upper classes enjoyed more baths, of course; the lower classes,
fewer). In London, private companies that supplied water turned on pumps in the
[1830–1850
MAP 21.2 The Spread of Cholera,

EUROPE
1826–1855 1831/1849
Contemporaries did not understand the NORTH

AMERICA
causes of the cholera epidemics in the 1832/1849 ASIA
1844
1830s and the 1840s in Europe. Western
Europeans knew only that the disease Mecca 1841
1831/1846
marched progressively from east to west 1840
AFRICA
across Europe. Nothing seemed able to 1836
1855
stop it. It appeared and died out for rea- SOUTH
sons that could not be grasped at the AMERICA
time. Nevertheless, the cholera epidem- Historical base of Indian cholera
ics prompted authorities in most Euro- 1849 Date of first occurrence
pean countries to set up public health 1826–1836 pandemic
0 1,500 3,000 miles
agencies to coordinate the response and 1840–1855 pandemic
study sanitation conditions in the cities. 0 3,000 kilometers
poorer sections for only a few hours three days a week. In rapidly growing British
industrial cities such as Manchester, one-third of the houses contained no latrines.
Human waste ended up in the rivers that supplied drinking water. The horses that
provided transportation inside the cities left droppings everywhere, and city dwellers
often kept chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, geese, and even cattle, as well as dogs and cats,
in their houses. The result was a “universal atmosphere of filth and stink,” as one
observer recounted.
Such conditions made cities prime breeding grounds for disease. In 1830 to 1832
and again in 1847 to 1851, devastating outbreaks of cholera swept across Asia and
Europe, touching the United States as well in 1849 to 1850 (Map 21.2). Today we
know that a waterborne bacterium causes cholera, but at the time no one understood
the disease and everyone feared it. The usually fatal illness induced violent vomiting
and diarrhea and left the skin blue, eyes sunken and dull, and hands and feet ice
cold. While cholera particularly ravaged the crowded, filthy neighborhoods of rap-
idly growing cities, it also claimed many rural and some well-to-do victims. In Paris,
18,000 people died in the 1832 epidemic and 20,000 in that of 1849; in London,
7,000 died in each epidemic; and in Russia, the epidemic was catastrophic, claiming
250,000 victims in 1831 to 1832 and 1 million in 1847 to 1851.
Epidemics revealed the social tensions lying just beneath the surface of urban
life. Middle-class reformers often considered the poor to be morally degenerate. In
their view, overcrowding led to sexual promiscuity and illegitimacy. They depicted
the lower classes as dangerously lacking in sexual self-control. Officials collected
statistics on illegitimacy that seemed to bear out these fears: one-quarter to one-half
of the babies born in the big European cities in the 1830s and 1840s were illegiti-
mate, and alarmed medical men wrote about thousands of infanticides. In contrast,
only a tiny fraction of rural births were illegitimate. The rising rate of births outside
of marriage seemed to go hand in hand with drinking and crime. Beer halls and
pubs dotted the urban landscape. By the 1830s, Hungary’s twin cities of Buda and
[ 1830–1850
]
Pest had eight hundred beer and wine houses for the working classes. Police officials
estimated that London had seventy thousand thieves and eighty thousand prostitutes.
In many cities, nearly half the population lived at the level of bare subsistence, and
increasing numbers depended on public welfare, charity, or criminality to make ends
meet.
Everywhere reformers warned of a widening separation between rich and poor
and a growing sense of hostility between the classes. A Swiss pastor noted: “A new
spirit has arisen among the workers. Their hearts seethe with hatred of the well-to-
do; their eyes lust for a share of the wealth about them; their mouths speak unblush-
ingly of a coming day of retribution.” In 1848, as we will see, it would seem that day
of retribution had arrived.
Agricultural Perils and Prosperity

Rising populations created increased demand for food and spurred changes in the
countryside, too. Although agricultural yields increased by 30 to 50 percent in the
first half of the nineteenth century, population grew by nearly 100 percent. Railroads
and canals improved food distribution, but much of Europe — particularly in the
east — remained isolated from markets and vulnerable to famines.
Most people still lived on the land, and the upper classes still dominated rural
society. In France at midcentury, almost two million economically independent peas-
ants tended their own small properties. But in England, southern Italy, Prussia, and
eastern Europe, large landowners, usually noblemen, consolidated and expanded
their estates by buying up the land of less successful nobles or peasants. As agricul-
tural prices rose, the big landowners pushed for legislation to allow them to continue
converting common land to private property.
Wringing a living from the soil under such conditions put pressure on tradi-
tional family life. Men often migrated seasonally to earn cash in factories or as village
artisans, while their wives, sisters, and daughters did the traditional “men’s work” of
tending crops. In the past, population growth had been contained by postponing
marriage (leaving fewer years for childbearing) and by high rates of death in child-
birth as well as infant mortality. Now, as child mortality declined outside the indus-
trial cities and people without property began marrying earlier, Europeans became
more aware of birth control methods. The vulcanization of rubber in the 1840s
improved the reliability of condoms. When such methods failed and population
increase left no options open at home, people emigrated, often to the United States.
Between 1816 and 1850, five million Europeans left their home countries for new
lives overseas. When France colonized Algeria in the 1830s and 1840s, officials tried
to attract settlers by emphasizing the fertility of the land; they offered the prospect
of agricultural prosperity in the colony as an alternative to the rigors of industrializa-
tion and urbanization at home.
Rural political power remained in the hands of traditional elites. The biggest
property owners controlled the political assemblies and often personally selected
[1830–1850
] Reforming the Social Order 683
local officials. Nowhere did the old rural social order seem more impregnable than
in Russia. Most Russian serfs remained tied to the land, and troops easily suppressed
serfs’ uprisings in 1831 and 1842. Yet in the 1850s railroad construction would begin
to transform life in Russia, too, and the railroads would bring with them the same
social problems — urbanization, the beginning of industrialization, and a growing
awareness of social disparities — that threatened the social and political order in west-
ern Europe in the 1830s and 1840s. These
new social problems demanded a response. REVIEW QUESTION What dangers did the
But would that response be reform or Industrial Revolution pose to both urban and
revolution? rural life?
Reforming the Social Order

The experience of dramatic economic and social changes prompted artists and writ-
ers to focus on emerging social problems and inspired the creation of new organi-
zations for social reform. Middle-class women often took the lead in establishing
charitable organizations that tried to bring religious faith, educational uplift, and the
reform of manners to the lower classes. The middle class, both men and women,
expected women to soften the rigors of a rapidly changing society, but this expecta-
tion led to some confusion about women’s proper role: Should they devote them-
selves to social reform in the world or to their own domestic spaces? Many hoped
to apply the same zeal for reform to the colonial peoples living in places administered
by Europeans.
Cultural Responses to the Social Question

The social question, an expression reflecting the widely shared concern about social
changes arising from industrialization and urbanization, pervaded all forms of art
and literature. The dominant artistic movement of the time, romanticism, generally
took a dim view of industrialization. The English-born American painter Thomas
Cole (1801–1848) complained in 1836: “In this age . . . a meager utilitarianism seems
ready to absorb every feeling and sentiment, and what is sometimes called improve-
ment in its march makes us fear that the bright and tender flowers of the imagination
shall all be crushed beneath its iron tramp.” Yet culture itself underwent important
changes as the growing capitals of Europe attracted flocks of aspiring painters and
playwrights; the 1830s and 1840s witnessed an explosion in culture as the number
of would-be artists increased dramatically and new technologies such as photography
and lithography brought art to the masses. Many of these new intellectuals would
support the revolutions of 1848.
Because romanticism tended to glorify nature and reject industrial and urban
growth, romantics often gave vivid expression to the problems created by rapid eco-
nomic and social transformation. The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, best
known for her love poems, denounced child labor in “The Cry of the Children” (1843).
[ 1830–1850
]
Joseph M. W. Turner, The Fighting “Téméraire” Tugged to Her Last Berth

to Be Broken Up (1838)
In this painting a steamer belching smoke tows a wooden sailing ship to its last berth, where it
will be destroyed. Turner muses about the passing of old ways but also displays his mastery of
color in the final blaze of sunset, itself another sign of the passing of time. Turner was an avid
reader of the romantic poets, especially Byron. British opinion polls have rated this painting the
best of all British paintings. How does the painting capture the clash of old and new? (National
Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
In Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway (1844), the leading English
romantic painter, Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–1851), portrayed the struggle between
the forces of nature and the means of economic growth. Turner was fascinated by
steamboats: in The Fighting “Téméraire” Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up
(1838), he featured the victory of steam power over more conventional sailing ships.
Increased literacy, the spread of reading rooms and lending libraries, and seri-
alization in newspapers and journals gave novels a large reading public. Unlike the
fiction of the eighteenth century, which had focused on individual personalities, the
great novels of the 1830s and 1840s specialized in the portrayal of social life in all
its varieties. Manufacturers, financiers, starving students, workers, bureaucrats, pros-
titutes, underworld figures, thieves, and aristocratic men and women filled the pages
of works by popular writers. Hoping to get out of debt, the French writer Honoré
de Balzac (1799–1850) pushed himself to exhaustion and a premature death by
cranking out ninety-five novels and many short stories. He aimed to catalog the
[
1830–1850
social types that could be found in French society. Many of his characters, like him-
self, were driven by the desire to climb higher in the social order.
The English fiction writer Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked with a similar
frenetic energy and for much the same reason. When his father was imprisoned for
debt in 1824, the young Dickens took a job in a shoe-polish factory. He eventually
became a journalist and managed to produce a series of novels that attracted thou-
sands of readers. In them, he paid close attention to the distressing effects of indus-
trialization and urbanization. In The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), for example, he
depicts the Black Country, the manufacturing region west and northwest of Birming-
ham, as a “cheerless region,” a “mournful place,” in which tall chimneys “made foul
the melancholy air.”
Novels by women often revealed the bleaker side of women’s situations. Char-
lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) describes the difficult life of an orphaned girl who
becomes a governess, the only occupation open to most single middle-class women.
The French novelist Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin Dudevant (1804–1876), writ-
ing under the pen name George Sand, took her social criticism a step further. She
announced her independence in the 1830s by dressing like a man and smoking cigars.
Though she published her work under a male pseudonym, as did many other women
writers of the time, she created female characters who prevail in difficult circum-
stances through romantic love and moral idealism. Her notoriety — she became the
George Sand
In this lithograph by Alcide Lorentz
of 1842, George Sand is shown in
one of her notorious male costumes
standing on a cloud created by the
cigar in her left hand. Sand published
numerous works, including novels
(Indiana is shown at the left of the
image), plays, essays, travel writing,
and an autobiography. She advocated
setting up a Chamber of Mothers to
go alongside the Chamber of Depu-
ties (her right arm rests on sheets
with those words on them), and she
actively participated in the revolution
of 1848 in France, writing pamphlets
in support of the new republic. Dis-
illusioned by the rise to power of Louis-
Napoleon Bonaparte, she withdrew to
her country estate and devoted her-
self exclusively to her writing. (Musée
de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris,
France / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman
Images.)
[ 1830–1850
]
lover of the Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin, among others, and threw
herself into socialist politics — made the term George-Sandism a common expression
of disdain toward independent women.
As artists became more interested in society and social relations, ordinary citi-
zens crowded cultural events. Museums opened to the public across Europe. Popular
theaters in big cities drew thousands from the lower and middle classes every night;
in London, for example, some twenty-four thousand people attended eighty “penny
theaters” nightly. The audience for print culture also multiplied. In the German
states, for example, the production of new literary works doubled between 1830 and
1843, as did the number of periodicals and newspapers and the number of booksell-
ers. Young children and ragpickers sold cheap prints and books door-to-door or in
taverns.
The advent of photography in 1839 provided an amazing new medium for art-
ists. The daguerreotype, named after its inventor, French painter Jacques Daguerre
(1787–1851), prompted one artist to claim that “from today, painting is dead.”
Although this prediction was highly exaggerated, photography did open up new ways
of portraying reality. It did so only gradually, however, as early photographs required
exposure times of twenty to thirty minutes, making it impossible to capture anything
or anyone in movement.
Culture expanded its reach in part because the ranks of artists and writers swelled.
Estimates suggest that the number of painters and sculptors in France, the undisputed
center of European art at the time, grew sixfold between 1789 and 1838. Not every-
one could succeed in this hothouse atmosphere, in which writers and artists furiously
competed for public attention. Their own troubles made some of them more keenly
aware of the hardships faced by the poor. A satirical article in one of the many bit-
ingly critical journals and booklets published in Berlin proclaimed: “In Ipswich in
The First Daguerreotype

Jacques Daguerre experi-
mented extensively with
producing an image on
a metal plate before he
came up with a viable
photographic process in
1837. He called this first
daguerreotype Still Life, a
common title for paintings.
In 1839, the French gov-
ernment bought the rights
and made the process
freely available. (Photo by
Science and Society Picture
Library [SSPL] / Getty Images.)
[1830–1850
England a mechanical genius has invented a stomach, whose extraordinary efficient

construction is remarkable. This artificial stomach is intended for factory workers
there and is adjusted so that it is fully satisfied with three lentils or peas; one potato
is enough for an entire week.”
The Varieties of Social Reform

Lithographs, novels, and even joke booklets helped drive home the need for social
reform, but religious conviction also inspired efforts to help the poor. Moral reform
societies, Bible groups, Sunday schools, and temperance groups aimed to turn the
poor into respectable people. In 1844, for example, 450 different relief organizations
operated in London alone.
Religiously motivated reformers first had to overcome the perceived indifference
of the working classes. Protestant and Catholic clergy complained that workers had
no interest in religion; less than 10 percent of the workers in the cities attended
religious services. To combat indifference, British religious groups launched the Sun-
day school movement, which reached its zenith in the 1840s. By 1851, more than
half of all working-class children ages five to fifteen were attending Sunday school,
even though very few of their parents regularly went to religious services. The Sun-
day schools taught children how to read at a time when few working-class children
could go to school during the week.
Women took a more prominent role than ever before in charitable work. Catho-
lic religious orders, which by 1850 enrolled many more women than men, ran schools,
hospitals, leper colonies, insane asylums, and old-age homes. The Catholic church
established new orders, especially for women, and increased missionary activity
overseas. Protestant women in Great Britain and the United States established Bible,
missionary, and female reform societies by the hundreds. Chief among their con-
cerns was prostitution, and many societies dedicated themselves to reforming “fallen
women” and castigating men who visited prostitutes.
Catholics and Protestants alike promoted the temperance movement. The first
societies had appeared in the United States as early as 1813, and by 1835 the Amer-
ican Temperance Society claimed 1.5 million members. Temperance advocates
viewed drunkenness as a sign of moral weakness and a threat to social order. Yet
temperance societies also attracted working-class people who shared the desire for
respectability.
Social reformers saw education as one of the main prospects for uplifting the
poor and the working class. In 1833, the French government passed an education
law that required every town to maintain a primary school, pay a teacher, and pro-
vide free education to poor boys. As the law’s author, François Guizot, argued, “Igno-
rance renders the masses turbulent and ferocious.” Girls’ schools were optional,
although hundreds of women taught at the primary level, most of them in private,
often religious schools. Despite these efforts, only one out of every thirty children
went to school in France, many fewer than in Protestant states such as Prussia, where
[ 1830–1850
]
75 percent of children were in primary school by 1835. Popular education remained
woefully undeveloped in most of eastern Europe. Peasants were specifically excluded
from the few primary schools in Russia, where Tsar Nicholas I blamed the Decem-
brist Revolt of 1825 on education.
Above all else, the elite sought to impose discipline and order on working people.
Popular sports, especially blood sports such as cockfighting and bearbaiting, sug-
gested a lack of control, and long-standing efforts in Great Britain to eliminate these
recreations now gained momentum through organizations such as the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. By the end of the 1830s, bullbaiting had been
abandoned in Great Britain. The other blood sports died out more slowly, and efforts
in other countries generally lagged behind those of the British.
When private charities failed to meet the needs of the poor, governments often
intervened. Great Britain sought to control the costs of public welfare by passing a
new poor law in 1834, called by its critics the Starvation Act. The law required that
all able-bodied persons receiving relief be housed together in workhouses, with hus-
bands separated from wives and parents from children. Workhouse life was designed
to be as unpleasant as possible so that poor people would move on to regions that
had better employment prospects. British women from all social classes organized
anti–poor law societies to protest the separation of mothers from their children in
the workhouses.
Many women viewed charitable work as the extension of their domestic roles:
they promoted virtuous behavior and morality in their efforts to improve society.
But women’s social reform activities concealed a paradox. According to the ideology
that historians call domesticity, women were to live their lives entirely within the
domestic sphere, devoting themselves to their families and the home. The English
poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, captured this view in a popular poem published in 1847:
“Man for the field and woman for the hearth; / Man for the sword and for the needle
she. / . . . All else confusion.”
Most women had little hope of economic independence. The notion that they
belonged in a separate, domestic sphere prevented women from pursuing higher
education, work in professional careers, or participation in politics through voting
or holding office — all activities deemed appropriate only to men. Laws everywhere
codified the subordination of women. Many countries followed the model of Napo-
leon’s Civil Code (see page 644), which classified married women as legal incompe-
tents along with children, the insane, and criminals. In some countries, such as France
and Austria, unmarried women enjoyed some rights over property, but elsewhere laws
explicitly defined them as perpetual minors under paternal control.
Distinctions between men and women were most noticeable in the privileged
classes. Whereas boys attended secondary schools, most middle- and upper-class
girls still received their education at home or in church schools, where they were
taught to be religious, obedient, and accomplished in music and languages. As men’s
fashions turned practical — long trousers and short jackets of solid, often dark colors;
no makeup (previously common for aristocratic men), and simply cut hair — women
[1830–1850
continued to dress for decorative effect, now with tightly corseted waists that empha-
sized the differences between female and male bodies. Middle- and upper-class
women favored long hair that required hours of brushing and pinning up, and they
wore long, cumbersome skirts.
Scientists reinforced stereotypes. Once considered sexually insatiable, women
were now described as incapacitated by menstruation and largely uninterested in sex,
an attitude that many equated with moral superiority. Thus was born the “Victorian”
woman (the epoch gets its name from England’s Queen Victoria — see page 703), a
figment of the largely male medical imagination. Physicians and scholars considered
women mentally inferior. In 1839, Auguste Comte, an influential early French sociolo-
gist, wrote, “As for any functions of government, the radical inaptitude of the female
sex is there yet more marked . . . and limited to the guidance of the mere family.”
Some women denounced the ideology of domesticity and separate spheres; the
English writer Ann Lamb, for example, proclaimed that “the duty of a wife means
the obedience of a Turkish slave.” Middle-class women who did not marry, however,
had few options for earning a living; they often worked as governesses or ladies’
companions for the well-to-do. Most lower-class women worked because of financial
necessity; as the wives of peasants, laborers, or shopkeepers, they had to supplement
the family’s meager income by working on the farm, in a factory, or in a shop. Domes-
ticity might have been an ideal for them, but rarely was it a reality.
Abuses and Reforms Overseas

Like the ideal of domesticity, the ideal of colonialism often conflicted with the real-
ity of economic interests. In the first half of the nineteenth century, those economic
interests changed as European colonialism underwent a subtle but momentous
transformation. Colonialism became imperialism — a word coined only in the mid-
nineteenth century — as Europeans turned their interest away from the plantation
colonies of the Caribbean and toward new colonies in Asia and Africa. Colonialism
had most often led to the establishment of settler colonies, direct rule by Europeans,
the introduction of slave labor from Africa, and the wholesale destruction of indig-
enous peoples. In contrast, imperialism usually meant more indirect forms of eco-
nomic exploitation and political rule. Europeans still profited from their colonies,
but now they also aimed to re-form colonial peoples in their own image — when it
did not conflict too much with their economic interests to do so.
Colonialism — as opposed to imperialism — rose and fell with the enslavement
of black Africans. British religious groups, especially the Quakers, had taken the lead
in forming antislavery societies. They gained a first victory in 1807 when the British
House of Lords voted to abolish the slave trade (though not the institution of slavery
itself). British reformers finally obtained the abolition of slavery in the British Empire
in 1833. Antislavery petitions to Parliament bore 1.5 million signatures, including
those of 350,000 women on one petition alone. In France, the new government of
Louis-Philippe took strong measures against clandestine slave traffic, virtually ending
[ 1830–1850
]
French participation during the 1830s. Slavery was abolished in the remaining
French Caribbean colonies in 1848.
Neither slavery nor the slave trade disappeared immediately just because the
British and French had given it up. Because of increased participation by Spanish
and Portuguese traders, almost as many slaves were traded in the 1820s as in the
1780s and the overall traffic did not dwindle until the 1850s. Human bondage con-
tinued unabated in Brazil, Cuba (still a Spanish colony), and the United States. Some
American reformers supported abolition, but they remained a minority. Like serf-
dom in Russia, slavery in the Americas involved a quagmire of economic, political,
and moral problems that worsened as the nineteenth century wore on.
Despite the abolition of slavery, Britain and France had not lost interest in over-
seas colonies. Using the pretext of an insult to its envoy, France invaded Algeria in
1830 and, after a long military campaign, established political control over most of
the country in the next two decades. By 1848, more than seventy thousand French,
Italian, and Maltese colonists had settled there with government encouragement,
often confiscating the lands of native peoples. In that year, the French government
officially incorporated Algeria as part of France. France also imposed a protectorate
government over the South Pacific island of Tahiti.
Although the British granted Canada greater self-determination in 1839, they
extended their dominion elsewhere by annexing Singapore (1819), an island off the
Malay peninsula, and New Zealand (1840). They also increased their control in India
through the administration of the East India Company, a private group of merchants
chartered by the British crown. The British educated a native elite to take over much
of the day-to-day business of administering the country, and they used native soldiers
to augment their military control. By 1850, only one in six soldiers serving Britain
in India was European.
The East India Company also tried to establish a regular trade with China in
opium, long known for its medicinal uses but increasingly bought in China as a rec-
reational drug. The Chinese government forbade
Ports opened after the Western merchants to venture outside the southern
Treaty of Nanking, 1842
city of Guangzhou (Canton) and banned the import
British attacks
0 250 500 miles
of opium, but these measures failed. By smuggling
KOREA
Indian opium into China and bribing local officials,
British traders built up a flourishing market, and
Shanghai
by the mid-1830s they were pressuring the British
C H I N A Ningbo
East government to force an expanded opium trade on
China
Fuzhou
Sea the Chinese. When the Chinese authorities expelled
Amoy
British merchants from southern China in 1839,
Guangzhou
(Canton) Taiwan Britain retaliated by bombarding Chinese coastal
Hong Kong
(British 1842) cities. The Opium War ended in 1842, when Brit-
South China
Sea
ain dictated to a defeated China the Treaty of Nan-
king, by which four more Chinese ports were opened
The Opium War, 1839–1842 to Europeans and the British took sovereignty over
[1830–1850
] Ideologies and Political Movements 691
the island of Hong Kong, received a sub-

stantial war indemnity, and were assured of REVIEW QUESTION In which areas did reform-
a continuation of the opium trade. In this ers trying to address the social problems
case, reform took a backseat to economic created by industrialization and urbanization
succeed, and in which did they fail?
interest, despite the complaints of religious
groups in Britain.
Ideologies and Political Movements

Although reform organizations grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s, many Europe-
ans found them insufficient to answer the questions raised by industrialization and
urbanization. How did the new social order differ from the earlier one, which was
less urban and less driven by commercial concerns? Who should control this new
order? Should governments try to moderate or accelerate the pace of change? New
ideologies such as liberalism and socialism offered competing answers to these ques-
tions and provided the platform for new political movements. Established govern-
ments faced challenges not only from liberals and socialists but also from the most
potent of the new doctrines, nationalism. Nationalists looked past social problems
to concentrate on achieving political autonomy and self-determination for groups
identified by ethnicity rather than by class.
The Spell of Nationalism

According to the doctrine of nationalism, all peoples derive their identities from their
nations, which are defined by common language, shared cultural traditions, and
sometimes religion. When such nations do not coincide with state boundaries, nation-
alism can produce violence and warfare as different national groups compete for
control over territory (Map 21.3).
Nationalist aspirations were especially explosive for the Austrian Empire, which
included a variety of peoples united only by their enforced allegiance to the Habsburg
emperor. The empire included three main national groups: the Germans, who made
up one-fourth of the population; the Magyars of Hungary (which included Tran-
sylvania and Croatia); and the Slavs, who together formed the largest group in the
population but were divided into different ethnic groups such as Poles, Czechs,
Croats, and Serbs. The Austrian Empire also included Italians in Lombardy and
Venetia, and Romanians in Transylvania. Efforts to govern such diverse peoples pre-
occupied Prince Klemens von Metternich, chief minister to the weak Habsburg
emperor Francis I (r. 1792–1835). Metternich’s domestic policy aimed to restrain
nationalist impulses, and it largely succeeded until the 1840s. He set up a secret
police organization on the Napoleonic model that opened letters of even the highest
officials. Metternich’s policies forced the leading Italian nationalist, Giuseppe Mazzini
(1805–1872), into exile in France in 1831. There Mazzini founded Young Italy, a
secret society that attracted thousands with its message that Italy would touch off a
[ 1830–1850
]
Language Group N
Romance Finno-Ugrian W
French Finnish
Italian Estonian E
Spanish Magyar S FINNISH
Catalan Baltic SWEDISH
Portuguese Latvian
Corsican Lithuanian NORWEGIAN
Romanian Basque
Walloon Basque
Germanic Thraco-Illyrian GREAT
English RUSSIAN
Albanian GAELIC ESTONIAN
Dutch
German Hellenic
Greek
a
Flemish LATVIAN
Se
North
Danish Turkish-Tataric IRISH S ea i
c
DANISH t LITHUANIAN
Norwegian Turkish
B al
Swedish WHITE
Mixed use RUSSIAN
Slavonic of languages WELSH ENGLISH
Great Russian
Ukrainian CORNISH DUTCH
White Russian GERMAN POLISH
Polish
Serbian UKRAINIAN
BRETON FLEMISH
Croatian CZECH
Slovak ATLANTIC WALLOON SLOVAK
Czech OCEAN
Bulgarian
Macedonian FRENCH SLOVENIAN MAGYAR
Slovenian BASQUE
Celtic ROMANIAN
Irish
Gaelic B l ack Se a
SERBIAN
Welsh CROATIAN BULGARIAN
Breton CATALAN CORSICAN
Cornish SPANISH ITALIAN
ALBANIAN
PORTUGUESE
MACEDONIAN
TURKISH
Mediterranean Sea GREEK
0 200 400 miles
MAP 21.3 Languages of Nineteenth-Century Europe

Even this detailed map of linguistic diversity understates the number of different languages and
dialects spoken in Europe. In Italy, for example, few people spoke Italian as their first language.
Instead, they spoke local dialects such as Piedmontese or Ligurian, and some who came from
the regions bordering France spoke better French than Italian. How does the map underline the
inherent contradictions of nationalism in Europe? What were the consequences of linguistic
diversity within national borders? Keep in mind that even in Spain, France, and Great Britain,
linguistic diversity continued right up to the beginning of the 1900s.
European-wide revolutionary movement. The conservative order throughout Europe

felt threatened by Mazzini’s charismatic leadership and conspiratorial scheming, but
he lacked both European allies against Austria and widespread support among the
Italian masses.
Austria was deliberately excluded when the German states formed a Zollverein
(“customs union”) in 1834, under Prussian leadership. German nationalists sought a
government uniting German-speaking peoples, but they could not agree on its bound-
aries: Would the unified German state include both Prussia and the Austrian Empire?
If it included Austria, what about the non-German territories of the Austrian Empire?
[1830–1850
And could the powerful, conservative kingdom of Prussia coexist in a unified Ger-
man state with other, more liberal but smaller states? These questions would vex
German history for decades to come.
Polish nationalism revived after the collapse of the revolt in 1830 against Russian
domination. It found its most ringing voice in the poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–
1855), whose mystical writings portrayed the Polish exiles as martyrs of a crucified
nation with an international Christian mission. Mickiewicz formed the Polish Legion
to fight for national restoration, but rivalries and divisions prevented united action
until 1846, when Polish exiles in Paris tried to launch a coordinated insurrection for
Polish independence. Plans for an uprising in the Polish province of Galicia in the
Austrian Empire collapsed when peasants instead revolted against their noble Polish
masters.
In Russia, nationalism took the form of opposition to Western ideas. Russian
nationalists, or Slavophiles (lovers of the Slavs), opposed the Westernizers, who wanted
Russia to follow Western models of industrial development and constitutional gov-
ernment. The Slavophiles favored maintaining rural traditions infused by the values
of the Russian Orthodox church. Only a return to Russia’s basic historical principles,
they argued, could protect the country against the corrosion of rationalism and
materialism. The conflict between Slavophiles and Westernizers has continued to
shape Russian cultural and intellectual life to the present day.
The most significant nationalist movement in western Europe could be found
in Ireland. The Irish had struggled for centuries against English occupation, but Irish
nationalists developed strong organizations only in the 1840s. In 1842, a group of
writers founded the Young Ireland movement, which aimed to recover Irish traditions
and preserve the Gaelic language (spoken by at least one-third of the peasantry).
Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), a Catholic lawyer and landowner who sat in the
British House of Commons, hoped to force the British Parliament to repeal the Act
of Union of 1801, which had made Ireland part of Great Britain. In 1843, London
newspapers reported “monster meetings” that drew crowds of as many as 300,000
people in support of repeal of the union. In response, the British government arrested
O’Connell and convicted him of conspiracy.
Liberalism in Economics and Politics

As an ideology, liberalism had a longer lineage than nationalism but enjoyed less
influence among the common people. Liberalism traced its origins to the writings
of John Locke in the seventeenth century and the Enlightenment philosophy in the
eighteenth. The adherents of liberalism defined themselves in opposition to conserv-
atives on one end of the political spectrum and revolutionaries on the other. Unlike
conservatives, liberals supported the Enlightenment ideals of constitutional guaran-
tees of personal liberty and free trade in economics, believing that they would pro-
mote social improvement and economic growth. Liberals generally applauded the
social and economic changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, while opposing
[ 1830–1850
]
the violence and excessive state power promoted by the French Revolution. The
leaders of the expanding middle class composed of manufacturers, merchants, and
professionals favored liberalism.
The rapid industrialization and urbanization of Great Britain created a receptive
environment for liberalism. Its foremost proponent in the early nineteenth century
was the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). He called his brand of
liberalism utilitarianism because he held that the best policy is the one that produces
“the greatest good for the greatest number” and is thus the most useful, or utilitarian.
Bentham criticized the injustices of the British parliamentary process, the abuses of
the prisons and the penal code, and the educational system. In his zeal for social
engineering, Bentham proposed model prisons that would emphasize rehabilitation
through close supervision rather than corporal punishment.
British liberals wanted government to limit its economic role to maintaining the
currency, enforcing contracts, and financing major enterprises like the military and
the railroads. They therefore sought to lower or eliminate British tariffs, especially
through repeal of the Corn Laws, which benefited landowners by preventing the
import of cheap foreign grain while keeping the price of food artificially high for
the workers. When landholders in the House of Commons thwarted efforts to lower
grain tariffs, two Manchester cotton manufacturers set up the Anti–Corn Law League.
The league appealed to the middle class against the landlords, who were labeled “a
bread-taxing oligarchy” and “blood-sucking vampires,” and attracted thousands of
workers to its meetings. League members established local branches, published news-
papers and the journal The Economist (founded in 1843 and now one of the world’s
most influential periodicals), and campaigned in elections. They finally won the
support of the Tory prime minister Sir Robert Peel, whose government repealed the
Corn Laws in 1846.
Free trade had less appeal in continental Europe than in England because con-
tinental industries needed protection against British industrial dominance. As a con-
sequence, liberals on the continent focused on constitutional reform. French liberals,
for example, agitated for greater press freedoms and a broadening of the vote. Louis-
Philippe’s government thwarted liberals’ hopes for reforms by suppressing many
political organizations and reestablishing censorship. Repression muted criticism in
most other European states as well. Nevertheless, some state bureaucrats, especially
university-trained middle-class officials, favored economic liberalism. Hungarian
count Stephen Széchenyi (1791–1860) personally campaigned for the introduction
of British-style changes. He helped start up steamboat traffic on the Danube, encour-
aged the importation of machinery and technicians for steam-driven textile factories,
and pushed the construction of Hungary’s first railway line, from Budapest to Vienna.
In the 1840s, however, Széchenyi’s efforts paled before those of the flamboyant
Magyar nationalist Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894). After spending four years in prison
for sedition, Kossuth grabbed every opportunity to publicize American democracy
and British political liberalism, all in a fervent nationalist spirit. In 1844, he founded
the Protective Association, whose members bought only Hungarian products; to
[1830–1850
Kossuth, boycotting Austrian goods was crucial to ending “colonial dependence” on

Austria.
Even in Russia, signs of liberal opposition appeared in the 1830s and 1840s.
Small circles of young noblemen serving in the army or bureaucracy met in cities,
especially Moscow, to discuss the latest Western ideas. Out of these groups came such
future revolutionaries as Alexander Herzen (1812–1870), described by the police as
“a daring free-thinker, extremely dangerous to society.” Tsar Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855)
banned Western liberal writings as well as all books about the United States. He sent
nearly ten thousand people a year into exile in Siberia as punishment for their political
activities.
Socialism and the Early Labor Movement

The newest ideology, socialism, took up where liberalism left off: socialists believed
that the liberties advocated by liberals benefited only the middle class — the owners of
factories and businesses — not the workers. They sought to reorganize society totally
rather than to reform it piecemeal through political measures. They envisioned a future
society in which workers would share a harmonious, cooperative, and prosperous life.
Early socialists criticized the emerging Industrial Revolution for dividing soci-
ety into two classes: the new middle class, or capitalists (who owned the wealth), and
the working class, their downtrodden and impoverished employees. As their name
suggests, the socialists aimed to restore harmony and cooperation through social
reorganization. Robert Owen (1771–1858), a successful Welsh-born manufacturer,
founded British socialism. In 1800, he bought a cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland,
and began to set up a model factory town, where workers labored only ten hours a
day (instead of seventeen, as was common) and children between the ages of five
and ten attended school rather than working. Owen moved to the United States in
the 1820s and founded a community named New Harmony in Indiana. The experi-
ment collapsed after three years, a victim of internal squabbling. But out of Owen’s
experiments and writings, such as The Book of the New Moral World (1820), would
come the movement for producer cooperatives (businesses owned and controlled by
their workers), consumers’ cooperatives (stores in which consumers owned shares),
and a national trade union.
The French socialists Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Charles
Fourier (1772–1837) shared Owen’s alarm about the effects of industrialization on
social relations. Saint-Simon — who coined the terms industrialism and industrialist
to define the new economic order and its chief animators — believed that work was
the central element in the new society and that it should be controlled not by politi-
cians but by scientists, engineers, artists, and industrialists themselves. To correct the
abuses of the new industrial order, Fourier urged the establishment of communities
that were part garden city and part agricultural commune; all jobs would be rotated
to maximize happiness. Fourier hoped that a network of small, decentralized com-
munities would replace the state.
[ 1830–1850
]
Women often played key roles in early socialism. In 1832, Saint-Simonian women
founded a feminist newspaper, The Free Woman, asserting that “with the emanci-
pation of woman will come the emancipation of the worker.” In Great Britain, many
women joined the Owenites and helped form cooperative societies and unions. They
defended women’s working-class organizations against the complaints of men in the
new societies and trade unions. The French activist Flora Tristan (1801–1844) devoted
herself to reconciling the interests of male and female workers. She published a stream
of books and pamphlets urging male workers to address women’s unequal status,
arguing that “the emancipation of male workers is impossible so long as women
remain in a degraded state.”
Even though most male socialists ignored Tristan’s plea for women’s participa-
tion, they did strive to create working-class associations. The French socialist Louis
Blanc (1811–1882) explained the importance of working-class associations in his
book Organization of Labor (1840), which deeply influenced the French labor move-
ment. Similarly, the printer turned journalist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865)
urged workers to form producers’ associations so that the workers could control the
work process and eliminate profits made by capitalists. His 1840 book What Is Prop-
erty? argues that property is theft: labor alone is productive, and rent, interest, and
profit unjust.
After 1840, some socialists began to call themselves communists, emphasizing
their desire to replace private property by communal, collective ownership. The
Frenchman Étienne Cabet (1788–1856) was the first to use the word communist. In
1840, he published Travels in Icaria, a novel describing a communist utopia in which
a popularly elected dictatorship efficiently organized work and reduced the workday
to seven hours.
Out of the churning of socialist ideas of the 1840s emerged two men whose
collaboration would change the definition of socialism and remake it into an ideol-
ogy that would shake the world for the next 150 years. Karl Marx (1818–1883) had
studied philosophy at the University of Berlin, edited a liberal newspaper until the
Prussian government suppressed it, and then left for Paris, where he met Friedrich
Engels (1820–1895). While working in the offices of his wealthy family’s cotton manu-
facturing interests in Manchester, England, Engels had been shocked into writing The
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845), a sympathetic depiction of
industrial workers’ dismal lives. In Paris, where German and eastern European intel-
lectuals could pursue their political interests more freely than at home, Marx and
Engels organized the Communist League, in whose name they published The Com-
munist Manifesto in 1848.
It eventually became the touchstone of Marxist and communist revolutions all
over the world. Communists, the Manifesto declared, must aim for “the downfall of
the bourgeoisie [capitalist class] and the ascendancy of the proletariat [working
class], the abolition of the old society based on class conflicts and the foundation of
a new society without classes and without private property.” Marx and Engels
embraced industrialization because they believed it would eventually bring on the
[1830–1850
] The Revolutions of 1848 697
proletarian revolution and thus lead inevitably to the abolition of exploitation, pri-
vate property, and class society.
Even when not overtly revolutionary, the upsurge in working-class organizations
frightened the middle classes. A newspaper exclaimed in 1834, “The trade unions
are, we have no doubt, the most dangerous institutions that were ever permitted to
take root.” Many British workers joined in Chartism, which aimed to transform Brit-
ain into a democracy. In 1838, political radicals drew up the People’s Charter, which
demanded universal manhood suffrage, vote by secret ballot, equal electoral districts,
annual elections, and the elimination of property qualifications for and the payment
of stipends to members of Parliament. Women took part by founding female political
unions, setting up Chartist Sunday schools, organizing boycotts of unsympathetic
shopkeepers, and joining Chartist temperance associations. Nevertheless, the People’s
Charter refrained from calling for woman suffrage because the movement’s leaders
feared that doing so would alienate potential supporters.
The Chartists organized a massive campaign during 1838 and 1839, with large
public meetings, fiery speeches, and torchlight parades. Presented with petitions for
the People’s Charter signed by more than a million people, the House of Commons
refused to act. In response to this rebuff from middle-class liberals, the Chartists
allied themselves in the 1840s with working-class strike movements in the manufac-
turing districts and associated with various European revolutionary movements.
Continental European workers were less well organized because trade unions and
strikes were illegal everywhere except Great Britain. Nevertheless, artisans and skilled
workers in France formed mutual aid societies that provided insurance, death bene-
fits, and education. In eastern and central Europe, socialism and labor organization —
like liberalism — had less impact than in western Europe. Cooperative societies and
workers’ newspapers did not appear in the German states until 1848. In general, labor
organization tended to flourish where urbanization and industrialization were most
advanced; even though factory workers rarely organized, skilled artisans did so in
order to resist mechanization and wage
cuts. When revolutions broke out in 1848, REVIEW QUESTION Why did ideologies
artisans and workers played a prominent — have such a powerful appeal in the 1830s
and controversial — role. and 1840s?
The Revolutions of 1848

Food shortages, overpopulation, and unemployment helped turn ideological turmoil
into revolution. In 1848, demonstrations and uprisings toppled governments, forced
rulers and ministers to flee, and offered revolutionaries an opportunity to put liberal,
socialist, and nationalist ideals into practice. In the end, the revolutions failed because
the various ideological movements quarreled, leaving an opening for rulers and their
armies to return to power. Rulers returned, but they now faced populations with
greater expectations for political participation, national unification, and government
responsiveness to social problems.
[ 1830–1850
]
The Hungry Forties
Beginning in 1845, crop failures across Europe caused food prices to shoot skyward.
In the best of times, urban workers paid 50 to 80 percent of their income for a diet
consisting largely of bread; now even bread was beyond their means. Overpopulation
hastened famine in some places, especially Ireland, where blight destroyed the staple
crop, potatoes, first in 1846 and again in 1848 and 1851. Irish peasants had planted
potatoes because a family of four might live off one acre of potatoes but would
require at least two acres of grain. By the 1840s, Ireland was especially vulnerable to
the potato blight. Out of a population of eight million, as many as one million people
died of starvation or disease. Corpses lay unburied on the sides of roads, and whole
families were found dead in their cottages, half-eaten by dogs. Hundreds of thou-
sands emigrated to England, the United States, and Canada.
Throughout Europe, famine jeopardized social peace. In age-old fashion, rumors
circulated about farmers hoarding grain to drive up prices. Believing that govern-
ments should ensure fair prices, crowds took to the streets to protest, often attacking
markets or bakeries. Although harvests improved in 1848, by then many people had
lost their land or become hopelessly indebted. High food prices also drove down the
demand for manufactured goods, resulting in increased unemployment. Industrial
workers’ wages had been rising, but the cost of living rose even faster.
Another French Revolution

The specter of hunger amplified the voices criticizing established rulers. A Parisian
demonstration in favor of reform turned violent on February 23, 1848, when panicky
soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing forty or fifty demonstrators. The next day,
faced with fifteen hundred barricades and a furious populace, King Louis-Philippe
abdicated and fled to England. A hastily formed provisional government declared
France a republic once again.
The new French republican government issued liberal reforms — an end to the
death penalty for political crimes, the abolition of slavery in the colonies, and freedom
of the press — and agreed to introduce universal adult male suffrage despite misgiv-
ings about political participation by peasants and unemployed workers. The govern-
ment allowed Paris officials to organize a system of “national workshops” to provide
the unemployed with construction work. To meet a mounting deficit, the provisional
government then levied a 45 percent surtax on property taxes, alienating peasants
and landowners.
While peasants grumbled, scores of newspapers and political clubs inspired grass-
roots democratic fervor in Paris and other cities. Meeting in concert halls, theaters,
and government auditoriums, the clubs became a regular evening attraction for the
citizenry. Women also formed clubs, published women’s newspapers, and demanded
representation in national politics.
This street-corner activism alarmed middle-class liberals and conservatives. Ten-
sion between the government and the workers in the national workshops rose. Faced
[1830–1850
with rising radicalism in Paris and other big cities, the voters elected a largely conserv-
ative National Assembly in April 1848; most of the deputies chosen were middle-class
professionals or landowners who favored either a restoration of the monarchy or a
moderate republic. The Assembly immediately appointed a five-man executive com-
mittee to run the government and pointedly excluded known supporters of workers’
rights. Suspicious of all demands for rapid change, the deputies dismissed a petition
to restore divorce and voted down woman suffrage by 899 to 1. When the numbers
enrolled in the national workshops in Paris rocketed from a predicted 10,000 to
110,000, the government ordered the workshops closed to new workers, and on June 21
it directed that those already enrolled move to the provinces or join the army.
The workers exploded in anger. In the June Days, as the following week came
to be called, the government forces crushed the workers: more than 10,000 people,
most of them workers, were killed or injured; 12,000 were arrested; and 4,000 even-
tually were convicted and deported to Algeria.
After the National Assembly adopted a new constitution calling for a presidential
election in which all adult men could vote, the electorate chose Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte (1808–1873), nephew of the dead emperor. Bonaparte got more than 5.5
million votes out of some 7.4 million cast. His election spelled the end of the Second
Republic, just as his uncle had dismantled the first one established in 1792. In 1852,
on the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I’s coronation as emperor, Louis-Napoleon
declared himself Emperor Napoleon III, thus inaugurating the Second Empire.
(Napoleon I’s son died and never became Napoleon II, but Napoleon III wanted to
create a sense of legitimacy and
so used the Roman numeral
III.) Although the revolution
of 1848 never had a period of
terror like that in 1793–1794,
it nonetheless ended in similar
fashion, with an authoritarian
government that tried to play
monarchists and republicans
off against each other.
The Violence of Revolution

Their red flag of revolt is all that is
left to these victims at a barricade
thrown up in Paris during the upris-
ing of June 1848. What was the
intention of artist Louis Adolphe
Hervier when he chose to paint this
scene? (Oil on panel by Louis Adolphe
Hervier / Private Collection / Archives
Charmet / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1830–1850
]
Nationalist Revolution in Italy
In January 1848, a revolt broke out in Palermo, Sicily, against the Bourbon ruler.
Then came the electrifying news of the February revolution in Paris. In Milan, a huge
nationalist demonstration quickly degenerated into battles between Austrian forces
and armed demonstrators. In Venice, an uprising drove out the Austrians. Peasants
in the south occupied large landowners’ estates. Artisans and workers called for
higher wages, restrictions on the use of machinery, and unemployment relief.
But class divisions and regional differences stood in the way of national unity.
Property owners, businessmen, and professionals wanted liberal reforms and national
unification under a conservative regime; intellectuals, workers, and artisans dreamed
of democracy and social reforms. Some nationalists favored a loose federation; others
wanted a monarchy under Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia; still others urged
rule by the pope; a few shared Giuseppe Mazzini’s
vision of a republic with a strong central govern- Under Austrian
control
ment. Many leaders of national unification spoke
standard Italian only as a second language; most Lombardy ene
tia
V
Piedmont
Italians spoke regional dialects.
As king of the most powerful Italian state, PAPAL
STATES
Charles Albert (r. 1831–1849) inevitably played a Corsica
(Fr.)
central role. After some hesitation caused by fears PIEDMONT-
SARDINIA
Rome
Naples
of French intervention, he led a military campaign
Sardinia
against Austria. Although Austrian troops defeated KINGDOM OF
THE TWO SICILIES
Charles Albert in the north, democratic and nation-
Sicily
alist forces prevailed at first in the south. In the 0 100 200 miles
fall, the Romans drove the pope from the city and 0 100 200 kilometers
declared Rome a republic. For the next few months,

The Divisions of Italy, 1848
republican leaders, such as Giuseppe Mazzini and
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), congregated in Rome to organize the new repub-
lic. These efforts faltered when foreign powers intervened. The new president of
France, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, sent an expeditionary force to secure the papal
throne for Pius IX. Mazzini and Garibaldi fled. Revolution had been defeated in Italy,
but the memory of the Roman Republic and the commitment to unification remained,
and they would soon emerge again with new force.
Revolt and Reaction in Central Europe

News of the revolution in Paris also provoked popular demonstrations in central and
eastern Europe. When the Prussian army tried to push back a crowd gathered in
front of Berlin’s royal palace on March 18, 1848, their actions provoked panic and
street fighting. The next day the crowd paraded wagons loaded with the dead bodies
of demonstrators under the window of the Prussian king Frederick William IV
(r. 1840–1860), forcing him to salute the victims killed by his own army. In a state
of near collapse, the king promised to call an assembly to draft a constitution.
[1830–1850
The goal of German unification soon took precedence over social reform or
constitutional changes within the separate states. In March and April, most of the
German states agreed to elect delegates to a federal parliament at Frankfurt that
would attempt to unite Germany. Local princes and even the more powerful kings
of Prussia and Bavaria seemed to totter. Yet the revolutionaries’ weaknesses soon
became apparent. The eight hundred delegates to the Frankfurt parliament had little
practical political experience and no access to an army. Unemployed artisans and
workers smashed machines; peasants burned landlords’ records and occasionally
attacked Jewish moneylenders; women set up clubs and newspapers to demand their
emancipation from “perfumed slavery.”
The advantage lay with the princes, who bided their time. While the Frankfurt
parliament laboriously prepared a liberal constitution for a united Germany — one
that denied self-determination to Czechs, Poles, and Danes within its proposed Ger-
man borders — Frederick William recovered his confidence. First, his army crushed
the revolution in Berlin in the fall of 1848. Prussian troops then intervened to help
other local rulers put down the last wave of democratic and nationalist insurrections
in the spring of 1849. When the Frankfurt parliament finally concluded its work,
offering the emperorship of a constitutional, federal Germany to the king of Prussia,
Frederick William contemptuously refused this “crown from the gutter.”
Events followed a similar course in the Austrian Empire. Just as Italians were
driving the Austrians out of their lands in northern Italy and Magyar nationalists
were demanding political autonomy for Hungary, a student-led demonstration for
political reform on March 13, 1848, in Vienna turned into rioting, looting, and machine
breaking. Metternich resigned, escaping to England in disguise. Emperor Ferdinand
promised a constitution, an elected parliament, and the end of censorship. The belea-
guered authorities in Vienna could not refuse Magyar demands for home rule, and
Stephen Széchenyi and Lajos Kossuth (see page 694) both became ministers in the
new Hungarian government. The Magyars were the largest ethnic group in Hungary
but still did not make up 50 percent of the population, which included Croats, Roma-
nians, Slovaks, and Slovenes, all of whom preferred Austrian rule to domination by
local Magyars.
The ethnic divisions in Hungary foreshadowed the many political and social divi-
sions that would doom the revolutionaries. Fears of peasant insurrection prompted the
Magyar nationalists around Kossuth to abolish serfdom, thereby alienating the largest
noble landowners. The new government infuriated the other nationalities when it
imposed the Magyar language on them. In Prague, Czech nationalists convened a Slav
congress as a counter to the Germans’ Frankfurt parliament and called for a reorgani-
zation of the Austrian Empire that would recognize the rights of ethnic minorities.
The Austrian government took advantage of these divisions. To quell peasant
discontent, it abolished all remaining peasant obligations to the nobility in March
1848. Rejoicing country folk soon lost interest in the revolution. Military force finally
broke up the revolutionary movements. The first blow fell in Prague in June 1848;
General Prince Alfred von Windischgrätz, the military governor, bombarded the city
[ 1830–1850
]
Revolutions of 1848 into submission when a demonstration led
to violence (including the shooting death
1848 of his wife, watching from a window).
January Uprising in Palermo, Sicily After another uprising in Vienna a few
February Revolution in Paris; proclamation months later, Windischgrätz marched sev-
of republic
enty thousand soldiers into the capital and
March Insurrections in Vienna, German set up direct military rule. In December,
cities, Milan, and Venice; autonomy
movement in Hungary; Charles the Austrian monarchy came back to life
Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia when the eighteen-year-old Francis Joseph
declares war on Austrian Empire (r. 1848–1916), unencumbered by prom-
May Frankfurt parliament opens ises extracted by the revolutionaries from
June Austrian army crushes revolutionary his now feeble uncle Ferdinand, assumed
movement in Prague; June Days the imperial crown after intervention by
end in defeat of workers in Paris
leading court officials. In the spring of
July Austrians defeat Charles Albert
and Italian forces
1849, the Austrian army teamed up with
Tsar Nicholas I, who marched into Hun-
November Insurrection in Rome
gary with more than 300,000 Russian
December Francis Joseph becomes Austrian
emperor; Louis-Napoleon is elected troops. Hungary was put under brutal
president in France martial law. Széchenyi went mad, and Kos-
1849 suth found refuge in the United States.
February Rome is declared a republic
April Frederick William of Prussia rejects
crown of united Germany offered
Aftermath to 1848:
by Frankfurt parliament Reimposing Authority
July Roman republic overthrown by Although the revolutionaries of 1848
French intervention
failed to achieve their goals, their efforts
August Russian and Austrian armies com- left a profound mark on the political and
bine to defeat Hungarian forces
social landscape. Between 1848 and 1851,
the French served a kind of republican
apprenticeship that prepared the population for another, more lasting republic after
1870. In Italy, the failure of unification did not stop the spread of nationalist ideas
and the rooting of demands for democratic participation. In the German states, the
revolutionaries of 1848 turned nationalism from an idea devised by professors and
writers into a popular enthusiasm and even a practical reality. The initiation of arti-
sans, workers, and journeymen into democratic clubs increased political awareness
in the lower classes and helped prepare them for broader political participation.
Almost all the German states had a constitution and a parliament after 1850. The
spectacular failures of 1848 thus hid some important underlying successes.
The absence of revolution in 1848 in some regions of the West was just as sig-
nificant as its presence. No revolution occurred in Great Britain, the Netherlands, or
Belgium, the three places where industrialization and urbanization had developed
most rapidly. In Great Britain, the Chartist movement mounted several gigantic
demonstrations to force Parliament into granting all adult males the vote. But even
[1830–1850
] Conclusion 703
though Parliament refused, no uprising occurred — in part because the government

had already proved its responsiveness: the middle classes in Britain had been co-
opted into the established order by the Reform Bill of 1832, and the working classes
had won parliamentary regulation of children’s and women’s work.
The other notable exception to revolution among the great powers was Russia,
where Tsar Nicholas I maintained a tight grip through police surveillance and cen-
sorship. The Russian schools, limited to the upper classes, taught Nicholas’s three
most cherished principles: autocracy (the unlimited power of the tsar), orthodoxy
(obedience to the church in religion and morality), and nationality (devotion to
Russian traditions). These provided no space for political dissent.
Although much had changed, the aristocracy remained the dominant power
almost everywhere. As army officers, aristocrats put down revolutionary forces. As
landlords, they continued to dominate the rural scene and control parliamentary
bodies. They also held many official positions in the state bureaucracies. As conserv-
atives returned to power, all signs of women’s political activism disappeared. The
French feminist movement, the most advanced in Europe, fell apart when, after the
June Days, the increasingly conservative republican government forbade women to
form political clubs and arrested and imprisoned two of the most outspoken women
leaders for their socialist activities. As rulers reimposed their authority in the years
after 1848, many socialists, communists,
and nationalists suffered a similar fate: if
they did not fall in battle or go to prison, REVIEW QUESTION Why did the revolutions of
they fled into exile, waiting for another 1848 fail?
opportunity to voice their demands.
Conclusion
In 1851, Europe’s most important female monarch presided over a midcentury cel-
ebration of peace and industrial growth that helped dampen the still-smoldering fires
of revolutionary passion. In the place of revolutionary fervor was a government-
sponsored spectacle of what industry, hard work, and technological imagination
could produce. Queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901), who herself promoted the notion of
domesticity as women’s sphere, opened the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations in London on May 1. A huge iron-and-glass building housed the dis-
play. Soon people referred to it as the Crystal Palace; its nine hundred tons of glass
created an aura of fantasy, and the abundant goods from around the world inspired
satisfaction and pride.
Many of the six million people who visited the Crystal Palace display traveled
on the new railroads, the foremost symbol of the age of industrial transformation.
Along with the railroads, the application of steam engines to textile manufacturing
set in motion a host of economic and social changes: cities burgeoned with rapidly
growing populations; factories concentrated laborers who formed a new working
class; manufacturers now challenged landed elites for political leadership; and social
[ 1830–1850
]
The Crystal Palace, 1851

George Baxter’s lithograph
(above) shows the exterior of
the main building for the Great
Exhibition of the Works of Indus-
try of All Nations in London. It
was designed by Sir Joseph
Paxton to gigantic dimensions:
1,848 feet long by 456 feet wide;
135 feet high; 772,784 square
feet of ground-floor area covering
no less than 18 acres. The litho-
graph by Peter Mabuse (left)
offers a view of one of the
colonial displays at the Great
Exhibition. The tented room and
carved ivory throne are meant
to recall India, Britain’s premier
colony. (Top: © Maidstone Museum
and Art Gallery, Kent, UK / Bridgeman
Images. Left: Private Collection / The
Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman
Images.)
problems galvanized reform organizations and governments alike. The Crystal Palace
presented the rosy view of modern, industrial, urban life, but the housing shortages,
inadequacy of water supplies, and recurrent epidemic diseases had not disappeared.
The revolutions of 1848 brought to the surface the profound tensions within a
European society in transition toward industrialization and urbanization. After
[ 1830–1850
] Conclusion 705
0 200 400 miles

SWEDEN AND NORWAY St. Petersburg
SCOTLAND
Glasgow
Moscow
Nor th
a
GREAT
Se
Sea c
IRELAND Leeds DENMARK lti
N Ba
Manchester
W BRITAIN Hamburg
E
IA RUSSIA
S London NETH.
Berlin U SS
PR
POLAND
BELGIUM
Ga
Frankfurt Prague Cracow
lic
Paris
ia
ATLAN TI C
OC EAN Munich AU S T R IA N
Vienna EMPIRE
F R A NC E SWITZ. AUSTRIA Pest
Buda
HUNGARY
Milan
Venice
PAPAL Black Sea

PORTUGAL STATES O
T
T
Lisbon
Madrid O
PIEDMONT- M Constantinople
SPAIN SARDINIA
Rome AN
EM
Naples PI
KINGDOM RE
OF THE
TWO SICILIES
Growth of European Population, GREECE
Palermo
percent increase,
c. 1800–1850
Over 80
60–79
40–59
20–39 M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Under 20
Little or no population data available
Cities of more than 1 million
Boundary of German Confederation

This map of population growth between 1800 and 1850 reveals important trends that would
not otherwise be evident. Although population growth correlated for the most part with industri-
alization, population also grew in more agricultural regions such as East Prussia, Poland, and
Ireland. Ireland’s rapid population growth in the early nineteenth century does not appear on
this map because the famine of 1846–1851 killed more than 10 percent of the population and
forced many others to emigrate.
them, the Industrial Revolution continued and workers developed more extensive
organizations. Confronted with the menace of revolution, conservative elites now
sought alternatives that would be less threatening to the established order and still
permit some change. This search for alternatives became immediately evident in the
question of national unification in Germany and Italy. National unification would
hereafter depend not on speeches and parliamentary resolutions, but rather on what
the Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck would call “iron and blood.”
Chapter 21 Review
ideology (p. 674) Opium War (p. 690) communists (p. 696)
Industrial Revolution (p. 674) nationalism (p. 691) Chartism (p. 697)
urbanization (p. 680) Giuseppe Mazzini (p. 691) Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
George Sand (p. 685) liberalism (p. 693) (p. 699)
domesticity (p. 688) Corn Laws (p. 694)
imperialism (p. 689) socialism (p. 695)
Review Questions
1. What dangers did the Industrial Revolution pose to both urban and rural life?
2. In which areas did reformers trying to address the social problems created by industriali-
zation and urbanization succeed, and in which did they fail?
3. Why did ideologies have such a powerful appeal in the 1830s and 1840s?
4. Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail?
Making Connections
1. Which of the ideologies of this period had the greatest impact on political events? How can
you explain this?
2. In what ways might industrialization be considered a force for peaceful change rather than
a revolution? (Hint: Think about the situation in Great Britain.)
3. In what ways did the revolutions of 1848 repeat elements of the French revolutions in
1789 and 1830, and in what ways did they break with those precedents?
4. Neither Great Britain nor Russia had a revolution in 1848. How is the absence of revolu-
tion in those two countries related to their history in the preceding decades?
The spread of industrialization has elicited much more historical interest than the process of
urbanization because the analysis of industrialization occupied a central role in Marxism. The
Web site Gallica, produced by the National Library of France, offers a wealth of imagery and
information on French cultural history.
Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle
Class, 1780–1850. 2002.
Hanes, W. Travis, and Frank Sanello. The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the
Corruption of Another. 2004.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. 1996.
Jacob, Margaret C. The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy,
1750–1850. 2014.
Jones, Peter. The 1848 Revolutions. 2013.
Kinealy, Christine. Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland. 2009.
*Primary source.
706
[1830–1850
Important Events
1830–1832 Cholera epidemic sweeps across Europe

1830 France invades and begins conquest of Algeria
1832 George Sand, Indiana
1833 Factory Act regulates work of children in Great Britain; abolition of slavery
in British Empire
1834 German Zollverein is established under Prussian leadership
1835 Belgium opens first continental railway built with state funds
1839 Beginning of Opium War; invention of photography
1841 Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
1846 Famine strikes Ireland; Corn Laws are repealed in England; peasant
insurrection in Austrian province of Galicia
1848 Revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe; last great wave of Chartist
demonstrations in Britain; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto; abolition of slavery in French colonies; end of serfdom in
Austrian Empire
1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London
Consider three events: Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Revolutions of
1848 throughout Europe (1848), and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (1848). How do these events represent different responses to the changes
wrought by the Industrial Revolution?
Kostantaras, Dean J. Nationalism and Revolution in Europe, 1815–1848. 2010.

Lees, Andrew, and Lynn Hollen Lees. Cities and the Making of Modern Europe, 1750–1914. 2007.
*Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto: With Related Documents. Ed. John E.
Toews. 1848; repr. 1999.
*Pollard, S., and C. Holmes. Documents of European Economic History. Vol. 1, The Process of
Industrialization, 1750–1870. 1968.
Sessions, Jennifer Elson. By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria. 2011.
Sked, Alan. Metternich and Austria: An Evaluation. 2008.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. 1964.
*Tocqueville, Alexis de. Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848. Eds. J. P. Mayer and A. P.
Kerr. 2009.
Politics and Culture
22
of the Nation-State
1850–1870
I
n 1859, the name VERDI suddenly appeared scrawled on walls across the cities
of the Italian peninsula. The graffiti seemed to celebrate the composer Giuseppe
Verdi, whose operas thrilled crowds of Europeans. Among Italians, Verdi was a
particular hero; his stories of downtrodden groups struggling against tyrannical gov-
ernment seemed to refer specifically to them. As his operatic choruses thundered
out calls to rebellion in the name of the nation, Italian audiences were sure that Verdi
was telling them to throw off Austrian and papal rule and unite in a newborn Roman
Empire. VERDI also formed an acronym for
Vittorio Emmanuele Re d’Italia (“Victor
Aïda Poster Emmanuel, King of Italy”), and in 1859 it sum-
Aïda (1871), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera
moned Italians to unite under Victor Emman-
of human passion and state power
among people of different nations, uel II, king of Sardinia and Piedmont — the one
became a staple of Western culture, Italian leader with a nationalist, modernizing
bringing people across Europe into profile. The graffiti was good publicity, for the
a common cultural orbit. Written to very next year Italy united as a result of warfare
celebrate the opening of the Suez and hard bargaining by political realists.
Canal, Aïda also celebrated the
improvement of Europe’s access to
After the failed revolutions of 1848, Euro-
Asian resources provided by the new pean statesmen and the politically aware pub-
waterway. The opera was a prime lic increasingly rejected idealism in favor of
example of the surge of interest Realpolitik — a politics of tough-minded real-
in Egyptian styles and objects that ism aimed at strengthening the state and tight-
followed the opening of the canal.
(© Lordprice Collection / Alamy.)
ening social order. Realpolitikers disliked the
romanticism of the revolutionaries. Instead, they
put their faith in power politics and even the use
of violence to attain their goals. Two particularly skilled practitioners of Realpolitik, the
Italian Camillo di Cavour and the Prussian Otto von Bismarck, succeeded in unifying
Italy and Germany not by romantic slogans but by war and diplomacy. Most leading
figures of the 1850s and 1860s, enmeshed like Verdi’s operatic heroes in power politics,
strengthened their states by harnessing the forces of nationalism and liberalism that
had led to earlier romantic revolts. Their achievements changed the face of Europe.
709
710 Chapter 22 Politics and Culture of the Nation-State
[ 1850–1870
]
Making a modern nation-state was a complicated task. Economic development
was also crucial, as was using government policy and culture to create a sense of
national identity and common purpose. Governments took vigorous steps to improve
rapidly growing cities, promote public health, and boost national loyalty. State institu-
tions such as public schools helped establish a common fund of knowledge and politi-
cal beliefs. Authoritarian leaders like Bismarck and the new French emperor Napo-
leon III believed that a better quality of life would not only make the state more stable
by calming revolutionary impulses of years past but also silence liberal critics.
Culture built a sense of belonging. Reading novels, attending operas and art
exhibitions, and visiting the newly fashionable world’s fairs gave ordinary people a
stronger sense of being French or German or British. Like politicians, artists and
writers also came to reject romanticism, featuring instead harsher, more realistic
aspects of everyday life. Artists painted nudes in shockingly blunt ways, eliminating
romantic hues and dreamy poses. Authors wrote about the bleak life of soldiers in
wartime or about ordinary people suffering poverty or turning to crime. Alongside
the tough-minded nation-building policies there arose tough-minded art, not just
mirroring Realpolitik but encouraging it.
In their quest to build strong nations, Western politicians did not shy away from
using violence or causing harm. They sent armies to distant areas to stamp out
resistance to their continuing global expansion. At home, governments uprooted
neighborhoods to construct public buildings, roads, and parks. The process of nation
building was often brutal, bringing foreign wars, arrests, and even civil war — all
the centerpieces of many Verdi operas. In 1871, an uprising of Parisians challenged
the central government’s intrusion into everyday life and its failure to count the
costs. Thus, for the most part, the powerful
Western nation-state did not arise sponta-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did political, inter-
neously. Instead, its growth and the tighter
national, societal, and cultural developments
in individual countries and across Europe in unification of peoples depended on shrewd
the mid-nineteenth century help create and policy, deliberate warfare, and new inroads
strengthen nation states? into societies around the world — which
together formed the basis of Realpolitik.
The End of the Concert of Europe

The revolutions of 1848 had weakened the concert of Europe and thus allowed the
forces of nationalism to flourish. It became more difficult for countries to control their
competing ambitions and act together. In addition, the dreaded revival of Bonapartism
in the person of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808–1873), the nephew of Napoleon I,
added to European instability as France reasserted itself. One of Louis-Napoleon’s
targets was Russia, formerly a mainstay of the concert of Europe. To limit Russia’s
and Austria’s grip on power, France helped engineer the Crimean War, which not
only changed the distribution of European power but also resulted in the end of
serfdom in Russia and the birth of new European nations.
[1850–1870
] The End of the Concert of Europe 711
Napoleon III and the Quest for French Glory

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who declared himself Napoleon III in 1852, encouraged
the cult of his famous uncle as part of nation building, showing Europe’s leaders how
to combine economic liberalism and nationalism with authoritarian rule. He claimed
to represent people’s “families, your property — rich and poor alike,” but he closed
cafés where men might discuss politics and established a rubber-stamp legislature,
the Corps législatif, that made representative government a charade. Napoleon’s opu-
lent court dazzled the public, while his wife, Empress Eugénie, followed middle-class
norms by playing up her domestic role as devoted mother to her only son and sup-
porting many charities. The authoritarian, apparently old-fashioned order imposed
by Napoleon showed that the radicalism of 1848 was under control.
Napoleon III was nonetheless a modernizer. He promoted a strong economy and
public works programs that provided jobs. The magnificent rebuilding of Paris made
France prosper as Europe recovered from the hard times of the late 1840s. Empress
Eugénie wore lavish gowns, encouraging French silk production. The regime also
reached a free-trade agreement with Britain and backed the establishment of inno-
vative investment banks. Railway mileage increased fivefold during Napoleon III’s
reign. During the economic downturn of the late 1850s, he wooed support by allow-
ing working-class organizations to form and introducing features of democratic
government.
Napoleon III and Eugénie Receive the Siamese Ambassadors, 1864

At a splendid gathering of their court, the emperor Napoleon III, his consort Eugénie, and their
son and heir greet ambassadors from Siam, whose exoticism and servility before the imperial
family are the centerpiece of this depiction by Jean-Léon Gerome. How might a middle-class
French citizen have reacted to this scene? (Chateau de Versailles, France / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1850–1870
]
On the international scene, Napoleon III’s main goals were to overcome the con-
tainment of France imposed by the Congress of Vienna and to acquire international
glory like a true Bonaparte. To reshape European politics in France’s favor, Napoleon
pitted France first against Russia in the Crimean War and then against Austria in
the War of Italian Unification (1860–1861). Napoleon also looked beyond Europe.
In Algeria and Southeast Asia, his army struggled to enforce French rule. In Mexico,
he attempted to install Maximilian, the brother of Habsburg emperor Francis Joseph,
as emperor. In Egypt, he successfully encouraged the construction of the Suez Canal
to connect the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Overall, his foreign policy broke
down the international order established at the Congress of Vienna.
The Crimean War, 1853–1856: Turning Point in European Affairs

Napoleon III first flexed his diplomatic muscle in the Crimean War (1853–1856),
which began as a conflict between the Russian and Ottoman Empires but ended as
a war with long-lasting consequences for much of Europe. While professing to uphold
the status quo, Russia had been expanding into Asia and the Middle East. In particu-
lar, Tsar Nicholas I wanted territory in the Ottoman Empire, and Napoleon encour-
aged Nicholas to be even more aggressive in his expansionism — a maneuver that
provoked war in October 1853 between the two eastern empires (Map 22.1).
The war drew in other states and upset Europe’s balance of power as set in the
Congress of Vienna. Napoleon III convinced Austria to remain neutral during the
war, thus splitting the conservative Russian-Austrian coalition that had checked
French ambitions since 1815. The Austrian government was concerned that the defeat
of the Ottomans would bring Russian expansion into the Balkans. To protect its Medi-
terranean routes to East Asia, Britain prodded the Ottomans to stand up to Russia,
but in the fall of 1853, the Russians blasted the Turkish wooden ships to bits at the
0 100 200 miles

RUS S I A 0 100 200 kilometers
Mo
lda
AUSTRIAN
via
EMPIRE Sevastopol Crimea

1854–55 Balaklava
1854
Wallachia Ceded to
R . Moldavia by Black Sea MAP 22.1 The Crimean War,
D a nu b e
T S Russia, 1856
.
M 1853–1856
K AN Sinope
B AL 1853 The most destructive war in Europe
MONTENEGRO Constantinople
O
N between the Napoleonic Wars and World
T T Straits of
O M Dardanelles E War I, the Crimean War drew attention
A N E W
M P I R E to the conflicting ambitions around ter-
S
GREECE ritories of the declining Ottoman Empire.
The war fractured the alliance of con-
Russian attack servative forces from the Congress of
Allied attack Vienna, allowing Italy and Germany to
Mediterranean Sea
come into being as unified states.
[
1850–1870
Ottoman port of Sinope on the Black Sea. The Russians justified their actions as a
necessary defense of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In 1854, France and Great
Britain, though enemies in war for more than a century, allied to declare war on
Russia and defend the Ottoman Empire.
The Crimean War was spectacularly bloody. British and French troops landed in
the Crimea in September 1854 and waged a long siege of the Russian naval base at
Sevastopol, which fell only after a year of savage and costly combat. Generals on both
sides demonstrated their incompetence, and governments failed to provide combat-
ants with even minimal supplies, sanitation, or medical care. Hospitals had no beds,
no dishes, and no water. A million men died, more than two-thirds from disease or
starvation.
In the midst of this unfolding catastrophe, Alexander II (r. 1855–1881) ascended
the Russian throne after the death of Nicholas I, his father. With casualties mounting,
the new tsar asked for peace. As a result of the Peace of Paris, signed in March 1856,
Russia lost the right to base its navy in the Strait of Dardanelles and the Black Sea,
which were declared neutral waters. Moldavia and Wallachia (which soon merged
to form Romania) became autonomous Turkish provinces under the victors’ protec-
tion, drastically reducing Russian influence in that region, too.
The Crimean War was full of consequence. New technologies were introduced
into warfare: the railroad, shell-firing cannons, breech-loading rifles, and steam-
powered ships. The telegraph and increased press coverage brought news from the
Crimean front lines to home audiences more rapidly and in more detail than ever
before. Reports of incompetent leadership, poor sanitation, and the huge death toll
outraged the public, inspiring some civilians, such as the British nurse Florence
Nightingale, to head for the front lines to help. Nightingale seized the moment to
escape the confines of middle-class domesticity by organizing a battlefield nursing
service to care for the British sick and wounded. (See the illustration on page 714.)
Through her tough-minded organization of nursing units, she pioneered nursing as a
profession and made sanitary conditions for soldiers a new and permanent priority.
More immediately, the war accomplished Napoleon III’s goal of severing the
alliance between Austria and Russia, the two conservative powers on which the Con-
gress of Vienna peace settlement had rested since 1815. It thus ended Austria’s and
Russia’s grip on European affairs and undermined their ability to contain the forces
of liberalism and nationalism.
Reform in Russia
Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War also made clear the need for meaningful reform.
Hundreds of peasant insurrections had erupted in the decade before the war. “Our
own and neighboring households were gripped with fear,” one aristocrat reported. The
Russian economy stagnated compared with that of western Europe. Old-fashioned
farming techniques depleted soil and led to food shortages, and the nobility often
ignored the suffering caused by malnutrition and hard labor. When Russia lost the
[ 1850–1870
]
Nurse Tending Wounded Man

The Crimean War exposed the backward, and lethal, sanitary conditions of warfare — conditions
that became intolerable to nation-states concerned with the well-being of their citizen soldiers.
Women’s contribution as nurses during both the Crimean War (shown in this photograph) and
the U.S. Civil War helped rectify the situation, but voluntary assistance was not enough to
prevent horrific death rates from disease and lack of coordinated medical attention. (Private
Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library International.)
Crimean War, the educated public, including some government officials, found the
poor performance of serf armies a disgrace and the system of serf labor a glaring
weakness.
Confronted with the need for change, Tsar Alexander II acted. Well educated and
more widely traveled than his father, Alexander ushered in what came to be known
as the Great Reforms. These granted Russians new rights from above as a way of
preventing violent action from below. The most dramatic reform was the emancipa-
tion of almost fifty million serfs beginning in 1861. By the terms of emancipation,
communities of newly freed serfs, headed by male village elders, received grants of
land. The community itself, traditionally called a mir, had full power to allocate this
land among individuals and to direct their economic activity. Communal landown-
ing and decision making meant that individual peasants could not simply sell their
parcel of land and leave their rural communities to work in factories, as laborers had
been doing elsewhere in Europe.
[1850–1870
In Russia peasants were not given land along with their personal freedom: they
were forced to “redeem” the land they farmed by paying off long-term loans from
the government, which in turn compensated the original landowners. The best land
remained in the hands of the nobility, and the huge burden of debt and communal
regulations slowed Russian agricultural development for decades. Even so, idealistic
reformers believed that the emancipation of the serfs, once treated by the nobility
virtually as livestock, had produced miraculous results. As one of them put it, “The
people are without any exaggeration transfigured from head to foot. . . . The look,
the walk, the speech, everything is changed.”
The Russian state also reformed local administration, the judiciary, and the
military. The government set up zemstvos — regional councils — through which aris-
tocrats could control local affairs such as education, public health, and welfare.
Zemstvos became a new political force with the potential for challenging the authori-
tarian central government. Some aristocrats took advantage of newly relaxed rules
on travel to see how the rest of Europe was governed. Their vision broadened as they
observed different ways of solving social and economic problems. The principle of
equality of all persons before the law, regardless of social rank, was introduced in Rus-
sia for the first time as judicial reform gave all Russians access to modern civil courts.
Military reform followed in 1874 when the government reduced the twenty-five-year
Emancipation of the Russian Serfs

This trading card was used as a marketing gimmick to promote canned meat. Cards like these
were given away by the thousands and traded just as baseball cards are today. Historical
scenes were popular subjects for the cards — this one shows the 1861 emancipation of the
serfs in Russia. Note that the caption is in French, the language of the European upper classes,
including those in Russia, who would have consumed this product. The emancipation is pre-
sented as a wholly beneficial act with no strings attached. (Mary Evans Picture Library.)
[ 1850–1870
]
period of service to a six-year term and began focusing on educating troops in an
effort to match the efficiency and fitness of soldiers in western Europe.
Alexander’s reforms helped landowners be more effective in the market even as
they reduced the privileges of the nobility, weakening their authority and sparking
family conflict. “An epidemic seemed to seize upon [noble] children . . . an epidemic
of fleeing from the parental roof,” one observer noted. Rejecting aristocratic leisure,
youthful rebels from the upper class valued practical activity and sometimes identi-
fied with peasants and workers instead of their own class. Some formed communes
in which they hoped to do humble manual labor; others turned to higher education,
especially the sciences. Daughters of the nobility opposed their parents, escaping
from home through phony marriages so they could study in western European uni-
versities. This rejection of traditional society led some to label these young people
as nihilists (from the Latin for “nothing”) — implying a lack of belief in any values
whatsoever. In fact, however, the so-called nihilists represented a defiant spirit per-
colating not just at the bottom but also at the top of Russian society.
The atmosphere of change also inspired resistance among the more than one
hundred Russian-dominated ethnic groups in the Russian Empire. Aristocratic and
upper-class nationalist Poles staged an uprising in 1863, demanding full national
independence for their country. By 1864, however, Alexander II’s army had crushed
them. The government then swiftly clamped down on other nationalist uprisings and
enforced Russification — a tactic meant to reduce the threat of future rebellion by
insisting that ethnic minorities within the empire adopt Russian language and cul-
ture. Despite these measures, the tsarist regime only partially succeeded in develop-
ing the administrative, economic, and civic institutions that made the nation-state
strong elsewhere in Europe, allowing few to share in power. In imperial Russia,
autocracy and continued abuse of many in
the population slowed the development of
REVIEW QUESTION What were the main the sense of common citizenship forming
results of the Crimean War? elsewhere in the West, while the urge to
revolt grew.
War and Nation Building

Dynamic leaders in the German and Italian states used the opportunity provided by
the weakened concert of Europe to unify their fragmented countries through war-
fare. When national disunity threatened, the United States waged a bloody civil war,
which opened the way for further expansion and vigorous economic growth. The
rise of powerful nation-states such as Italy, Germany, and the United States was
accompanied by a sense of pride in national identity — or nationalism — among their
peoples. This was not an inevitable or universal trend in the West, however. Millions
of individuals in the Austrian Empire, Ireland, and elsewhere maintained a regional,
local, or distinct ethnic identity even as the nation-state was strengthening and
national sentiment was on the rise.
[1850–1870
] War and Nation Building 717
Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Process of Italian Unification

Despite the failure of the revolutions of 1848, hope for national unification remained
strong in the Italian states, aided by diplomatic instability across Europe. The prag-
matic Camillo di Cavour (1810–1861), prime minister of the kingdom of Piedmont-
Sardinia from 1852 until his death, had a Realpolitiker’s vision of how to unify the
Italian states. A rebel in his youth, Cavour in his maturity organized steamship com-
panies, played the stock market, and inhaled the heady air of modernization during
his travels to Paris and London. He promoted economic development rather than
idealistic uprisings as the means to achieve a united Italy. As a skilled prime minister,
Cavour helped King Victor Emmanuel II (r. Piedmont-Sardinia 1849–1861, r. Italy
1861–1878) achieve a strong Piedmontese economy and a modern army as the foun-
dation for Piedmont’s claim to lead the unification process (Map 22.2).
To unify Italy, however, Piedmont would have to confront Austria, which gov-
erned the northern provinces of Lombardy and Venetia and exerted strong influence
over most of the peninsula. Cavour turned for help to Napoleon III, who promised
French assistance in exchange for the city of Nice and the region of Savoy. Napo-
leon III expected that France rather than Austria would then influence the peninsula
thereafter. Sure of French help, Cavour provoked the Austrians to invade northern
Italy in April 1859. The cause of Piedmont-Sardinia’s monarchy now became the
cause of nationalist Italians everywhere, even those who had supported romantic
republicanism in 1848. The French and Piedmontese armies used the newly built Pied-
montese railroad to move troops,
thereby achieving rapid victories.
Napoleon, suddenly fearing the
growth of Piedmont as a potential
competing force, independently
signed a peace treaty with Austria
that gave Lombardy, but not Vene-
tia, to Piedmont. The rest of Italy
remained disunited, leaving Cavour’s
nationalist ambitions still to be
realized.
Seamstresses of the Red Shirts

Sewing uniforms and making battle
flags, European women like these Italian
volunteers saw themselves as contribu-
tors to the nation. Many nineteenth-
century women participated in nation
building as “republican mothers” by
donating their domestic skills and rais-
ing the next generation of citizens to
be patriotic. (By Odoardo Borrani [1834–
1905] / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1850–1870
]
0 100 200 miles

SWITZERLAND
Savoy AUSTRIAN EMPIRE

FRANCE Lombardy Venetia
Milan Venice
Magenta
1859 Solferino
Ceded to 1859
France Parma
in 1860 Genoa
Modena
Nice
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
es
Florence
at
Tuscany A
al St
dr
ia
ti
P ap
c
Se
Corsica a
(Fr.)
PIEDMONT- Rome
SARDINIA
Naples
Tyrrhenian
Sea
KINGDOM
OF THE
TWO SICILIES
Piedmont-Sardinia before 1859
to Piedmont-Sardinia, 1859
N
to Piedmont-Sardinia, 1860
W
to kingdom of Italy, 1866 Sicily E
to kingdom of Italy, 1870 S
Boundary of kingdom of Italy
after unification
Route of Garibaldi’s Thousand, 1860 Mediterranean Sea
Battle
MAP 22.2 Unification of Italy, 1859–1870

The many states of the Italian peninsula had different languages, ways of life, and economic
interests. The northern kingdom of Sardinia, which included the commercially advanced state
of Piedmont, had much to gain from a unified market and a more extensive pool of labor.
Although the armies of King Victor Emmanuel II and Giuseppe Garibaldi brought the Italian
states together as a single country, it would take decades to construct a culturally, socially,
and economically unified nation.
Napoleon III’s plan to keep Italy disunited was soon derailed. Support for Pied-
mont continued to swell among Italians. Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), a commit-
ted republican and veteran of the revolutions of 1848, set sail from Genoa in May
1860 with a thousand red-shirted volunteers (many of them teenage boys) to liberate
Sicily. In the autumn of that year, King Victor Emmanuel II’s victorious forces
descending from the north and Garibaldi’s moving up from the south met in Naples.
[1850–1870
Garibaldi threw his support to the king, and in 1861, the kingdom of Italy was pro-
claimed with Victor Emmanuel as its ruler.
Exhausted by a decade of overwork, Cavour died within months of leading
the unification, leaving lesser men to organize the new Italy. The task ahead was
enormous and complex: there was still no common Italian language; 90 percent of
the peninsula’s inhabitants spoke local dialects. Moreover, consensus among Italy’s
elected political leaders was often difficult to reach after the war, and admirers of
Cavour, such as Verdi (who had been made a senator), quit the quarrelsome political
stage. Politicians from the wealthy commercial north and the impoverished agricul-
tural south disagreed over issues like taxation and development, as they often do
even today. Finally, Italian borders did not yet seem complete because Venetia and
Rome remained outside them, under Austrian and French control, respectively.
Holding the new nation together amid these difficulties was the romanticized retell-
ing of the Italian struggle for freedom from foreign and domestic tyrants under the
daring leadership of Garibaldi and his Red Shirts — a legend that papered over
Cavour’s economic and military Realpolitik.
Bismarck and the Realpolitik of German Unification

The most momentous act of nation building for Europe and the world was the cre-
ation of a united Germany in 1871 under Prussian leadership. The architect of the
unified Germany was Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). Bismarck came from a tra-
ditional Junker (Prussian landed nobility) family on his father’s side; his mother’s
family included high-ranking bureaucrats. At university, the young Bismarck had
gambled and womanized. After failing in the civil service, he worked to modernize
operations on his landholdings while leading an otherwise decadent life. His mar-
riage to a pious Lutheran woman gave him new seriousness. In the 1850s, his dip-
lomatic service to the Prussian state made him increasingly angry at the Habsburg
grip on German affairs. Establishing Prussia as the dominant German power became
Bismarck’s goal.
In 1862, William I (king of Prussia, r. 1861–1888; German emperor, r. 1871–
1888) appointed Bismarck prime minister in hopes that he would crush the growing
power of the liberals in the Prussian parliament. The liberals, representing the pros-
perous professional and business classes, had gained parliamentary strength at the
expense of conservative landowners during the decades of industrial expansion.
Indeed, the liberals’ wealth was crucial to the Prussian state’s power, but liberals
wanted Prussia to be like other parts of western Europe, with political rights for citi-
zens and increased civilian control of the military. William I, along with members
of the traditional Prussian elite such as Bismarck, rejected the western European
model. Acting on his conservative beliefs, Bismarck simply rammed through pro-
grams to build the army and prevent civilian control. “Germany looks not to Prussia’s
liberalism, but to its power,” he proclaimed. “The great questions of the day will not
[ 1850–1870
]
King William I of Prussia and His Generals

Realpolitik politicians used warfare to create new nations like the unified Germany, which led
other states in using up-to-date weaponry and transportation. Nonetheless, horses, swords, and
flashing helmets such as those worn by King William I and the generals of Prussia were still a
major feature of developing modern warfare. (Private Collection / @Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images.)
be settled by speeches and majority decisions — that was the great mistake of 1848
and 1849 — but by iron and blood.”
After his triumph over the parliament, Bismarck led Prussia into a series of wars:
against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870. Using war as a politi-
cal tactic, he kept the disunited German states from choosing Austrian leadership
and instead united them around Prussia. Bismarck drew Austria into the 1864 war
over Denmark’s proposed incorporation of the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein,
with their partially German population. The Prussian-Austrian victory resulted in
an agreement that Prussia would administer Schleswig, and Austria, Holstein. That
arrangement stretched Austria’s geographic interests far from its central European
base: “We were very honorable, but very dumb,” Emperor Francis Joseph later said
of being drawn into the Schleswig-Holstein debacle.
Austria proved weaker than Prussia, because the Austrian empire lagged in eco-
nomic development. Bismarck, however, so encouraged Austria’s pretensions to gran-
deur that it disputed the administration of Schleswig and Holstein and in the summer
[ 1850–1870
of 1866 confidently declared war on Prussia itself. Within seven weeks, the modern-
ized Prussian army won a decisive victory that allowed Bismarck to drive Austria
from the German Confederation and create the North German Confederation, led
by Prussia (Map 22.3).
To bring the remaining German states into Prussia’s expanding orbit, Bismarck
next provoked France into war. The atmosphere became charged when Spain pro-
posed a Prussian prince to fill its vacant royal throne. This candidacy at once threat-
ened France with Prussian rulers on two of its borders and inflated Prussian pride
at the possibility of its own princes ruling grand states. To get nationalist sentiments
onto the news pages in both countries, Bismarck edited a diplomatic communication
0 100 200 miles

SWEDEN N
DE NMA RK B al t i c S e a W
E
S
Schleswig Danzig
N or t h
Sea Kiel
Lübeck
Holstein
Hamburg
El Mecklenburg
Bremen be
R.
Oldenburg
Hanover A Warsaw
Berlin I
V is
Amsterdam Hanover
S
tul
NETHERLANDS S
aR
U
.
R U SSI A
P R POLAND
Ruh Ode
rR Leipzig rR
Antwerp . .
Dresden
E
Cologne
BELGIUM Weimar
Silesia
R
KINGDOM OF
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I
Ems P
M
Frankfurt
Prague E
Luxembourg
R.
Prussia in 1862
Rhine
KINGDOM OF Conquered by Prussia in

Lorraine BAVARIA Austro-Prussian War, 1866
Württemberg Da United with Prussia as North
nub German Confederation, 1867
e R.
e
Vienna
ac
Munich
United with Prussia to form
FRANCE
Als
Baden Lake N German Empire, 1871

Constance A
I Annexed after Franco-
R R
.
Prussian War, 1871

In
n
T
S German Confederation boundary,
SWITZERLAND U 1815–1866
A
Bismarck’s German Empire, 1871
MAP 22.3 Unification of Germany, 1862–1871

In a complex series of diplomatic maneuvers, Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck welded dis-
united kingdoms and small states into a major continental power independent of the other dom-
inant German dynasty, the Habsburg monarchy. That unity almost immediately unleashed the
new nation’s economic and industrial potential, but an aristocratic and agrarian elite remained
firmly in power.
[ 1850–1870
]
to make it look as if the king of Prussia had insulted France over the issue of the
vacant throne. Publication of the revised telegram inflamed the French into demand-
ing war. The parliament gladly declared it on July 19, 1870, launching the Franco-
Prussian War. The Prussians captured Napoleon III with his army on September 2,
1870, and France’s Second Empire fell two days later.
A new French government struggled to carry on, and as Prussian forces besieged
Paris, in January 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, King William of Prussia
was proclaimed kaiser (“emperor”) of the new German Reich (“empire”). The peace
terms ending the Franco-Prussian War, signed in May, required France to cede the
rich industrial provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and to pay a multibillion-
franc indemnity. Without French protection for the papacy, Rome became part of
Italy. Germany was now poised to dominate continental politics.
Prussian military might served as the foundation for German nation building,
and a complex constitution for the German Empire ensured the continued political
dominance of the aristocracy and monarchy — despite the growing wealth and influ-
ence of the liberal business classes. Kaiser William, who remained Prussia’s king,
controlled the military and appointed Bismarck to the powerful position of chancel-
lor for the Reich. Individual German states were represented in a council called the
Bundesrat, while the Reichstag was an assembly elected by universal male suffrage.
The Reichstag ratified all budgets but had little power to initiate programs. In
framing this political settlement, Bismarck accorded rights such as suffrage in the
belief that the masses would uphold conservatism and the monarchy out of their
fear of modernizing, exploitative businessmen. Taking no chances, he balanced this
move with an electoral system in Prussia in which the votes from the upper classes
counted more than those from the lower. He had little to fear from liberals, how-
ever. Dizzy with German military success, liberals came to support the blend of eco-
nomic progress, constitutional government, and militaristic nationalism that Bismarck
represented.
Francis Joseph and the Creation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy

The Austrian monarchy took a different approach to nation building, proving that
there was no one blueprint for the modern nation-state. The confrontations with
Cavour and Bismarck left the Habsburg Empire struggling to keep its standing in a
rapidly changing Europe. The young monarch Francis Joseph (r. 1848–1916) favored
absolutist rule and enhanced his authority through stiff court ceremonies, playing to
the popular fascination with celebrity and power. Though the emperor resisted
reform, official standards of honesty and efficiency improved, and the government
promoted local education. The administration used the German language and the
schools taught it, but the government respected the rights of national minorities —
Czechs and Poles, for instance — to receive education and communicate with officials
in their native tongues. Above all, the government boosted railway construction,
attracted foreign capital, and helped trade to flow by abolishing most internal cus-
[1850–1870
toms barriers. Like Paris, the capital city of Vienna GERMAN RUSSIA
STATES
underwent extensive rebuilding, and industrializa-
AUSTRIA
tion progressed, if unevenly.
Vienna
In the fast-moving nineteenth century, the Buda
Pest
HUNGARY
absolutist Austrian emperor Francis Joseph could
not match Bismarck in nation building. Too much ITALY
R.
D a n u be
of the old regime remained as a roadblock: the 0 100 200 miles
OTTOMAN
Catholic church controlled education and civil insti- 0 100 200 kilometers EMPIRE
tutions such as marriage, prosperous liberals lacked
The Austro-Hungarian
representation in such important policy matters as Monarchy, 1867
taxation and finance, and police informers swarmed
around them. Wanting truly representative government and free speech, the liberals
prevented measures — such as providing funds for modernizing the military — that
would have strengthened the reactionary government in Austria. Unlike Bismarck
in Prussia, there was no one to override the liberals to bring about change.
After Prussia’s 1866 victory over Austria, the vast, wealthy kingdom of Hungary
became the key to the Habsburg Empire’s existence. The leaders of the Hungarian
agrarian elites forced the Austrian emperor to accept a dual monarchy — that is, one
in which the Magyars had home rule over the Hungarian kingdom within the
Habsburg lands. This agreement restored the Hungarian parliament and gave it con-
trol of internal policy (including the right to decide how to treat Hungary’s ethnic
minorities). Although the Habsburg emperor Francis Joseph was king of Hungary
and Austro-Hungarian foreign policy was coordinated from Vienna, the Hungarians
mostly ruled themselves after 1867, weakening the process of nation building in the
empire.
Although designed specifically to address the Hungarian demands, the dual mon-
archy led to claims by Czechs, Slovaks, and other national groups in the Habsburg
Empire for a similar kind of self-rule. Czechs who had helped the empire advance
industrially, for example, wanted Hungarian-style liberties. Other leaders of dissat-
isfied ethnic groups turned to Pan-Slavism — that is, the loyalty of all ethnic Slavs
across national boundaries. Instead of looking toward Vienna, they turned to the
largest Slavic country — Russia — as key to achieving the unity of all Slavs. With so
many competing ethnicities, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy remained a dynastic
state in which people could show loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty but had difficulty
relating to one another as members of a single nation.
Political Stability through Gradual Reform in Great Britain

In contrast to the turmoil on the continent, Great Britain appeared the ideal of liberal
progress. By the 1850s, the monarchy symbolized domestic tranquility and propri-
ety. Queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901) and her husband, Prince Albert, portrayed them-
selves as models of morality, British stability, and middle-class virtues. Britain’s par-
liamentary system steadily brought more men into the political process. Economic
[ 1850–1870
]
prosperity supported peaceful political reform, except that politicians did little to
relieve Ireland’s continued suffering. A flexible party system helped smooth govern-
mental decision making: the Tories evolved into the Conservatives, who favored a more
status-oriented politics but still went along with the emerging liberal consensus around
economic development and representative government. The Whigs became the Lib-
erals, so named for their commitment to progress, free trade, and an active role for
industrialists as well as the aristocracy. In 1867, the Conservatives, led by Benjamin
Disraeli (1804–1881), passed the Second Reform Bill, which extended voting rights
to a million more men. Disraeli proposed, like Bismarck somewhat later, that the
working classes would choose “the most conservative interests in the country” — not
the business ones.
Both political parties supported reforms because citizens had formed pressure
groups to influence national policies. Women’s groups advocated the Matrimonial
Causes Act of 1857, which facilitated divorce, and the Married Women’s Property
Act of 1870, which allowed married women to own property and keep the wages
they earned. The Reform League, another pressure organization, had held mass dem-
onstrations in London to bring about passage of the Second Reform Bill. Plush royal
ceremonies united critics and activists and masked political conflict but, more
important, involved all social classes. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with their
newly devised celebrations of royal marriages, anniversaries, and births, promoted
the monarchy so successfully that the term Victorian came to symbolize almost the
entire nineteenth century. Yet Britain’s politicians were as devoted to Realpolitik as
those in Germany, Italy, or France. Their policies included the use of violence to
expand their overseas empire and, increasingly, to control Ireland, where reform
stopped short. This violence occurred beyond the view of most British people, how-
ever, allowing them to imagine their nation as peaceful, advanced, and united.
Nation Building in North America

Nation building in the United States involved unprecedented and destructive upheaval
at midcentury. The young nation had a more democratic political culture than that
of Europe, and nationalism was on the rise. Virtually universal white male suffrage,
a rambunctiously independent press, and mass political parties promoted the belief
that sovereignty derived from the people. From the beginning, a combative public
politics shaped America.
The United States continued to expand westward (Map 22.4). In 1848, victory in
the Mexican-American War almost doubled the size of the country: the United States
officially annexed Texas, and large portions of California and the Southwest extended
U.S. borders into formerly Mexican land. Politicians and citizens alike favored ban-
ning native Americans from these western lands and confining them to reservations.
There was no agreement, however, on whether slavery would be allowed in the new
western territories. The issue polarized the country. In the North, politicians in the
new Republican Party ran on a platform of “free soil, free labor, free men.”
[ 1850–1870
N
C A N A D A
E
W
WASHINGTON Maine
TERRITORY M S
i
sso
Vt.
ur
iR
N.H. Mass.
.
Oregon Minn. N.Y.
NEBRASKA Wis.
TERRITORY Mich. R.I.
Pa. Conn.
Iowa N.J.
Ohio Md.
Illinois Ind. Del.
UTAH W.
.
TERRITORY
oR
Va. Va.
ad
r KANSAS TERRITORY
lo Missouri Ky.
Co
California N.C.
i R.
Tenn.
sipp
NEW MEXICO Oklahoma Ark. S.C.
ssis
TERRITORY
Mi
Ala. Ga. ATLANTIC
Miss.
OCEAN
PACIFIC La.
Texas
OCEAN Florida
Indian lands ceded before 1850

Ri
Indian lands ceded 1850–1870 Gulf of

o
Lands still held by Indians 1870 M E X ICO Mexico

0 250 500 miles
1860 boundaries
MAP 22.4 U.S. Expansion, 1850–1870

Like Russia, the United States expanded into adjacent regions to create a continental nation-
state. In taking over territories, however, the United States differed from Russia by herding
native peoples into small confined spaces called reservations so that settlers could acquire
thousands of square miles for farming and other enterprises. The U.S. government granted full
citizenship for all native Americans only in 1925.
After Republican Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) was elected president in 1860,

most of the slaveholding states seceded to form the Confederate States of America.
Civil war broke out in 1861 when, under Lincoln’s leadership, the North fought to
preserve the Union. The future of nation building in the United States hung in the
balance. Lincoln did not initially aim to abolish slavery, but his Emancipation Procla-
mation of January 1863 officially freed all slaves in the Confederacy and turned the
war into a fight not only for union but also for an end to human bondage. After the
summer of 1863, the North’s superior industrial strength and military might overpow-
ered and physically destroyed much of the South. By April 1865, the North had pre-
vailed, though a Confederate sympathizer assassinated Lincoln. Constitutional amend-
ments ended slavery and promised full political rights to African American men.
By 1871, northern interest in promoting African American political rights was
declining, and whites began regaining control of state politics in the South, often by
organized violence and intimidation. The end of northern occupation of the South
in 1877 was a setback in obtaining rights for blacks. Nonetheless, in ending slavery,
[ 1850–1870
]
the Union victory opened the way to stronger national government and to economic
advancement no longer tied to the old Atlantic plantation system.
The North’s triumph had profound effects elsewhere in North America. The
United States also threatened the annexation of Canada to punish Great Britain,
whose dependence on cotton had led it to support the Confederacy. To prevent the
loss of Britain’s largest territory, the British government allowed Canadians to form a
united dominion — that is, a self-governing
unit of the empire — in 1867. Dominion
REVIEW QUESTION What role did warfare status answered Canadians’ appeal for home
play in the various nineteenth-century nation- rule, weakened the cause of those opposing
building efforts?
Britain’s control of Canada, and strength-
ened Canadian national unity.
Nation Building through Social Order

Government officials and reformers hoped to offset the violent changes of the nation-
building process with new improvements. Population rose and cities grew crowded
as the nineteenth century progressed, leading officials across Europe to promote
public health and safety. Many liberals wanted a laissez-faire government that left
social and economic life largely to private enterprise. In contrast, bureaucrats and
reformers took direct action to improve citizens’ lives and, along with missionaries
and explorers, worked more actively to establish social order and to extend European
power to the farthest reaches of the globe. Some of these efforts met violent resis-
tance both within Europe and outside it.
Bringing Order to the Cities

European cities became the backdrop for displays of state power and accomplish-
ment. Governments focused on improving capital cities such as Vienna and Rome
with handsome parks, widened streets, stately museums, and massive city halls. In
1857, Austrian emperor Francis Joseph ordered that the old Viennese city walls be
replaced with boulevards lined with major public buildings such as the opera house
and government offices. These buildings were concrete evidence of national wealth
and power, and the broad boulevards allowed crowds to observe royal pageantry. The
wide roads were also easier for troops to navigate than the twisted, narrow medieval
streets that in 1848 had concealed insurrectionists in cities like Paris and Vienna.
Impressive parks and public gardens showed the state’s control of nature, ordered
people’s leisure time, and inspired respect for the nation-state’s achievements.
Construction first required destruction: buildings and entire neighborhoods that
had intermingled rich and poor disappeared, and thousands of city dwellers were
dislocated. Newly built expensive housing was separated from the poor sections of
the city. In Paris, the process of urban change was called Haussmannization, named
for the prefect Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who implemented a grand design that
[1850–1870
] Nation Building through Social Order 727
included eighty-five miles of new streets, many lined with showy dwellings for the
wealthy. In London, the many new banks and insurance companies, one architect
believed, “help[ed] the impression of stability.” There was an expectation that the civic
pride resulting from urban rebuilding would replace rebelliousness and disunity.
Amid redevelopment, serious problems menaced the urban population. Repeated
epidemics of diseases such as cholera killed alarming numbers of city dwellers and
gave the strong impression of social decay, not national power. Poor sanitation
allowed typhoid bacteria to spread through sewage and into water supplies, infecting
rich and poor alike. In 1861, Britain’s Prince Albert — the beloved husband of Queen
Victoria — reputedly died of typhoid fever, commonly known as a “filth disease.”
Heaps of animal excrement in chicken coops, pigsties, and stables; unregulated urban
slaughterhouses; and piles of human waste were breeding grounds for disease, mak-
ing sanitation a top priority.
Scientific research, increasingly undertaken in publicly financed laboratories and
hospitals, provided the means to promote public health and control disease. France’s
Louis Pasteur, three of whose young daughters had also died of typhoid, advanced
the germ theory of disease. He suggested that bacteria and parasites might be respon-
sible for human and animal diseases. Pasteur demonstrated that heating foods such
as wine and milk to a certain temperature, a process that soon became known as
pasteurization, killed these organisms and made food safe. English surgeon Joseph
Lister applied Pasteur’s germ theory of disease to infection and developed antiseptics
for treating wounds and preventing puerperal fever, a condition caused by the dirty
hands of physicians and midwives that killed innumerable women after childbirth.
Governments undertook projects to modernize sewer and other sanitary systems
and to straighten rivers. Citizens often prized such improvements as signs of national
superiority. In Paris, sewage flowed into newly built, watertight underground collec-
tors. In addition, Haussmann piped in water from uncontaminated sources in the
countryside to provide each household with a secure supply. To prevent devastating
floods and to eliminate disease-ridden marshlands, governments rerouted and
straightened rivers such as the Rhine and built canals. Improved sanitation testified
to the activist state’s ability to bring about progress.
Citizens responded positively to improvements in everyday life. When sanitary
public toilets for men became a feature of modern cities, women petitioned govern-
ments for similar facilities. More aware of dirt, disease, and smells, the middle classes
bathed more regularly, sometimes even once a week. People’s concerns for refine-
ment and health mirrored governments’ pursuit of order.
Expanding Government Bureaucracy

To build an orderly national community required a more active role for the state,
and bureaucracies expanded in these years as government authority reached further
into everyday life. Censuses became routine and provided the state with personal
details of citizens’ lives such as age, occupation, residence, marital status, and number
[ 1850–1870
]
of children. Governments then used these data for everything from setting quotas
for military conscription to predicting the need for new prisons. Reformers like
Florence Nightingale, who gathered medical, public health, and other statistics to
support sanitary reform, believed that such quantitative information would help a
government base decisions on facts rather than on influence peddling or ill-informed
hunches, and thus reduce corruption and inefficiency.
To bring about their vision of social order, many governments also expanded
the regulation of prostitution. Venereal disease, especially syphilis, was common, and
like typhoid fever, it infected individuals and whole families. Officials blamed prosti-
tutes, not their clients, for its spread. The police picked up suspect women, examined
them for syphilis, and confined infected ones for treatment. As states began monitor-
ing prostitution and other social matters like public health and housing, they had to
add departments and agencies. In 1867, Hungary’s bureaucracy handled fewer than
250,000 individual cases ranging from health to poverty issues; twenty years later, it
handled more than 1 million.
Schooling and Professionalizing Society

Emphasis on empirical knowledge and objective standards changed the professions
and raised their status. Growing numbers of middle-class doctors, lawyers, profes-
sors, and journalists employed solid information in their work. The middle classes
argued that jobs in government should be awarded according to expertise rather than
aristocratic birth or political connections. In Britain, a civil service law passed in 1870
required competitive examinations to ensure competency in government posts — a
system long used in China. Governments began to allow professionals to determine
rules for admission to their fields. Such legislation had both positive and negative
effects: groups could set high standards, but otherwise qualified people were some-
times prohibited from working because they lacked the credentials. The medical pro-
fession, for example, gained the authority to license physicians, but it tried to block
experienced midwives from attending childbirths.
Nation building required the education of all citizens, professional or not. “We
have made Italy,” one Italian official announced. “Now we have to make Italians.”
Education was one way of bringing citizens to hold common beliefs and values.
Expansion of the electorate and lower-class activism prompted one British aristocrat
to say of the common people, whom he feared as they gained influence, “We must
now educate our masters!” Governments introduced compulsory schooling to reduce
illiteracy rates, which were more than 65 percent in Italy and Spain in the 1870s and
even higher in eastern Europe. As ordinary people were allowed to vote, books
taught them about the responsibilities of citizenship and provided the practical
knowledge necessary for contributing to industrial society.
Educational reform was not easy. At midcentury, religious authorities supervised
schools and charged tuition, making primary education an option only for prosper-
ous or religious parents. After the 1850s, critics questioned the relevance of religion
[1850–1870
in the curricula of modern schools. In 1861, an English commission on education

concluded that instead of knowledge of the Bible, “the knowledge most important to a
labouring man is that of the causes which regulate the amount of his wages, the hours
of his work, the regularity of his employment, and the prices of what he consumes.” To
feel part of a nation, the young had to learn its language, literature, and history. Replac-
ing religion was a challenge for the secular and increasingly knowledge-based state.
Enforcing school attendance was another challenge. Although the Netherlands,
Sweden, and Switzerland had functioning primary-school systems before midcentury,
rural parents in these and other countries resisted sending their children to school.
Farm families depended on children to perform chores and believed that work in
the fields or the household provided the best and most useful education. Urban home-
makers from the lower classes needed their children to fetch water, tend younger
children, and scavenge for household necessities such as stale bread from bakers or
soup from local missions. Yet some of the working poor developed a craze for learn-
ing, which made traveling lecturers, reading groups, and debating societies popular.
Secondary education also expanded through the creation of more lycées (high
schools) and technical schools, yet it remained even more of a luxury. In authoritar-
ian countries such as Russia, advanced knowledge, including education in science
and technology, was considered suspect because it empowered the young with infor-
mation and taught them to think for themselves. Reformers pushed for advanced
courses for young women to make them more interesting wives and better mothers
of future citizens. In Britain, the founders of two women’s colleges — Girton (1869)
and Newnham (1871) — at Cambridge University believed, and were later proved
right, that exacting standards and a modern curriculum in women’s higher education
would inspire improvements in the men’s colleges of Cambridge and Oxford.
Education also opened professional doors to women, who came to attend
universities — in particular, medical schools — in Zurich and Paris in the 1860s.
Women doctors argued that they could not only bring feminine values to health care
but also get better results because women patients would be more open with them
than with male doctors. The need for educated citizens also offered opportunities
for large numbers of women to enter teaching, a field once dominated by men.
Thousands of women founded nursery schools and kindergartens based on the
Enlightenment idea that developmental processes start at an early age. Yet many men
opposed the idea of women studying or teaching. “I shudder at philosophic women,”
wrote one critic of female education.
Spreading National Power and Order beyond the West

In an age of nation building, colonies took on new importance because they seemed
to add to the power of the nation-state. This benefit led Great Britain, France, and
Russia to expand their political control of colonies. Sometimes the imperial powers
offered social and cultural services, such as schools. For instance, in the 1850s and
1860s provincial governors and local officials promoted the extension of Russian
[ 1850–1870
]
borders to gain control over nomadic tribes in central and eastern Asia. Russian
officials then instituted common educational and religious policies, such as instruc-
tion in the Russian language and in the principles of the Russian Orthodox church,
as a means to social order.
Great Britain, the era’s mightiest imperial power, imposed direct political rule
abroad as part of nation building. Before the 1850s, British liberals desired commercial
profits from colonies, but, believing in laissez-faire, they kept political involvement in
colonial affairs minimal. Since the eighteenth century, the East India Company had
been gaining control over various kingdoms’ trading and tax collection rights and
then began building railroads throughout the Indian countryside. As commerce with
Britain grew, many Indian businessmen became wealthy. Other local men served in
the colonial army, which became one of the largest standing armies in the world.
In 1857, a contingent of Indian troops, both Muslim and Hindu, violently
rebelled when a rumor spread that Britain would force them to use cartridges of
ammunition greased with cow and pig fat, which violated the Hindu ban on beef
and the Muslim prohibition of pork. This was not their main grievance, however.
The soldiers, more generally angered at widening British control, overran the old
Moghul capital at Delhi and declared the independence of the Indian nation — an
uprising that became known as the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Simultaneously, local rulers rebelled, condemning “the tyranny and oppression
of the infidel and treacherous English.” Lakshmibai, the rani (“queen”) of the state
of Jhansi in central India, led a separate military revolt when the East India Company
tried to take over her lands after her husband died. Even as the British brutally
crushed the rebels, Indian nationalism was born. Victorious, the British government
took direct control of India in 1858, and the British Parliament declared Queen
Victoria the empress of India in 1876.
A system of rule took shape in which close to half a million South Asians,
supervised by a few thousand British men, governed a region that they now called
India. Colonial rule meant both outright domination and subtle intervention in
everyday life. For example, British taxes on high-quality Indian textiles led many to
buy cheaper British cottons. Artisans were directed instead to farm raw materials
such as wheat, cotton, and jute to supply Britain’s industry and feed its workers. Nev-
ertheless, some of the Indians who benefited from improved sanitation and medicine
chose to accept British arguments against Indian customs such as child marriage and
sati — the self-immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. Others found
Europe’s scientific values attractive and came to appreciate that British rule, ironi-
cally, brought a kind of unity to India’s many separate princedoms, thus laying the
foundation for an Indian nation.
French political expansion was similarly complex. The French government
pushed to establish its dominion over Cochin China (modern southern Vietnam) in
the 1860s. Missionaries in the area, ambitious French naval officers, and even some
local peoples — much like Indian merchants and financiers — pulled the French gov-
ernment farther into the region. Like the British, the French brought improvements,
[1850–1870
but sanitation and public health programs led to a rise in population that strained
resources. Furthermore, landowners and French imperialists siphoned off most of
the profits from economic improvement. The French also undertook a cultural mis-
sion to transform cities like Saigon by adding tree-lined boulevards similar to those
of Paris. French literature, theater, and art were popular with both colonial officials
and upper-class local people.
In this age of Realpolitik, the Crimean War had shown the great powers the
importance of the Mediterranean basin. Napoleon III, remembering his uncle’s cam-
paign in Egypt, took an interest in building the Suez Canal, which would connect
the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and thus dramatically
shorten the route from Europe to Asia. Following the canal’s completion in 1869,
“canal fever” spread: Verdi composed the opera Aïda (set in ancient Egypt), and
people across the West applied Egyptian designs to textiles, furniture, art, and even
public monuments in cities. The French army had occupied all of Algeria by 1870,
when the number of European immigrants to the region reached one-quarter mil-
lion. French rule in Algeria, as elsewhere, was aided by local people’s attraction to
European goods and technology and by the opportunity to make money.
Its vastness allowed China to escape complete takeover, but traders and Chris-
tian missionaries from Europe made inroads for the Western powers. Defeat in the
Opium War caused an economic slump and helped generate the mass movement
known as the Taiping (“Heavenly Kingdom”). Headed by a leader who claimed to
be the brother of Jesus, the Taiping’s millions of adherents wanted an end to the
ruling Qing dynasty, the expulsion of foreigners, more equal treatment of women,
and land reform. By the mid-1850s, the Taiping controlled half of China. The threat-
ened Qing regime promised the British and French greater influence in exchange for
aid in defeating the Taiping. More than 20 million Chinese died in the resulting civil
war. When peace finally came in 1864, Western governments controlled much of the
Chinese customs service and had virtually unlimited access to the country.
Japan alone in East Asia was able to escape Western domination, because it was
keenly aware of the innovations taking place in the West. In 1854, the Japanese agreed
to open the country to foreign trade in part to gain Western goods, including the West’s
superior weaponry. Japanese reformers in 1867 overthrew a government that resisted
such change and in 1868 enacted the Meiji Restoration. The word Meiji pointed to the
“enlightened rule” of the new emperor, whose power reformers had restored. The goal
was to combine “Western science and Eastern values” as a way of “making new” —
hence, a combination of restoration and innovation. The new regime pushed Japan to
become a modern, technologically powerful state free from Western control.
Contesting the Nation-State’s Order at Home

Europeans did not simply sit by as the growing nation-state changed and often dis-
rupted their lives. A better-informed urban working class protested the upheavals in
everyday life caused when cities were ripped apart for improvements and when the
[ 1850–1870
]
growth of factories destroyed artisans’ livelihoods. Increasingly educated by public
schools, urban workers frequented cafés and pubs to hear news and discuss eco-
nomic and political events. After the post-1848 repression of worker organizations,
unions gradually started to take shape, sometimes in secret because of continuing
opposition from governments.
Many of the most outspoken labor activists were artisans struggling to survive
in the new industrializing climate. They were attracted at first by the ideas of former
printer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865). In the 1840s, Proudhon proclaimed,
“Property is theft,” suggesting that property ownership robbed people of their right-
ful share of the earth’s benefits. He opposed the centralized state and proposed that
society be organized instead around natural groupings of men in artisans’ work-
shops. (Women, he believed, should work in seclusion at home for their husbands’
comfort.) These workshops and a central bank crediting each worker for his labor
would replace government.
As the nation-state expanded its power, workers were also drawn to anarchism,
which maintained that the existence of the state was the root of social injustice.
According to Russian nobleman and anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876),
the slightest infringement on freedom, especially by the central state and its laws,
was unacceptable. Anarchism thus advocated the destruction of all state power. Its
appeal grew as government grew in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Political theorist and labor organizer Karl Marx (1818–1883) opposed both doc-
trines as lacking the sound, scientific basis of his own theory, subsequently called
Marxism. Marx’s analysis, appearing most notably in Das Kapital (Capital), adopted
the liberal idea, dating back to John Locke in the seventeenth century, that human
existence was defined by the necessity to work to fulfill basic needs such as food,
clothing, and shelter. Using mathematical calculations of production and profit that
would justify Realpolitik for the working classes, Marx held that the fundamental orga-
nization of any society derived from the relationships arising from work or produc-
tion. This idea, known as materialism, meant that society rested on class relationships —
such as those between serf and medieval lord, slave and master, or worker and
capitalist. Marx called the class relationships that developed around work the mode
of production — for instance, feudalism, slavery, or capitalism. He rejected the liberal
focus on individual rights and emphasized instead the unequal class relations caused
by those who had taken from workers control of the means of production — that is,
the capital, land, tools, or factories that allowed basic human needs to be met.
Marx, like the politicians around him, took a tough-minded and realistic look
at the economy, discarding the romantic views of the utopian socialists. He saw
struggle, not warmhearted cooperation, as the means for bringing about change.
Workers’ awareness of their oppression would produce class-consciousness, he
argued, leading them to overthrow their exploiters. Society was not basically harmo-
nious; instead social progress could occur only through conflict.
As the Franco-Prussian War ended, revolution and civil war erupted not only in
Paris but also in other French cities — catching the attention of Marx as a sign that
[
1850–1870
] The Culture of Social Order 733
his predictions were coming true. As the Prussians laid siege to Paris in the winter
of 1870–1871, causing many deaths from starvation and bitter cold, Parisians rose up
and demanded new republican liberties, new systems of work, and a more balanced
distribution of power between the central government and localities. On March 28,
1871, to counter what they saw as the despotism of the centralized government, they
declared themselves a self-governing commune. One issue behind the unrest was the
nation-state’s destruction of city life through urban renovation.
In the Paris Commune’s two months of existence, and while trying to maintain
“communal” instead of “national” values, Parisians quickly developed a wide array
of political clubs, local ceremonies, and self-managed workshops. Women workers,
for example, banded together to make National Guard uniforms on a cooperative
rather than a for-profit basis. The Commune proposed to liberate the worker and
ensure “the absolute equality of women laborers.” Thus, a commune — in contrast to
a republic — was meant to bring about social revolution. Communards, however,
often disagreed on how to change society. Anticlericalism, feminism, socialism, and
anarchism were but a few of the proposed routes to social justice.
In the meantime, the provisional government that succeeded the defeated Napo-
leon III stamped out similar uprisings in other French cities. In late May, the well-
supplied national army crushed the Commune and shot tens of thousands of citizens
on the streets. Parisian rebels, one citizen commented, “deserved no better judge
than a soldier’s bullet.” The Communards had promoted a kind of antistate in an age
of rising state power. Others saw the Commune as the work of the pétroleuse (“woman
incendiary”) — a case of frenzied women running amok through the streets. While
revolutionary men became heroes in the history books, writers were soon blaming
the burning of Paris on women — “shameless slatterns, half-naked women, who
kindled courage and breathed life into arson.”
Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the rise of the Paris Commune, and the civil
war were all horrendous blows to the French
state. Yet in the struggle against the Com-
mune, the nation-state once again showed REVIEW QUESTION How did Europe’s expand-
ing nation-states attempt to impose social
its strengthening muscle. Executions and
order within and beyond Europe, and what
deportations by the thousands followed, resistance did they face?
and fear of workers spread across Europe.
The Culture of Social Order

Artists and writers of the mid-nineteenth century had complex reactions to the state’s
expanding reach and the economic growth that sustained it. They saw daily life as
filled with commercial values and organized by mindless officials. Ordinary people
no longer appeared heroic, as they had during the revolutionary years. “How tired
I am of the ignoble workman, the inept bourgeois, the stupid peasant, and the odi-
ous priest,” wrote the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Rejecting romanticism, he
described ordinary people in a harsh new style called realism. Intellectuals of the
[ 1850–1870
]
time proposed scientific theories that also took a cold, hard look at human life in
society and challenged both idealism and fervent religious belief. Theirs was a
detached point of view similar to that applied by statesmen to politics.
The Arts Confront Social Reality

Culture helped the cause of national unity. A hungry reading public devoured biog-
raphies of political leaders, past and present, and credited daring heroes with creating
the triumphant nation-state. As schooling spread literacy and a craving for realism —
that is, true-to-life portrayals of society without romantic or idealistic overtones —
commercially minded publishers produced an age of best sellers. Newspapers pub-
lished the novels of Charles Dickens in serial form, and each installment attracted
buyers eager for the latest plot twist. Drawn from English society, Dickens’s charac-
ters included starving orphans, grasping lawyers, greedy bankers, and ruthless
opportunists. Hard Times (1854) depicts the grinding poverty and ill health of work-
ers alongside the heartlessness of businessmen. Novelist George Eliot (the pen name
of Mary Ann Evans) probed real-life dilemmas in The Mill on the Floss (1860) and
Middlemarch (1871–1872). Describing rural society, Eliot allowed her readers to see
one another’s predicaments, wherever they lived. She knew the pain of ordinary life
from her own experience: despite her fame, she was a social outcast because she lived
with a married man. Popular novels that showed a hard reality helped form a shared
culture much as state institutions did.
French writers also scorned dreams of utopian, trouble-free societies and ideal
beauty. Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (1857) tells the story of a doctor’s
wife who longs to escape her provincial surroundings. Filled with romantic fantasies,
she has two love affairs to escape her boredom, becomes hopelessly indebted buying
gifts for her lovers, and commits suicide by swallowing arsenic. Madame Bovary
scandalized French society with its frank picture of women’s sexuality, but it attracted
a wide readership. Poet Charles-Pierre Baudelaire wrote explicitly about sex; in his
1857 collection, Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil), he expressed drug- and alcohol-
induced passions — some focused on the brown body of his African mistress — and
spun out visions that critics condemned as perverse. French authorities brought
charges of obscenity against both Flaubert and Baudelaire. At issue was social and
artistic order: “Art without rules is no longer art,” maintained the prosecutor.
During the era of Alexander II’s Great Reforms, Russian writers debated whether
western European values were harming Russian culture. Adopting one viewpoint, Ivan
Turgenev created a powerful novel of Russian life, Fathers and Sons (1862), a story
of nihilistic children rejecting both parental authority and their parents’ spiritual val-
ues in favor of science and facts. Fyodor Dostoevsky, in contrast, portrayed nihil-
ists as dark, ridiculous, and neurotic. The highly intelligent characters in Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment (1866) are personally tormented and condemned to lead
absurd, even criminal lives. Dostoevsky used antiheroes to emphasize spirituality
and traditional Russian values but added a realistic spin by planting such values in
[1850–1870
Daumier, The Burden

Artists painted stark images of ordi-
nary people as they struggled to sur-
vive in an industrializing age. Despite
romantic views of a secluded separate
sphere for women that was protected
from life’s realities, the majority of
women hardly enjoyed such an exis-
tence, as shown by this depiction of a
weighted-down working woman and her
child. Daumier was one of the artists
who captured that reality. (National Gal-
lery, Prague, Czech Republic / photo by Erich
Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)
A Realist View of the Nude

Manet’s Olympia (1865) was one of
the most shocking works of art of its
day. The central woman is not glamor-
ously dressed or posed erotically;
rather, she stares candidly and boldly
at the viewer. The black maid offers
the white woman, obviously a courte-
san, flowers from an admirer. This
scene was far too modern in its style
and subject matter for most critics.
(Edouard Manet [1832–1883] Musée d’Orsay,
Paris, France / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1850–1870
]
ordinary, often seedy people. The Russian public was drawn together by these debates
about Russian identity.
While writers of realism depended on sales to thousands of readers, painters usu-
ally depended on government support. Leaders such as Prince Albert of Great Britain
actively patronized the arts and purchased works for official collections and for
themselves. Having their artwork chosen for display at government-sponsored exhi-
bitions was another way for artists to earn a living. Hundreds of thousands from all
social classes attended these exhibitions, though not all could afford to buy the art.
After the revolutions of 1848, artists began rejecting the romantic idealizing of
ordinary folk or grand historic events. Instead, painters like Gustave Courbet por-
trayed groaning laborers at backbreaking work because, as he stated, an artist should
“never permit sentiment to overthrow logic.” The renovated city, artists found, had
become a visual spectacle; its wide new boulevards served as a stage on which urban
residents performed. Universal Exhibition (1867) by Edouard Manet shows figures
from all social classes gazing at the Paris scene and observing one another to learn
correct modern behavior. Manet also broke with romantic conventions of the nude.
His Olympia (1865) depicts a white courtesan lying on her bed, attended by a black
woman (see the illustration on page 735). This disregard for depicting women in
mythical or idealized settings was too much for the critics: “A sort of female gorilla,”
one wrote of Olympia as debate raged over realism.
Unlike most of the visual arts, opera was commercially profitable and an effec-
tive means of reaching the nineteenth-century public. Verdi used musical theater to
contrast noble ideals with the deadly effects of power and the lure of passion with
the need for social order. The German composer Richard Wagner hoped to revolu-
tionize opera by fusing music and drama to arouse the audience’s fear and awe. A
gigantic cycle of four operas, Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen reshaped ancient Ger-
man myths into a modern, nightmarish story of a world doomed by its obsessive
pursuit of money and power and saved only through unselfish love. His opera The
Mastersingers of Nuremberg was said to be implicitly anti-Semitic because of its rejec-
tion of influences other than German ones in the arts. Wagner’s musical innovation
made him a major force in philosophy, politics, and the arts across Europe. To his
fellow citizens, however, his operas stood for Germany. Artists both implicitly (like
George Eliot) and more explicitly (like Richard Wagner) promoted nation building
even as they experimented with new forms.
Religion and National Order

The expansion of state power set the stage for clashes over the role of organized religion
in the nation-state. In the 1850s, many politicians supported religious institutions and
attended public church rituals because they were another source of order. Simultane-
ously, some nation builders, intellectuals, and economic liberals came to reject the
religious worldview of established churches, particularly Roman Catholicism, because
it was based in faith, not reason, and slowed the growth of nationalist sentiment.
[
1850–1870
Bismarck mounted a full-blown Kulturkampf (“culture war”) against religion.

The German government expelled the Jesuits from Germany in 1872, increased state
power over the clergy in Prussia in 1873, and introduced a civil ceremony as an
obligatory part of marriage in 1875. Bismarck had bragged, “I am the master of
Germany in all but name,” but he miscalculated his ability to manipulate politics.
The pope fought back: “One must obey God more than men,” he ordered. German
Catholics rebelled, and even conservative Protestants thought Bismarck wrong-
headed in attacking religion. Competition between church and state for power and
influence heated up in the age of Realpolitik.
The Catholic church felt assaulted. Nation builders had also extended liberal
rights to Jews, whom many Christians considered enemies. Attacking changing val-
ues, Pope Pius IX issued The Syllabus of Errors (1864), which found fault “with
progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilization.” Becoming pope in 1878,
Leo XIII began reconciling the church to modern politics by encouraging up-to-date
scholarship in Catholic institutes and universities and by accepting aspects of repre-
sentative democracy. The Kulturkampf between church and state ended, making it
easier for the faithful to be both Catholic and patriotic.
The place of organized religion in society was changing. While many in the
upper and middle classes and most of the peasantry remained faithful, church atten-
dance declined among workers and artisans. There was a religious gender gap, too.
Women’s spiritual beliefs became more intense, with both Roman Catholic and Rus-
sian Orthodox women’s religious orders increasing in size and number; men, by
contrast, were falling away from religious devotion. Many urban Jews abandoned
religious practices and assimilated instead to secular, national cultures. Religion no
longer included everyone.
In 1854, the pope’s announcement of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
(stating that Mary, alone among all humans, had been born without original sin)
was followed by an outburst of popular religious fervor, especially among women.
In 1858, a young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, began having visions of the
Virgin Mary at Lourdes in southern France. Crowds, mostly of women, flocked to
Lourdes, believing that its waters could cure their ailments. In 1867, less than ten
years later, a new railroad line to Lourdes enabled millions of pilgrims to visit the
shrine on church-organized trips. The Catholic church thus showed that it, too,
could use such modern means as railroads, shopping centers, and medical verifica-
tions of miraculous cures to make the religious experience more up-to-date. Tradi-
tional institutions began making themselves as effective as the nation-state.
At about the time of Soubirous’s vision, the English naturalist Charles Darwin
(1809–1882) published On the Origin of Species (1859). In his writings, Darwin
argued that life on Earth had taken shape over countless millions of years before
humans existed and that human life was the result of this slow development, called
evolution. This theory directly challenged the Judeo-Christian dogma that God
miraculously brought the universe and all life into being in six days, as described in
the Bible. Instead Darwin held that life developed from lower forms through a primal
[ 1850–1870
]
“Gentlemen, We Are
Descended from Monkeys,”
Spain, Late Nineteenth
Century
Darwin’s scientific ideas
aroused anger, admiration, and
even mirth, as shown in this
engraving some decades after
the publication of his major
works. As you consider this
image, what message would
you say the artist is trying to
convey about evolution? (Biblio-
thèque des Arts Décoratifs Paris /
Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at
Art Resource, NY.)
battle for survival and through the sexual selection of mates — a process he called
natural selection. For Darwin the Bible gave a “manifestly false history of the world.”
Darwin’s theories also undermined Enlightenment principles that glorified nature as
tranquil and noble, and human beings as essentially rational. The theory of natural
selection, in which the fittest survive, suggested a different kind of human society,
one composed of warlike individuals and groups constantly fighting one another to
triumph over hostile surroundings.
Other innovative biological research placed religious views of reproduction under
attack. Working with pea plants in his monastery garden in the 1860s, the Austrian
monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) discovered the principles of heredity, from which
the science of genetics later developed. Investigation into the female reproductive
cycle led German scientists to discover the principle of spontaneous ovulation — the
automatic release of the egg by the ovary independent of sexual intercourse. Theo-
rists concluded that men had strong sexual drives because reproduction depended
on their sexual arousal. In contrast, the automatic release of the egg each month
indicated to them that women were passive and lacked sexual feeling.
[1850–1870
Many other ideas disturbed the status quo. Even before Darwin, the writer Her-
bert Spencer (1820–1903) had written that the “unfit” should be allowed to perish
in the name of progress. On these grounds Spencer opposed public education and
any other attempt to soften the struggle for existence. Darwin continued this line of
argument when he claimed that white European men in the nineteenth century were
wealthier and better because they were more highly evolved than white women or
people of color. A school of thought known as Social Darwinism grew out of Dar-
win’s and Spencer’s ideas; it promoted racist, sexist, and other discriminatory policies
as a way of strengthening the nation-state.
From the Natural Sciences to Social Science

In an age influenced by Realpolitik, Darwin’s revolutionary thought was part of a
quest to find alternatives to the idea that the social order was created by God. French
thinker Auguste Comte (1798–1857) developed positivism — a theory claiming that
careful study of facts would generate accurate and useful, or “positive,” laws of soci-
ety. Comte’s “sociology” inspired people to believe they could solve the problems
resulting from economic and social changes. To accomplish this goal, tough-minded
reformers founded study groups and scientifically oriented associations to dig up
social facts such as statistics on poverty or the conditions of working-class life.
Comte encouraged women’s participation in reform because he deemed “womanly”
compassion and love as fundamental to social harmony as scientific public policy
was. Positivism led not only to women’s increased public activism but also to the
development of the social sciences in this period. Among them, sociology brought
a new realism to the study of human society.
The celebrated English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) used Comte’s
theories to advocate widespread reform and mass education. In his political treatise
On Liberty (1859), Mill advocated the improvement of society generally, but he also
worried that superior people would be brought down by the will of the masses.
Influenced by his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, as well as by Comte, he argued for
women’s rights and introduced a woman suffrage bill into the House of Commons.
The bill’s defeat led Mill to publish The Subjection of Women (1869), an influential
work around the world. The Subjection of Women showed the family as a despotic
institution, lacking modern values such as rights and freedom. To make a woman
appear “not a forced slave, but a willing one,” he said, she was trained from child-
hood not to value her own talent and independence but to welcome her “submis-
sion” to men. Mill’s progressive thought
was soon lost in a flood of Social Darwin-
REVIEW QUESTION How did cultural expres-
ist theories. Still, inspired by the social sci-
sion and scientific and social thought help
ences, policymaking came to rely on statis- produce the hardheaded and realistic values
tics and fact gathering for building strong, of the mid-nineteenth century?
unified nations.
[ 1850–1870
]
Conclusion
Throughout modern history, the development of nation-states has been neither
inevitable nor uniform nor peaceful. In the nineteenth century, ambitious politicians,
shrewd monarchs, and determined bureaucrats used a variety of methods and poli-
cies to transform very different countries into effective nation-states. Nation building
was most dramatic in Germany and Italy, where states unified through military force
and where people of opposing political opinions ultimately agreed that national unity
should be the primary goal. Compelled by military defeat to shake off centuries of
tradition, the Austrian and Russian monarchs instituted reforms as a way of keeping
their systems in place. The Habsburg Empire became a dual monarchy, an arrange-
ment that gave the Hungarians virtual home rule and raised the level of disunity.
Reforms in Russia left the authoritarian monarchy intact and only partially trans-
formed the social order.
After decades of romantic fervor, no-nonsense realism in politics — Realpolitik —
became a much touted principle. Realist thinkers such as Darwin and Marx devel-
oped theories disturbing to those who maintained an Enlightenment faith in social
and political harmony. Realist novels and artworks jarred polite society, and, like the
operas of Verdi, portrayed dilemmas of the times. Growing government administra-
tions set policies that were meant to bring order but often brought disorder, includ-
ing the destruction of entire neighborhoods and violence toward people in far-off
lands. In the long term, schooling taught the lower classes to be orderly citizens, and
urban renewal ultimately improved cities and public health to complement nation
building.
Objections arose to the expanding power of the nation-state. The Indian Rebel-
lion of 1857 against Britain and the Paris Commune of 1871 against the French state
were but two examples where violent actions raised difficult questions about nation-
building methods. How far should the power of the state extend in both domestic
and international affairs? Would nationalism be a force for war or for peace? In the
face of state power, would ordinary people have any say in their destiny? As these
issues ripened, the next decades saw extraordinary economic advances and an unprec-
edented surge in Europe’s global power — much of it the result of successes in nation
building.
[ 1850–1870
] Conclusion 741
0 200 400 miles
0 200 400 kilometers FINLAND

SWEDEN AND
NORWAY
Kristiania St. Petersburg
N Stockholm
Volga R.
W SCOTLAND
E
Moscow
S
a
Nor th Riga
DENMARK
Se
GREAT S ea Copenhagen c
IRELAND
BRITAIN lti
NETHERLANDS Ba
RUSSIA
ENGLAND Elb
eR Voronezh
.
London Warsaw
Berlin
Od
er
BELGIUM GERMANY R.
POLAND
Rhi
Dresden
Brussels Kiev
ne R
Prague
.
Paris LUXEMBOURG
ATLANTIC AUSTRIA
OCEAN Munich AU S T R IA-
F R A NC E Zurich
Vienna H U NG A RY Odessa
SWITZERLAND Budapest
Bordeaux CROATIA- CRIMEA
HUNGARY
A
SLOVENIA
NI
Genoa Venice MA
Lourdes
BOSNIA RO R.
SERBIA Danube Black Sea
Marseille HERZEGOVINA
PORTUGAL ITALY Sinope
BULGARIA
Madrid Corsica
Lisbon MONTENEGRO
Constantinople
SPAIN Rome
MACE
DONIA
ALBANIA
Sardinia Naples
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GREECE
Tangier
Tunis Sicily Athens
Algiers
Crete
Cyprus SYRIA
MOROCCO
TUNISIA M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
ALGERIA
(Fr.)
TRIPOLI EGYPT
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the Mediterranean, 1871

European nation-states consolidated their power by building unified state structures and by devel-
oping the means for the diverse peoples within their borders to become socially and culturally
integrated. Nation-states were also rapidly expanding outside their boundaries, extending their
economic and political reach. North Africa and the Middle East — parts of the declining Ottoman
Empire — particularly appealed to European governments because of their resources and their
potential for further European settlement. They offered a gateway to the rest of the world.
Chapter 22 Review
Be sure you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Realpolitik (p. 709) Camillo di Cavour (p. 717) realism (p. 733)
Alexander II (p. 713) Otto von Bismarck (p. 719) George Eliot (p. 734)
Florence Nightingale (p. 713) dual monarchy (p. 723) Kulturkampf (p. 737)
mir (p. 714) Pan-Slavism (p. 723) Charles Darwin (p. 737)
Russification (p. 716) anarchism (p. 732) positivism (p. 739)
nation-state (p. 716) Marxism (p. 732)
Review Questions
1. What were the main results of the Crimean War?
2. What role did warfare play in the various nineteenth-century nation-building efforts?
3. How did Europe’s expanding nation-states attempt to impose social order within and
beyond Europe, and what resistance did they face?
4. How did cultural expression and scientific and social thought help produce the hardheaded
and realistic values of the mid-nineteenth century?
Making Connections
1. What were the main methods of nation building in the mid-nineteenth century, and how did
they differ from those of state building in the early modern period?
2. How did realism in social thought break with Enlightenment values?
3. In what ways did religion emerge as an issue (both within and outside Europe) during the
course of nation building?
4. How was the Paris Commune related to earlier revolutions in France? How did it differ from
them? How was it related to nation building?
Nation building took many forms in the nineteenth century, including wars, urban improvement,
myth making, and the development of scientific and realistic attitudes — all of these themes are
found in the following books.
Barnes, David S. The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and
Germs. 2006.
Berra, Tim M. Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man. 2009.
Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany.
2006.
Brower, Benjamin. A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of French Empire in the Algerian Sahara,
1844–1902. 2009.
Gross, Michael B. The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Germany. 2005.
Heretz, Leonid. Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular Religion and Traditional Culture under the
Last Tsars. 2008.
Kaufman, Suzanne. Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine. 2005.
Merriman, John M. Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871. 2014.
Parker, Kate, and Julia Shone, eds. The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, 1867–1918. 2008.
742
[1850–1870
Important Events
1850s–1860s Positivism, Darwinism become influential

1850s–1870s Realism in the arts
1853–1856 Crimean War
1857 British-led forces suppress Indian Rebellion
1861 Victor Emmanuel declared king of a unified Italy; abolition of serfdom
in Russia
1861–1865 U.S. Civil War
1867 Second Reform Bill in England; Austro-Hungarian monarchy
1868 Meiji Restoration begins in Japan
1869 Suez Canal opens
1869–1871 Women’s colleges are founded at Cambridge University
1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War
1871 German Empire is proclaimed at Versailles; self-governing Paris
Commune is established
Consider three events: Positivism, Darwinism become influential (1850s–1860s),

Realism in the arts (1850s–1870s), and German Empire is proclaimed at Versailles
(1871). How is this era’s quest for practicality, order, and stability shown in each of these
events?
Riall, Lucy. Garibaldi: The Invention of a Hero. 2007.

Roy, Tapti. The Raj of the Rani. 2007.
*Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. 1857.
Steinberg, Jonathan. Bismarck: A Life. 2011.
Unowsky, Daniel L. The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria,
1848–1916. 2005.
The Victorian Web: http://www.victorianweb.org.
Wetzel, David. A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the Origins of the Franco-Prussian War.
2001.
Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling. Russia’s Age of Serfdom, 1649–1861. 2008.
*Primary source.
Empire, Industry,
23
and Everyday Life
1870–1890
I
n the mid-1880s, Frieda von Bülow, a young German woman of aristocratic birth,
joined several activist groups interested in promoting German colonial expansion
in Africa. Like other women in these pro-imperial organizations, von Bülow was
eager to help German settlers — and even some Africans — in East Africa, which
Germany was in the process of colonizing. She also met adventurous men such as
Carl Peters, a fanatical nationalist and leading figure in imperialist circles. As Euro-
peans competed to take over the African continent, von Bülow and Peters headed
for Zanzibar and other distant cities not only to conquer them but also to carry
on a passionate romance. Once in Africa, von
European Immigrants Arriving Bülow basked in the freedom from her soci-
in New York ety’s restrictions on women and in German
This calm image of an immigrant ship superiority over local African peoples. For his
arriving in New York harbor hardly part, Peters followed his usual pattern of
captures the emotions the immi-
grants had (as we know from their
tricking Africans into giving up their lands
letters and diaries) on leaving their and using guns, rape, and other violence to get
communities and facing an unknown his way. Peters seduced one African woman
life in the United States or other and then had her executed because of her rela-
parts of the Western Hemisphere. tionship with another man. Though Peters’s
Many came from agricultural regions
womanizing caused von Bülow to break up
and would soon be the labor behind
the advance of industry; others would with him, she maintained both her racism and
become settlers, driving out native her German nationalism, learning to shoot a
Americans and thus becoming agents gun on behalf of colonial conquest, writing
of empire. (The Granger Collection, NYC — popular novels about empire and white supe-
All rights reserved.)
riority, and setting up a plantation in South-
east Africa.
Von Bülow and Peters were just two of the tens of thousands of Europeans pur-
suing imperial adventure as the search for lands to colonize reached a feverish pitch
after the 1870s. Those involved in imperialism had a variety of motives and, like
Peters, were often swaggering and violent. The rapid expansion of Western takeovers
745
746 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
was called the “new imperialism” because the race for empire now aimed at political
rather than mere economic power.
Europeans had been acquiring global territory since the late fifteenth century;
the new imperialism intensified this process. In their rush for empire, Europeans
like Frieda von Bülow and Carl Peters worked to control whole societies instead of
dominating coastal trade until, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Western
nations claimed jurisdiction over vast stretches of the world’s surface. Beyond political
control, Europeans tried to stamp other continents with European-style place names,
architecture, clothing, languages, and domestic customs. They used culture to secure
their empires just as they used it to forge the nation-state.
Millions of people traveled vast distances in the nineteenth century — a time of
greatly increased mobility and migration, much of which was made possible by an
expansion of industry and colonization. Some migrated temporarily to serve in colo-
nial governments or to find business opportunities. Others relocated permanently
within Europe or outside it. Such migration uprooted tens of millions of people,
disrupted social and family networks, and often inflicted terrible violence on native
peoples dislocated by European migrants’ greed, ambition, or desperation.
The decades from 1870 to 1890 were also an era of expanding industry in the
West. Empire and industry fed on each other as raw materials from conquered areas
supplied Western factories and as innovations in weaponry, transportation, medicine,
and communication allowed imperialism to thrive. Industrialization spread from
Britain to central and eastern Europe and brought a continuous new supply of prod-
ucts to the market. A growing appetite for these products, many of them for house-
hold consumption, changed the fabric of everyday life and built pride in a nation’s
conquests. Urban workers began demanding greater participation in the political
process. Proud Europeans brimmed with
confidence and hope, while the grimmer
CHAPTER FOCUS How did imperial conquest
aspects of empire and industrialization
and industrial advances affect Western society,
culture, and politics in the late nineteenth played themselves out in distant colonies,
century? urban slums, and declining rural areas of
Europe.
The New Imperialism

Imperialism surged in the last third of the nineteenth century. Industrial demand
for raw materials and business rivalry for new markets fueled competition for ter-
ritory in Africa and Asia, and European nations, the United States, and Japan now
aimed to rule sizable portions of the world directly. “Nations are not great except for
the activities they undertake,” declared a French advocate of imperialism in 1885.
Conquering foreign territory and developing wealth through industry appeared to
heap glory on the nation-state. Although some missionaries and reformers aimed to
spread Western religions and culture as a benefit to colonized peoples, the expansion
[
1870–1890
] The New Imperialism 747
of the West increased the subjugation of those peoples, inflicted violence on them,
and radically altered their lives.
The Scramble for Africa — North and South

European countries had long viewed Africa — North and South — as a vast region
for profit through trade and investment. In the late nineteenth century, they aimed
for political control as well. Egypt, a convenient and profitable stop on the way to
Asia, was an early target. Modernizing rulers had made Cairo into a bustling metrop-
olis with lively commercial and manufacturing enterprises. Production of raw
materials, such as cotton for European textile mills, was booming. Europeans invested
heavily in the region, first in ventures such as building the Suez Canal in the 1860s,
then in laying thousands of miles of railroad track, improving harbors, creating tele-
graph systems, and finally and most important, loaning money at exorbitant rates of
interest.
In 1879, the British and the French took over the Egyptian treasury, allegedly to
secure their investments and guarantee the repayment of loans. In 1882, they invaded
the country with the excuse of squashing Egyptian nationalists who protested the
takeover of the treasury. The British next seized control of the government as a whole
and forcibly reshaped the Egyptian economy from a system based on multiple crops
that maintained the country’s self-sufficiency to one that emphasized the production
of a few crops — mainly cotton, raw silk, wheat, and rice — that cheaply fed both Euro-
pean manufacturing and the European working classes. Businessmen from the colo-
nial powers, Egyptian landowners, and local merchants profited from these agricul-
tural changes, while the bulk of the rural population barely eked out an existence.
Alongside the takeover of the Egyptian government, France occupied neighbor-
ing Tunisia in 1881. Europeans also turned their attention to sub-Saharan Africa. In
the past, contact between Europe and Africa had principally involved the trade of
African slaves for a variety of goods, but by this time Europeans had begun to want
Africa’s raw materials, such as palm oil, cotton, metals, diamonds, cocoa, and rubber.
Additionally, Britain needed the southern and eastern coasts of Africa for stopover
ports on the route to Asia and its empire in India.
In the 1880s, European military forces conquered one sub-Saharan African ter-
ritory after another (Map 23.1) to dominate peoples, land, and resources — “the mag-
nificent cake of Africa,” as King Leopold II of Belgium (r. 1865–1909) put it. Insa-
tiable greed drove Leopold to claim the Congo region of central Africa, inflicting on
its peoples unparalleled acts of cruelty (see the illustration on page 749). German
chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who saw colonies mostly as political bargaining chips,
established German control over Cameroon and a section of East Africa, to which
Frieda von Bülow and Carl Peters headed. Faced with competition, the British poured
millions of pounds into conquering the continent “from Cairo to Cape Town,” as the
slogan went, and the French cemented their hold on large portions of western Africa.
[ 1870–1890
]
N
OTTOMAN
W E EMPIRE
S
TUNISIA
MADEIRA IS. (Port.)
ALGERIA Mediterranean Sea
Suez
MOROCCO Canal
CANARY IS. (Sp.) 4 Cairo

TRIPOLI
2
Ni
RIO DE
le
R.
ORO
S A H A R A EGYPT ARABIA
TIB
Red
ES T
I
Sea
SENEGAL
TUKULOR
Ni
2 r
ge
EMPIRE BORNU MAHDIST

WADAI
Blue
R.
STATE
e Nile R.
GAMBIA L. Chad
SOKOTO
Nil
den
SULTANATE Gulf of A
eR
DAHOMEY RABIH BR.
hit
.
SAMORI’S SOMALIA
GUINEA EMPIRE
W
ETHIOPIA
ASANTE YORUBA
3
SIERRA
LEONE Ubangi R.
LIBERIA
TOGO CAMEROON EQUATORIA
GOLD
o R.
COAST Cong
São Tomé BUGANDA
(Port.)
GABON CONGO L. Victoria
FREE INDIAN
STATE TIPPU OCEAN
TIB’S
ATLANTIC CABINDA
DOMAIN SULTANATE OF
L.Tanganyika ZANZIBAR
OCEAN
CHOKWE
ANGOLA DOMAIN MSIRI’S
KINGDOM L. Nyasa
Z am
be
British Routes of Colonial Expansion zi R
.
PORTUGUESE
French 1 Route of Rhodes’s British
S. African Company, 1890
GERMAN
EAST AFRICA Madagascar
SOUTH-WEST
German
AFRICA 1 (MOZAMBIQUE)
Italian 2 French expansion into
SOUTH
MERINA (HOVA)
West Africa, 1883-1896 WALVIS BAY AFRICAN KINGDOM
Portuguese British expansion into KALAHARI REPUBLIC
Spanish
3 Nigeria, 1880-1902 DESERT (TRANSVAAL)
R.
BRIT.
m popo
4 British invasion and BECHUANALAND L
Ottoman i
occupation of Egypt, 1882 ORANGE
Nominally Ottoman; Orange R. FREE ZULULAND
British controlled STATE
Non-European regimes CAPE COLONY NATAL

(including Boer republics) BASUTOLAND
Personal possession Cape Town 0 500 1,000 miles
of Leopold II
MAP 23.1 Africa, c. 1890

The scramble for Africa entailed a change in European trading practices, which generally had
been limited to the coastline. Trying to penetrate economically and rule the interior ultimately
resulted in a map of the continent that made sense only to the imperial powers, for it divided
ethnic groups and made territorial unities that had nothing to do with Africans’ sense of geogra-
phy or patterns of settlement. This map shows the unfolding of that process and the political
and ethnic groupings to be conquered.
[1870–1890
The scramble for Africa escalated tensions in Europe and prompted Bismarck
to call a conference at Berlin. The European nations represented at the conference,
held in a series of meetings in 1884 and 1885, decided that control of settlements
along the African coast guaranteed rights to interior territory. This agreement led to
the strictly linear dissection of the continent — a dissection that cut across boundar-
ies of African culture and ethnic life. The Berlin conference also banned the sale of
alcohol and controlled the flow of arms to African peoples. In theory, the meeting
was supposed to reduce bloodshed and ambitions for territory in Africa. In reality,
the agreement accelerated conquest of the continent and left everyone on edge over
the threat of more violence. Newspaper accounts whetted the popular appetite for
more takeovers. Music hall audiences rose to their feet and cheered at the sound of
popular songs about imperial heroes of the day.
The lust for conquest had perhaps its greatest effect in southern Africa. The
Dutch had moved into the area in the seventeenth century, but by 1815 the British
had gained control. Thereafter, descendants of the Dutch, called Boers (Dutch for
“farmers”), and British immigrants joined together in their fight to wrest farmland
and mineral resources from the Xhosa, Zulu, and other African peoples. British
businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes, sent to South Africa for his health just as
diamonds were being discovered in 1870, cornered the diamond market and claimed
The Violence of
Colonization
King Leopold II, ruler of the
Belgian Congo, was so greedy
and ruthless that his agents
squeezed the last drop of
rubber and other resources
from local peoples. Mission-
aries reported and photo-
graphed atrocities such as
the killing of workers whose
quotas were even slightly
short or the amputation of
hands for the same offense.
Belgian agents collected
amputated hands and sent
them to government officials
to show Leopold that they
were enforcing his kind of dis-
cipline. (Universal History Archive /
UIG / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1870–1890
]
a huge amount of African territory hundreds of miles into the interior. His ambition
for Britain and for himself was boundless: “I contend that we are the finest race in
the world,” he explained, “and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is.”
Although notions of European racial superiority had been advanced before, Social
Darwinism strengthened racism to justify the conquest of African lands.
Wherever necessary to ensure domination, Europeans either destroyed African
economic and political systems or transformed them into instruments of their rule.
A British governor of the West African region known as the Gold Coast put the mat-
ter succinctly in 1886: the British would “rule the country as if there were no inhabit-
ants.” Indeed, most Europeans considered Africans barely civilized, despite the wealth
local rulers and merchants accumulated in their international trade and despite indi-
vidual Africans’ accomplishments in everything from fabric dyeing to road building
and architecture. They felt this justified the confiscation of land from Africans, who
were then forced to work for them to pay European-imposed taxes. Agriculture to
support families, often performed by women and slaves, declined in favor of mining
and farming cash crops. Men were made to leave their homes to work in mines or
to build railroads. Family and community networks, though upset by the new arrange-
ments, helped support Africans during this upheaval in everyday life.
Acquiring Territory in Asia

The expansion of imperial power from the 1870s
0 150 300 miles
on was occurring around the world, not just in BHUTAN
Africa. Much of Asia, with India as the center-
A
M
UR
CHINA
piece, was integrated into Western empires. At the
RB
same time, resistance to outside domination was INDIA

UPPE
also growing: the educated Indian elite in 1885

STA
S H TE S
AN
founded the Indian National Congress. Some of its LAOS

members welcomed opportunities for trade, edu- LOWER
BURMA
cation, and social advancement. Others, however,
Me
Rangoon
ko
challenged Britain’s right to rule India at all. In the SIAM

ng
R.
next century, the Indian National Congress would Bangkok CAMBODIA
develop into a mass movement.

Gulf of
To the east, British military forces took control Siam
of the Malay peninsula in 1874 and of the interior

of Burma in 1885. In both areas, political instability
MALAY
often threatened secure trade. The British depended STATES
on the region’s tin, oil, rice, teak, and rubber as Annexed by British, 1826–52
well as on its access to the numerous interior trade Annexed by British, 1885–86
routes of China. British troops guaranteed the Annexed by British, 1890
order necessary to expand railroads for more effi-

cient export of raw materials and the development British Colonialism in the Malay
of Western systems of communication. Peninsula and Burma, 1826–1890
[1870–1890
N
Russian expansion 1856–1876
W
NORWAY AND ARCTIC OCEAN Russian expansion 1877–1900
SWEDEN
E
S
Vassal khanates
a
B a lt i c S e Railroads (only main lines
Y
shown)
AN
GERM
St. Petersburg
Warsaw Moscow
Kiev
Siberia
Odessa
ga
R . RUSSIA
Bl Vol
a TRA
NS-SIBERIA
N RA ILROAD
ck
Sea
Caspian Sea
Vladivostok
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
Turkestan
Port Arthur
(leased from China, 1898)
CHINA
PERSIA 0 500 1,000 miles
AFGHANISTAN
INDIA 0 500 1,000 kilometers
MAP 23.2 Expansion of Russia in Asia, 1865–1895

Russian administrators and military men continued enlarging Russia, bringing in Asians of
many different ethnicities, ways of life, and religions. Land-hungry peasants in western Russia
followed the path of expansion into Siberia and Muslim territories to the south. In some cases
they drove native peoples from their lands, but in others they settled less-populated frontier
areas. As in all cases of imperial expansion, local peoples resisted any expropriation of their
livelihoods, while the central government tried various policies for integration.
The British added to their holdings in Asia partly to counter Russian and French
annexations. For years, Russia had been absorbing the small Muslim states of cen-
tral Asia, including provinces of Afghanistan (Map 23.2). Besides extending into the
Ottoman Empire, Russian tentacles reached Persia, India, and China, often encoun-
tering British competition. By the thousands land-hungry Russian peasants moved
to these regions, with the Trans-Siberian Railroad (1891–1916) later feeding hun-
dreds of thousands more to Siberia. France meanwhile used the threat of military
action to negotiate favorable treaties with Indochinese rulers, creating the Union
of Indochina from the ancient states of Cambodia, Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin
China in 1887 (the last three now constitute Vietnam). Laos was added to Indochina
in 1893.
Japan’s Imperial Agenda

Japan escaped European rule by rapidly transforming itself into a modern industrial
nation with its own imperial agenda. The Japanese embraced foreign trade and
industry. “All classes high and low shall unite in vigorously promoting the economy
[ 1870–1890
]
Modernization in Japan
Like the West, Japan bustled with
commerce and industry thanks to
improved and expanding transpor-
tation. Railroads, ships, and a
range of new inventions such as
the rickshaw sped goods and indi-
viduals within cities, across the
country, and ultimately to new, for-
eign destinations. The Japanese
traveled widely to learn about
ongoing technological innovation.
(Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection,
and welfare of the nation,” ran

one of the first pronouncements
of the Meiji regime that had
come to power in 1868. Unlike
China, the Japanese government
directed the country’s turn
toward modern industry, and
state support led daring innova-
tors like Iwasaki Yataro, founder
of the Mitsubishi firm, to develop
heavy industries such as mining
and shipping. The Japanese sent
students, entrepreneurs, and
government officials to the West
to bring back as much new knowledge as they could.
Change was the order of the day in Japan. Japanese legal scholars, following Ger-
man models, helped draft a constitution in 1889 that emphasized state power rather
than individual rights. Western dress became the rule at the imperial court, and
when fire destroyed Tokyo in 1872, a European planner directed the rebuilding in
Western architectural style. The Japanese adapted samurai traditions such as spiritual
discipline to create a large and technologically modern military. In the 1870s, Japan
purchased naval ships from Britain and began conquering adjacent islands, including
Okinawa.
The Paradoxes of Imperialism

Imperialism ignited constant, sometimes heated debate because of its many para-
doxes. Although it was meant to make European nations more economically secure,
[1870–1890
imperialism intensified distrust in international politics as countries vied with one

another for a share of world influence. In securing India’s borders, for example, the
British faced Russian expansion in Afghanistan and along the borders of China,
raising the costs of empire. Britain thus spent enormous amounts of tax revenue to
maintain its empire even as its industrial lead began to slip. Yet for certain businesses,
colonies provided crucial markets and large profits: late in the century, French colo-
nies bought 65 percent of France’s exports of soap and 41 percent of its metallurgical
exports. Imperialism provided huge numbers of jobs to people in European port
cities, but taxpayers in all parts of a nation — whether they benefited or not — paid
for colonial armies, increasingly costly weaponry, and administrators.
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and explorer who arrived in southern Africa in
1841 and spent the next thirty-two years of his life investigating rivers and lakes. This image
depicts his expedition to locate Lake Ngami. A later quest took him to Victoria Falls. In both
instances, he was most likely the first European to view them. Livingstone advocated that trade
along waterways could replace slavery on the continent, a development that would also benefit
the English sponsors of his expeditions. Livingstone traveled with a relatively small retinue,
though one can catch glimpses of the rest of his supply train in the distance. Hundreds of
porters, guards, cooks, and guides were some of those necessary to an expedition’s success,
while leaders such as Livingstone were mythologized as solitary and heroic figures braving
all obstacles alone. (chromolithograph from The Life and Explorations of David Livingstone [London, © 1878] /
Universal History Archive / UIG / Bridgeman Images.)
[ 1870–1890
]
Advocates of imperialism pointed out that whites had a “civilizing mission.” The
French thus taught some of their colonial subjects French language, literature, and
history. In Germany’s African colonies, an exam for students in a school run by
missionaries asked them to write on “Germany’s most important mountains” and
“the reign of William I and the wars he waged.” The deeds of Africa’s great rulers
and the accomplishments of its kingdoms disappeared from the curriculum. While
Europeans believed in instructing colonial subjects, they did not believe that Africans
and Asians were as capable as Europeans of great achievements.
Imperialism’s goal of “civilizing” was further conflicted. French advocates argued
that their nation “must keep its role as the soldier of civilization.” But it was unclear
whether imperialism should emphasize soldiering (that is, the conquest and murder
of local peoples) or civilizing (the education of local peoples in the European tradi-
tion). Western scholars and travelers had long studied Asian and African languages,
art, and literature, and had gathered and used botanical and other scientific knowl-
edge. Yet appreciation of foreign cultures was tinged with bias and error. European
scholars of Islam characterized Muhammad as an inferior imitation of Jesus, for
example, and many Europeans stereotyped Asians and Africans as lying, lazy, self-
indulgent, or irrational. One English official pontificated that “accuracy is abhorrent
to the Oriental mind.” Such beliefs offered still another justification for conquest:
that inferior colonized peoples would ultimately be grateful for what Europe had
brought them.
European missionaries ventured to newly secured areas of Africa and Asia with
attitudes similarly full of contradictions. A woman missionary reflected a common
view when she remarked that the Tibetans with whom she worked were “going down,
down into hell, and there is no one but me . . . to witness for Jesus amongst them.”
Many people under colonial rule did accept Christianity, often blending their local
religious practices with Christian ones. Christianizing entire populations proved
impossible, especially when some imperial adventurers and soldiers became addicted,
went mad, or were wantonly murdered. When native people resisted, missionaries
often supported brutal military measures against them in the name of upholding
Christian values and Western order.
The paradoxes of imperialism are clear in hindsight, but at the time European
self-confidence hid many of them. There was the belief that through imperialist
ventures “a country exhibits before the world its strength or weakness as a nation,”
as one French politician announced. Some in government, however, worried that
imperialism — because of its expense and the constant possibility of war — might
weaken rather than strengthen the nation-state. The most glaring paradox of all was
that Western peoples who believed in
nation building and national indepen-
REVIEW QUESTION What were the goals of
the new imperialism, and how did Europeans dence invaded the territory of others thou-
accomplish those goals? sands of miles away and refused them the
right to rule themselves.
[1870–1890
] The Industry of Empire 755
The Industry of Empire

Behind the expansion of Western empires lay dramatic developments in economic
and technological power. Fed by raw materials from around the world, industry turned
out a flood of new products, including the increasingly powerful guns that served
imperial conquest, and many workers’ wages increased. Beginning in 1873, however,
downturns in business threatened both entrepreneurs and the working class. Business-
people sought remedies in new technology, managerial techniques, and a revolution-
ary marketing institution — the department store. Governments played their part by
changing business law and supporting the drive for raw materials and global profits.
The steady advance of industry, global trade, and the consumer economy further
transformed people’s daily lives.
Industrial Innovation
An abundance of industrial, technological, and commercial innovation backed the
ambitions of the nation-state and the drive for empire. The last third of the nineteenth
century saw new products ranging from the bicycle to the typewriter to the telephone.
In 1885, sophisticated German engineer Karl Benz devised a workable gasoline
engine; six years later, France’s Armand Peugeot constructed a functioning automo-
bile. Electricity became more widely used after 1880, providing power to light every-
thing from private drawing rooms to government office buildings. The Eiffel Tower,
constructed in Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1889, stood as a monument to
the age’s engineering wizardry. Visitors rode to the Eiffel Tower’s summit in electric
elevators, while to fuel the West’s explosive industrial growth, the leading industrial
nations mined and produced massive quantities of coal, iron, and steel in the 1870s
and 1880s. Manufacturers used the metal to build the more than 100,000 locomotives
that pulled trains — trains that transported two billion people a year.
The factory system spread across Europe and around the world, while agricul-
ture continued to be modernized. Historians used to contrast a “second” Industrial
Revolution of the late nineteenth century, in which manufacturers concentrated on
heavy industrial products like iron and steel, to the “first” one of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, in which innovations in the manufacture of textiles and
the use of steam energy predominated. Many historians now believe this distinction
mainly applies to Britain, where industrialization did rise in two stages. In countries
where industrialization came later, the two developments occurred simultaneously.
Numerous and increasingly advanced textile mills were installed on the European
continent later than in Britain, for instance, at the same time that blast furnaces were
being constructed. Although industrialization led to the decline of traditional crafts
like weaving, home industry — or outwork, the process of having some aspects of
industrial work done outside factories in individual homes (similar to the putting-
out system described on page 675) — persisted in garment making, metalwork, and
[ 1870–1890
]
porcelain painting. Industrial production occurring simultaneously in homes, small
workshops, and factories has continued to the present day.
Industrial innovations also changed agriculture. Chemical fertilizers boosted
crop yields, and reapers and threshers mechanized harvesting. In the 1870s, Sweden
produced a cream separator, a first step toward mechanizing dairy farming, while
wire fencing and barbed wire replaced wooden fencing and stone walls. Refrigera-
tion, developed during this period, allowed fruits, vegetables, and meat to be trans-
ported without spoiling, thus diversifying and increasing the urban food supply. Tin
from colonies facilitated large-scale commercial canning, which made many foods
available year-round to people in the cities and thus improved their health.
Imperial expansion accelerated because new, more powerful guns, railroads,
steamships, and medicines allowed Western penetration of Asia and Africa. Improve-
ments in steamboat technology helped in the conquest of the African interior, but
the scientific development of quinine was also crucial. Before the development of
medicinal quinine in the 1840s and 1850s, the deadly tropical disease malaria deci-
mated many a European party embarking on exploration or military conquest, giving
Africa the nickname “White Man’s Grave.” The processing of quinine from Andean
cinchona bark, long known by local people as preventing or relieving malaria, radi-
cally cut deaths from the disease among soldiers, missionaries, adventurers, traders,
and bureaucrats.
As Europeans profited from these advances, drought and famine plagued large
stretches of both Africa and Asia in these decades, thus weakening local peoples’ abil-
ity to fight off European attacks. Under those circumstances European weapons did
the work of conquest despite stout resistance. Improvements to the breech-loading
rifle and the development of the machine gun, or “repeater,” between 1862 and the
1880s dramatically increased firepower. Europeans sold outmoded guns to peoples
needing protection both from their internal enemies and from the Europeans them-
selves. In contrast, Europeans crushed African resistance with rapid, accurate, and
blazing gunfire: “The whites did not seize their enemy as we do by the body, but
thundered from afar,” claimed one local African resister. “Death raged everywhere —
like the death vomited forth from the tempest.”
Despite global expansion, Britain’s rate of industrial growth slowed as its entre-
preneurs remained wedded to older technologies. Neglecting innovation, Great Brit-
ain profited from its investments worldwide and consolidated its global power in the
latter nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Germany and the United States began surpass-
ing Britain in research, technical education, and innovation — and ultimately in over-
all rates of economic growth.
Following the Franco-Prussian War, Germany annexed Alsace and Lorraine, ter-
ritories with both textile industries and rich iron deposits. Investing heavily in
research, German businesses devised new industrial processes and began to mass-
produce goods. Germany also spent as much money on education as on its military
in the 1870s and 1880s, sending German industrial productivity soaring. The United
States began intensive exploitation of its vast natural resources, including coal, metal
[1870–1890
ores, gold, and oil. Whereas German productivity rested more on state promotion
of industrial efforts, U.S. growth often involved innovative entrepreneurs, such as
Andrew Carnegie in iron and steel and John D. Rockefeller in oil. Most other coun-
tries trailed the three leaders in economic development.
French industry grew steadily, but French businesses remained smaller than
those in Germany and the United States. In Spain, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, indus-
trial development was primarily a local phenomenon. Austria-Hungary, for example,
had densely industrialized areas around Vienna and in Styria and Bohemia, but the
rest of the country remained tied to traditional, nonmechanized agriculture. The
Italian government spent more on building Rome into a grand capital than it invested
in economic growth. A mere 1.4 percent of Italy’s 1872 budget went to education
and science, compared with 10.8 percent in Germany. Scandinavian countries even-
tually made commercial use of electricity to industrialize in the last third of the
nineteenth century and became leaders in the use of hydroelectric power.
The Invention of Electric Lighting

By the 1890s, residents of major European cities could see many fresh inventions in a single
walk down the newly widened boulevards. In this illustration of Piccadilly in London, electric
lighting illuminates the way for modern bicycles and automobiles as well as horse-drawn car-
riages. By the turn of the century, streets had also become crowded with electric trams. (Mary
Evans Picture Library / The Image Works.)
[ 1870–1890
]
Russia’s road to industrialization was tortuous. The terms of serf emancipation
bound many Russian peasants to the mir, or landed community. Some villages sent
men and women to industrializing cities, but on the condition that they return for
plowing and harvesting. Nevertheless, by the 1890s, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a
few other cities had substantial working-class populations, and the Russian govern-
ment constructed railroads, including the Trans-Siberian Railroad (1891–1916), which
upon completion stretched 5,787 miles from Moscow to Vladivostok. Even as Rus-
sia’s industrial and military power increased, it exemplified the uneven benefits of
industrialization: neither Russian peasants nor underpaid urban workers could afford
to buy the goods their country produced.
Facing Economic Crisis

Economic conditions were far from rosy throughout the 1870s and 1880s despite
industrial innovation. In 1873, prosperity abruptly gave way to a severe economic
depression, followed by almost three decades of economic downturns. People of all
classes lost their jobs or businesses and faced long stretches of unemployment or
bankruptcy. Because economic ties bound industrialized western Europe to interna-
tional markets, the downturns affected economies around the world: Australia, South
Africa, California, Newfoundland, and the West Indies.
By the 1870s, as industry gained in influence, industrial and financial setbacks —
not agricultural ones as in the past — were capable of sending the economy into a
long tailspin. Innovation created new or modernized industries on an unprecedented
scale, but economic uncertainty accompanied the forward march of Western indus-
trial development, and businesspeople faced real problems. First, the start-up costs
of new enterprises skyrocketed. The early textile mills had required relatively small
amounts of capital in comparison to the new factories producing steel and iron.
Capital-intensive industry, which required huge financial investment for the pur-
chase of expensive machinery, replaced labor-intensive production, which relied on
the hiring of more workers. Second, the distribution and consumption of goods
failed to keep pace with industrial growth, in part because businessmen kept wages
so low that workers could afford little besides food. For them, purchasing the new
industrial goods was impossible. The series of slumps turned industrialists’ attention
to finding ways to enhance sales and distribution and to control markets and prices.
Governments took steps to address the economic crisis. New laws spurred the
development of the limited liability corporation, which protected investors from
personal responsibility for a firm’s debt and thus encouraged investment. Before
limited liability, owners or investors were personally responsible for the debts of a
bankrupt business. In one case in England, a former partner who had failed to have
his name removed from a legal document after leaving the business remained respon-
sible to creditors when the company went bankrupt. He lost everything he owned
except a watch and the equivalent of one hundred dollars. By reducing personal risk,
limited liability made investors more confident about financing business ventures,
[1870–1890
which led to the growth of stock markets. These stock markets raised money from a
larger pool of private capital than before and gave businesses the funds to innovate.
Businesses also met the crisis that began in 1873 by banding together in cartels
and trusts. Cartels were combinations of industries formed to control prices and com-
petition. A single German coal cartel, founded in the 1880s, eventually dominated
more than 95 percent of coal production in Germany and could therefore restrict
output and set prices. Trusts — similar to cartels in their power to control prices but
different in structure — appeared first in the United States in 1882, when John D.
Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Trust by acquiring stock from many different
oil companies and placing it under the direction of trustees. The trustees then con-
trolled so much of the companies’ stock that they could set prices for the entire
industry and even dictate to the railroads the rates for transporting the oil. While
expressing their belief in free trade, those who set up cartels and trusts actually
restricted the free market to produce soaring profits for themselves.
Much of Europe had adopted free trade after midcentury, but during the down-
turn of the 1870s and 1880s the resulting huge trade deficits — caused when imports
exceeded exports — soured many Europeans on the concept. Countries with trade
deficits had less capital available to invest internally, slowing job growth. Farmers in
many European countries suffered when improvements in transportation brought in
cheap grain from the United States and Ukraine. With broad popular support, gov-
ernments approved tariffs to make foreign goods, including grain, more expensive.
Revolution in Business Practices

Industrialists also tried to minimize the damage of economic downturns by revolu-
tionizing the everyday conduct of their businesses. Instead of running their firms on
their own in the late 1800s, industrialists began to hire managers specializing in a
particular aspect of a business — such as sales and distribution, finance, or the pur-
chase of raw materials. A white-collar ser vice sector, composed of workers with
mathematical skills and literacy acquired in the new public primary schools, emerged
as part of the development of management. Businesses employed armies of secretar-
ies, file clerks, and typists to guide the flow of business information.
Women, responding to the availability of clean, respectable work, formed the
bulk of service employees. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, middle-class
women still tended businesses with their husbands, but the new ideology of domes-
ticity became so strong that male employers were unwilling to hire married women,
and women in the lower-middle and middle classes were themselves ashamed to
work outside the home. By the late nineteenth century, the costs of middle-class
family life had increased, especially because school-attendance laws meant that chil-
dren were no longer contributing to family resources by working. Whether to help
pay family expenses or to support themselves, both unmarried and married women
of the respectable middle class increasingly took jobs despite the ideal of domesticity.
Since society had come to believe that women were not meant to work or even not
[ 1870–1890
]
fit to work, businesses made greater profits by consistently paying women in the
service sector much less than they would have paid men for doing the same tasks.
The drive to boost consumption led to the development of the department store.
Founded after midcentury in the largest cities, department stores such as the Bon
Marché in Paris and Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia gathered an impressive variety of
goods in one place in imitation of the Middle Eastern bazaar. Unlike stores that sold
single lines of goods such as dishware or fabrics, department stores were modern
shopping palaces built of marble and filled with lights and mirrors. In the depart-
ment store, luxurious silks and embellished tapestries spilled over railings and coun-
ters to stimulate consumer desire. Frenzied shoppers no longer limited their purchases
to necessities. Department stores became the domain of women, who came out of
their domestic sphere into a new public role. Stores hired attractive salesgirls, another
variety of service workers, to inspire customers to buy. Department-store shopping
also took place outside of cities: glossy mail order catalogs from the Bon Marché or
Sears, Roebuck in Chicago arrived regularly in rural areas, with both necessities and
exotic items from the faraway dream world of the city.
Berlin Telephone Operators

Middle-class women needing jobs embraced the opportunities offered by the growing ser vice
sector in telephone, telegraph, and office work and other respectable employment. These Ber-
lin telephone operators probably earned less than women factory workers, as ser vice sector
employers took advantage of an untapped educated pool of labor to advance industrial devel-
opment. (akg-images.)
[1870–1890
] Imperial Society and Culture 761
Consumerism was shaped by empire. Travelers like Frieda von Bülow and Carl
Peters journeyed on speedier ocean liners, carrying quinine, antiseptics, and other
medicines as well as cameras, revolvers, and the latest in rubber goods and apparel.
Colonial products such as coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, and cocoa became more wide-
spread for the stimulation they offered hardworking Westerners. Tons of palm oil
from Africa were turned into both margarine and soap, allowing even ordinary
people in the West to see themselves as cleaner and more civilized than those in
other parts of the world, including areas
from which those raw materials came.
Empire and industry jointly shaped every-
changes in Western industry and business
day life by exciting the desire for things — by the end of the nineteenth century?
whether industrial goods or products from
the colonies.
Imperial Society and Culture

The spread of empire not only made the world an interconnected marketplace but
also transformed everyday culture and society. Success in manufacturing and foreign
ventures both created millionaires and expanded the professional middle class and
the service sector. Many Europeans grew healthier, partly because of improved diet
and partly because of government-sponsored programs aimed at promoting the fit-
ness necessary for citizens of imperial powers. At the same time, millions of poor
Europeans migrated in search of opportunities around the world — even in the
colonies — while artists found new subject matter in the industrial and imperial
changes around them.
The “Best Circles” and the Expanding Middle Class

Profits from empire and industrial growth added new members to the upper class, or
“best circles,” so called at the time because of their members’ wealth, education, and
social status. People in the best circles often came from the aristocracy, which remained
powerful even as aristocrats had to share their social position with new millionaires
from the ranks of the upper middle class, or bourgeoisie. Monarchs gratefully bestowed
aristocratic titles on wealthy businesspeople, and poorer aristocrats approved mar-
riages between their children and those of the newly rich. Such arrangements brought
much-needed money to old, established families and the glamour of an aristocratic
title to newly wealthy families. Thus, Jeanette Jerome, daughter of a wealthy New
York financier, married England’s Lord Randolph Churchill (their son Winston later
became Britain’s prime minister). To justify their success, the wealthy often quoted
Social Darwinist principles, maintaining that their prosperity resulted from their
natural superiority over the poor.
Empire reshaped leisure time. Upper-class men bonded over big-game hunting in
Asia and Africa, which replaced age-old traditions of fox and bird hunting. European
[ 1870–1890
]
hunters forced native Africans, who had depended on hunting for income, food, and
group unity, to work as guides, porters, and domestics on hunts. Collectors brought
exotic specimens back to Europe for natural history museums, and wealthy Europe-
ans added empire to their homes with displays of stags’ heads, elephant tusks, and
animal skins.
People in the best circles saw themselves as an imperial elite, and upper-class
women devoted themselves to maintaining its standards of social conduct. Members
of the upper class did their best to exclude inferiors by controlling their children’s
social lives, especially by arranging marriages themselves. Instead of working for pay,
upper-class women focused on raising children and directing staffs of servants. They
took their role seriously, keeping detailed accounts of their expenditures and moni-
toring their children’s religious and intellectual development. Being active consumers
of Oriental carpets, bamboo furniture, Chinese porcelains, and fashionable clothing
was also time-consuming for women. In contrast to men’s plain garments, upper-
class women wore elaborate costumes — featuring constricting corsets, voluminous
skirts, bustles, and low-cut necklines for evening wear — that made them symbols of
elite leisure. Women offset the grim side of imperial and industrial society with the
rigorous practice of art and music. With keys made of ivory from Africa, the piano
symbolized the imperial elite’s accomplishments and superiority.
Below the best circles, or upper crust, the solid middle class of businesspeople
and professionals such as lawyers was expanding, most notably in western and cen-
tral Europe. In eastern Europe, this expansion did not happen naturally, and the
Russian government often sought out foreigners to build its professional and busi-
ness classes. Although middle-ranked businessmen and professionals occasionally
mingled with those at the apex of society, their lives remained more modest. They
did, however, employ at least one servant, which might give the appearance of leisure
to the middle-class woman in the home even though she did many household chores
herself. Professional men working at home did so from a well-appointed, if not lavish,
room. Overall, middle-class domesticity celebrated the imperial value of cleanliness.
Working People’s Strategies

For centuries, working people had migrated from countryside to city and from coun-
try to country to make a living. After the middle of the nineteenth century, empire
and industry were powerful factors in migration for a variety of reasons. In parts of
Europe, the land simply could not produce enough to support a rapidly expanding
population. Because of eroded soil, hundreds of thousands of Sicilians left, often tem-
porarily, to find work in the industrial cities of North and South America. One-third
of all European immigrants came from the British Isles, especially Ireland between
1840 and 1920, first because of the potato famine and then because English landlords
drove them from their farms to get higher rents by simply changing tenants. Between
1886 and 1900, half a million Swedes out of a population of 4.75 million quit their
[
1870–1890
country. Millions of rural Jews from eastern Europe also fled vicious anti-Semitism.
Russian mobs brutally attacked Jewish communities, destroying homes and busi-
nesses and even murdering some Jews. These ritualized attacks, called pogroms, were
scenes of horror. “People who saw such things never smiled anymore, no matter how
long they lived,” recalled one Russian Jewish woman who migrated to the United
States in the early 1890s.
Commercial and imperial development determined destinations for interna-
tional migration. Most migrants who left Europe went to North and South America,
Australia, and New Zealand as news of opportunity reached Europe. The railroad
and steamship made journeys across and out of Europe faster, though most workers
traveled in steerage with few comforts. Once established elsewhere, migrants fre-
quently sent money back home; European farm families often received a good deal
of their income from husbands or grown sons and daughters who had left. Cash-
starved peasants in eastern and central Europe welcomed the arrival of “magic dol-
lars” from their kin. Even though they formed the cheapest pool of labor, often in
factories or sweatshops, migrants themselves appreciated the chance to begin anew.
One settler in the United States was relieved to escape the meager peasant fare of rye
bread and herring: “God save us from . . . all that is Swedish,” he wrote home sourly.
More common than international migration was internal migration from rural
areas to European cities, accelerating the urbanization of Europe. The most urban-
ized countries were Great Britain and Belgium, followed by Germany, France, and
the Netherlands; established port cities like Riga, Marseille, and Hamburg offered
opportunities for work in global trade. Many who moved to the cities were seasonal
migrants who worked as masons, cabdrivers, or factory hands to supplement declin-
ing income from agriculture. When they returned to the countryside, they provided
hands for the harvest. In villages across Europe, independent artisans such as hand-
loom weavers often supported their unprofitable livelihoods by sending their wives
and daughters to work in industrial cities.
Changes in technology and management practices often made factory work
more stressful. Workers complained that new machinery sped up the pace of work
to an unrealistic level. For example, employers at a foundry in suburban Paris
required workers using new furnaces to turn out 50 percent more metal per day than
they had produced using the old furnaces. Despite more physical exertion, workers
received no additional pay for their extra efforts. Workers also grumbled about the
increased number of managers; many believed that foremen, engineers, and other
supervisors interfered with their work. Some women kept their jobs only in return
for granting sexual favors to the male manager.
Many in the urban and rural labor force continued to do outwork at home. In
Russia, workers made bricks, sieves, shawls, lace, and locks during the slow winter
season. Every branch of industry, from metallurgy to toy manufacturing to food pro-
cessing, also employed urban women at home — and their work was essential to the
family economy. Women painted tin soldiers, wrapped chocolate, made cheese boxes,
[ 1870–1890
]
and polished metal. Factory owners liked the system because low piece rates made
outworkers willing to work extremely long days. A German seamstress at her new
sewing machine reported that she “pedaled at a stretch from six o’clock in the morning
until midnight. . . . At four o’clock I got up and did the housework and prepared meals.”
Owners could lay off women at home during slack times and rehire them whenever
needed with little fear of organized protest, as the threat of joblessness meant destitu-
tion. By and large, however, urban workers were better informed and more connected
to the progress of industry and empire than their rural counterparts were.
National Fitness: Reform, Sports, and Leisure

In an age of Social Darwinist concerns about national fitness in the international
struggle to survive, middle- and upper-class reformers founded organizations for
social improvement. Settlement houses, clinics, and maternal and child health cen-
ters sprang up overnight in cities. Young middle- and upper-class men and women,
often from universities, eagerly took up residence in poor neighborhoods to study
and help the people there. Believing in the scientific approach to solving social prob-
lems, the Fabian Society, a small organization established in London in 1884, under-
took studies to devise reforms based on planning rather than socialist revolution. In
1893, the Fabians helped found the Labour Party to make social improvement a
political cause. Religious faith also shaped these efforts: the Catholic church in Hun-
gary, for example, ministered to those experiencing rural poverty as agriculture came
under the stresses of global competition.
To make the poor more fit in a competitive world, philanthropists and govern-
ment officials intervened in the lives of working-class families as a way to “quicken
evolution.” The worry was that the poor, as one reformer put it, “were permanently
stranded on lower levels of evolution.” Reformers sponsored centers to provide good
medical care and food for children and instructed mothers in child-care techniques,
including breast-feeding to promote infant health. Some schools distributed free
lunches, medicine, and clothing and inspected the health and appearance of their
students. Yet the poor were also pressured to follow new standards they could ill
afford, such as finding children respectable shoes, and reformers believed they had
the right to enter working-class apartments whenever they chose to inspect them.
A few professionals began to distribute birth-control information in the belief
that smaller families could better survive the challenges of urban life. In the 1880s,
Aletta Jacobs (1851–1929), a Dutch physician, opened the first birth-control clinic,
which specialized in promoting the new, German-invented diaphragm. Jacobs wanted
to help women in Amsterdam slums who were worn out by numerous pregnancies.
Working-class women used these clinics, and knowledge of birth-control techniques
spread by word of mouth among workers. The churches adamantly opposed this
trend, and even reformers wondered whether birth control would increase sexual
exploitation.
[1870–1890
Another government reform effort consisted of legislation barring women from

night work and from “dangerous” professions such as florist and bartender — allegedly
for health reasons. Even though medical statistics demonstrated that women in even
the most strenuous jobs became sick less often than men, lawmakers and working-
men claimed that women were not producing healthy enough children and were
stealing jobs from men. Women who had worked in trades newly defined as danger-
ous were forced to find other, lower-paying jobs or work at home. The new laws did
not prevent women from holding jobs, but they made earning a living harder.
As nations competed for territory and global trade, male athletes created sports
teams. Soccer, rugby, and cricket matches drew mass audiences that welded the lower
and higher classes into an imperial culture. Competitive sports began to be seen as
signs of national strength and spirit, as newspapers reported all sorts of new contests,
whether they concerned nations vying for colonies or bicyclists participating in cross-
country races such as the Tour de France. “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the
playing fields of Eton,” ran the wisdom of the day, suggesting that the games played
in school could mold the strength of an army — an army that competed with those
of other nations in pursuit of empire.
Team sports for men — like civilian military service — helped differentiate male
and female spheres and thus promoted a social order based on distinction between
the sexes. Reformers introduced exercise classes and gymnastics into schools for
girls, often with the idea that these would strengthen them for motherhood and thus
help build the nation-state. As knowledge of the world developed, some women
began to practice yoga, while wealthy men crossed the empire to challenge them-
selves with mountain climbing.
Working-class people adopted middle-class habits by joining clubs for such pur-
suits as bicycling, touring, and hiking. Clubs that sponsored trips often had names
like the Patriots or the Nationals, making a clear association between physical fitness
and national strength. The emphasis on healthy recreation gave people a greater sense
of individual might and promoted an imperial citizenship based less on constitutions
and rights than on an individual nation’s exercise of raw power. A farmer’s son in the
1890s boasted that with a bicycle, “I was king of the road, since I was faster than a
horse.”
Artistic Responses to Empire and Industry

In the 1870s and 1880s, the arts explored the process of global expansion and economic
innovation, often in the same gloomy Darwinistic terms that made reformers anxious.
Darwin’s theory held out the possibility that strong civilizations, if they failed to adapt
to changing conditions, could weaken and collapse. French writer Émile Zola, influ-
enced by fears of social decay, had a dark vision of how industrial society affected
individuals. He produced a series of novels set in industrializing France about a family
plagued by alcoholism and madness. His characters led violent strikes and in one case
[ 1870–1890
]
even castrated an oppressive grocer. Zola’s novel Women’s Paradise (1883) depicts the
upper-class shopper who abandons rational decision making as a consumer for the
frenzy of the new department stores. Other fictional heroines were equally upsetting
because they violated other long-standing rules. The character Nora in the drama A
Doll’s House (1879), by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, undermines accepted val-
ues regarding the health of society by leaving an unsatisfying marriage.
Some decorative arts of this period featured a countertrend that celebrated a
healthy and heroic rural life away from stark realism. Country people used mass-
produced textiles to create traditional-looking costumes and developed ceremonies
based on a mythical past. Such invented customs, romanticized as old and authen-
tic, brought tourists from the cities to villages. Urban architects and industrial
designers copied rustic styles when creating household goods and decorative objects.
The influence of empire is apparent in the traditional Persian and Indian motifs used
by English designers William Morris (1834–1896) and his daughter May Morris
(1862–1938) in their designs of fabrics, wallpaper, and household items based on
such natural imagery as the silhouettes of plants. Their work gave birth to the arts
and crafts style, whose “traditional” features paradoxically attracted consumers living
in the modern industrial age.
Industrial developments directly influenced the work of painters, who by the
1870s felt intense competition from a popular industrial invention — the camera.
Photographers could produce cheap copies of paintings and create more realistic
portraits than painters could, at affordable prices. In response, painters altered their
style, employing new and varying techniques to distinguish their art from the photo-
graphic realism of the camera. Claude Monet, for example, was fascinated by the way
light transformed an object, and he often portrayed the same place — a bridge or a
railroad station — at different times of day.
This daring style of art generally came to be called impressionism. It emphasizes
the artist’s attempt to capture a single moment by focusing on the ever-changing light
and color found in ordinary scenes. Using splotches and dots, impressionists moved
away from the precise realism of earlier painters. Vincent Van Gogh used vibrant
colors in great swirls to capture sunflowers, haystacks, and the starry evening sky.
Closely following the impressionists, French painter Georges Seurat depicted with
thousands of dots and dabs the Parisian suburbs’ newly created parks, with their
Sunday bicyclists and office workers in their store-bought clothing, carrying books
or newspapers. Industry contributed to the new styles of painting, as factories pro-
duced a range of pigments that allowed artists to use a wider and more intense
spectrum of colors than ever before.
An increasingly global vision also influenced painting in the age of empire. In
both composition and style, impressionists borrowed heavily from Asian art and
architecture. The impressionist goal of portraying the fleetingness of light or human
situations came from an ancient Japanese concept — mono no aware (“sensitivity to
the fleetingness of life”). The color, line, and delicacy of Japanese art (which many
impressionists collected) is evident, for example, in Monet’s later paintings of water
[1870–1890
] The Birth of Mass Politics 767
Mary Cassatt, The Letter

(c. 1890)
Mary Cassatt, an American artist
who spent much of her time in
Europe, was one of the many
Western artists smitten by Japa-
nese prints. Like many other
Western artists of her day, she
learned Japanese techniques
for printmaking, but she also
reshaped her painting style to
follow Japanese conventions
in composition, perspective,
and the use of color. Cassatt is
known for her many depictions
of Western mothers and children
and of individual women. In this
painting, the woman herself
even looks Japanese. (Worcester
Art Museum, Worcester, Massachu-
setts, USA / Bridgeman Images.)
lilies and even his re-creation of a Japanese garden at his home in France as the
subject for artistic study. Similarly, the American expatriate Mary Cassatt used the
two-dimensionality of Japanese art in The Letter (1890–1891) and other paintings.
Van Gogh sometimes filled the background of portraits with copies of intensely
colored Japanese prints, and in some paintings he imitated classic Japanese wood-
cuts. The graphic arts advanced the West’s
ongoing borrowing from around the globe REVIEW QUESTION How did empire and
while responding to the changes brought industry influence art and everyday life?
about by industry.
The Birth of Mass Politics

Ordinary people struggled for political voice, especially through the vote, as they
watched the wealth and influence of industry and empire increase. By bringing more
people into closer contact with one another in cities, the growth of industries helped
[ 1870–1890
]
develop networks of political communication and awareness, leading western Euro-
pean governments to allow more men to vote. Although only men profited from
electoral reform in these nations, the era’s expanding franchise marked the beginning
of mass politics. Women could not vote, but they participated in public life by form-
ing auxiliary groups to support political parties. Among the authoritarian monarchies,
Germany had male suffrage, but in more autocratic states to the east — for instance,
Russia — violence and ethnic conflict shaped political systems. In such places, the
harsh rule from above often resembled the control imposed on colonized peoples.
Workers, Politics, and Protest

As the nineteenth century entered its final decades, workers organized formal unions,
which attracted the allegiance of millions. Unions reacted to workplace hardships,
demanding a say in working conditions and aiming, as one union’s rule book put it,
“to ensure that wages never suffer illegitimate reductions and that they always follow
the rises in the price of basic commodities.” Businessmen and governments viewed
striking workers as insubordinate, threatening political unrest and destructive vio-
lence. Even so, strong unions appealed to some industrialists because a union could
make strikes more predictable (or even prevent them) and present worker demands
coherently instead of piecemeal by groups of angry workers.
From the 1880s on, the pace of collective action for better pay, lower prices, and
better working conditions accelerated. In 1888, for example, hundreds of young women
who made matches, the so-called London matchgirls, went on strike to end the fin-
ing system, under which they could be penalized an entire day’s wage for being a
minute or two late to work. The fines, the matchgirls maintained, helped companies
reap profits of more than 20 percent. In 1890, sixty thousand workers took to the
streets of Budapest to agitate for safer working conditions and the vote; the next year,
day laborers on Hungarian farms struck, too. Across Europe between 1888 and 1890,
the number of major strikes and demonstrations rose by more than 50 percent, from
188 to 289.
Housewives, who often acted in support of strikers, carried out their own pro-
tests against high food prices. They confiscated merchants’ goods and sold them at
what they considered a fair price. “There should no longer be either rich or poor,”
argued Italian peasant women. “All should have bread for themselves and for their
children.” Housewives often hid neighbors’ truant children from school officials so
that the children could continue to help with work at home. When landlords evicted
tenants, women gathered in the streets to return the ousted families’ household
goods as fast as they were removed. Meeting on doorsteps or at markets, women
initiated rural newcomers into urban ways. In doing so, they helped cement the
working-class unity created by workers in the factory.
Governments increasingly responded to strikes by calling out troops or armed
police, even though most strikes were about working conditions and not about politi-
[1870–1890
Match Makers’ Union

The matchgirls’ strike of 1888
was part of a new mass activism
on the part of so-called unskilled
workers. Writers for the increas-
ingly abundant newspapers
circulating across the West picked
up on the matchgirls’ situation,
spreading both exaggerated and
true stories of their lives, which
at a minimum were full of danger
from phosphorous, machinery,
and generally bad conditions.
The drama around the matchgirls
helped sell newspapers. The
idea that they were helpless
“girls” rather than workingwomen,
though disproven by their activ-
ism, made middle-class reformers
flock to aid them no matter how
rough they might seem. (© Mary
Evans Picture Library / Alamy.)
cal revolution. Despite government force, unions did not back down or lose their
commitment to solidarity. Craft-based unions of skilled artisans, such as carpenters
and printers, were the most active and cohesive, but from the mid-1880s on, a move-
ment known as new unionism attracted transport workers, miners, matchgirls, and
dockworkers. These new unions were nationwide groups with salaried managers who
could plan a widespread general strike across the trades, focusing on such common
goals as achieving the eight-hour workday but also paralyzing an entire nation
through work stoppages. Large unions had the potential for challenging large indus-
tries, cartels, and trusts.
Working-class political parties developed from unions. Workingmen helped cre-
ate the Labour Party in England, the Socialist Party in France, and the Social Demo-
cratic Parties of Sweden, Hungary, Austria, and Germany — most of them inspired
by Marxist theories. Germany was home to the largest socialist party in Europe after
1890. Socialist parties held out hope that newly enfranchised male working-class
voters could become a collective force in national elections, even triumphing over
the power of the upper class.
Those who accepted Marx’s assertion that “workingmen have no country” also
founded an international movement to address workers’ common interests across
national boundaries. In 1889, some four hundred socialists from across Europe met
[ 1870–1890
]
to form the Second International, a federation of working-class organizations and
political parties that replaced the First International, founded by Marx before the Paris
Commune. The Second International adopted a Marxist revolutionary program, but
it also advocated suffrage (in countries where it still did not exist) and better working
conditions.
Members of the Second International determined to rid the organization of
anarchists, who flourished in the less industrial parts of Europe — Russia, Italy, and
Spain — where Marxist theories of worker-controlled factories had less appeal. In
an age of tough international competition in agriculture, many rural workers sought
a life free from governments that backed the landowners’ interests. Thus, many
advocated extreme tactics, including physical violence. “We want to overthrow the
government . . . with violence since it is by the use of violence that they force us to
obey,” wrote one Italian anarchist. In the 1880s, anarchists bombed stock exchanges,
parliaments, and businesses. Members of the Second International felt that such
random violence was counterproductive.
Workingwomen joined unions and workers’ political parties, but in much smaller
numbers than men. Unable to vote in national elections and usually responsible for
housework in addition to their paying jobs, women had little time for party meetings.
In addition, their lower wages hardly allowed them to survive, much less pay party
or union dues. Many workingmen also opposed women’s presence in unions. Con-
tact with women would mean “suffocation,” one Russian workingman believed, and
end male union members’ sense of being “comrades in the revolutionary cause.”
Unions glorified the heroic struggles of a male proletariat against capitalism. Marxist
leaders maintained that capitalism alone caused injustice to women and thus that
the creation of a socialist society would automatically end gender inequality. As a
result, although the new political organizations wanted women’s support, they dis-
missed women’s concerns about lower wages and sexual harassment.
Popular community activities further strengthened worker solidarity. The gym-
nastics and musical societies that had once united Europeans in nationalistic fervor
now served working-class goals. Socialist gymnastics, bicycling, and marching soci-
eties promoted physical fitness because it could help workers in the “struggle for
existence” — a reflection of the spread of Darwinian thinking to all levels of society.
Workers also held festivals and cheerful parades, most notably on May 1 — a centuries-
old holiday that the Second International now claimed as a labor holiday. Like reli-
gious processions of an earlier time, parades fostered unity. As a result, governments
frequently banned such public gatherings, calling them a public danger.
Expanding Political Participation in Western Europe

Ordinary people everywhere in the West were becoming aware of politics through
newspapers, which, combined with industrial and imperial progress, were important
in developing a sense of citizenship in a nation. After 1880, western European coun-
tries moved toward mass politics more rapidly than did countries to the east, thanks
[1870–1890
in part to the rise of mass journalism — itself the product of imperial and industrial
development. The invention of automatic typesetting and the production of news-
print from wood pulp lowered the costs of printing, and the telephone allowed
reporters to communicate news to their papers almost instantly. Once literary in
content, many daily newspapers now emphasized sensational news, using banner
headlines, dramatic pictures, and gruesome or lurid details — particularly about mur-
ders and sexual scandals — to sell papers. In the hustle and bustle of industrial soci-
ety, one editor wrote that “you must strike your reader right between the eyes.”
Stories of imperial adventurers and exaggerated accounts of exploited women work-
ers, some in the white slave trade, drew ordinary people to the mass press.
Journalism created a national community of up-to-date citizens, whether or not
they could vote. Unlike the book, the newspaper was meant not for quiet reflection
at home or in the upper-class club but for quick reading of attention-grabbing stories
on mass transportation and on the streets. Elites complained that the sensationalist
press was a sign of social decay, but in western Europe increasing political literacy
opened the political process to wider participation.
A change in political campaigning was one example of this widening participa-
tion. In the fall of 1879, William Gladstone (1809–1898), leader of the British Liber-
als, whose party was then out of power, took a train trip across Britain to campaign
for a seat in the House of Commons. During his campaign, Gladstone addressed
thousands of workers, arguing for the people of India and Africa to have more rights
and summoning his audiences to “honest, manful, humble effort” in the middle-class
tradition of “hard work.” Newspapers around the country reported on his trip, and
these accounts, along with mass meetings, fueled public interest in politics. Gladstone’s
campaign was successful, and he took the post of prime minister for the second of
the four nonconsecutive terms he served between 1868 and 1894.
Other changes fostered the growth of political participation in Britain. The Bal-
lot Act of 1872 made voting secret, a reform that reduced the ability of landlords
and employers to control how their workers voted. The Reform Act of 1884 doubled
the electorate to around 4.5 million men, enfranchising many urban workers and
artisans and thus further diminishing traditional aristocratic influence in the coun-
tryside. To win the votes of the newly enfranchised, Liberal and Conservative parties
alike established national political clubs that competed with small cliques of parlia-
mentary elites for control of party politics. Broadly based interest groups such as
unions and national political clubs opened up politics by appealing to many more
voters.
British political reforms immediately affected Irish politics by arming poor ten-
ant farmers with the secret ballot. The political climate in Ireland was explosive
mainly because of the repressive tactics of absentee landlords, many of them English
and Protestant, who drove Irish tenants from their land in order to charge higher
rents to newcomers. In 1879, opponents of these landlords formed the Irish National
Land League and launched fiery protests. Irish tenants elected a solid bloc of nation-
alist representatives to the British Parliament, who, voting as a group, had sufficient
[ 1870–1890
]
strength to defeat either the Conservatives or the Liberals. Irish leader Charles
Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) demanded British support for home rule — a system
giving Ireland its own parliament — in return for Irish votes. Conservatives called
home rule “a conspiracy against the honor of Britain,” and when they were in power
(1885–1886 and 1886–1892), they cracked down on Irish activism. Scandals reported
in the press, some of them totally invented, weakened Parnell’s influence. In 1890, the
news broke of his affair with a married woman, and he died in disgrace soon after,
as the media shaped politics. Still, Irish home rule remained a heated political issue,
as did the determination to end Ireland’s colonial status.
France’s Third Republic replaced the Second Empire. The republic was shaky
at the start because the monarchist political factions — Bonapartist, Orléanist, and
Bourbon — all struggled to destroy it. Their failure to do so led in 1875 to the adoption
of a new constitution, which created a ceremonial presidency and a premier (prime
minister) dependent on support from the elected Chamber of Deputies. An alliance
of businessmen, shopkeepers, professionals, and rural property owners hoped the
new system would prevent the kind of strongman politics that had seen previous
republics give way to the rule of emperors and the return of monarchs.
Fragile at birth, the Third Republic would remain so until World War II. Eco-
nomic downturns, widespread corruption, and growing anti-Semitism fueled by a
highly partisan and monarchist press kept the Third Republic on shaky ground.
Newspaper stories about members of the Chamber of Deputies selling their votes to
business interests and about the alleged trickery of Jewish businessmen manipulating
the economy added to the instability. As a result, the public also blamed Jews for
problems in the republican government and the economy.
In 1889, those disgusted by the messiness of parliamentary politics backed
Georges Boulanger, a dashing and highly popular general, in his attempt to take over
the government. Boulanger soon lost his nerve, however, thereby saving the French
from rule by another strongman. Still, Boulanger’s popularity showed that in hard
economic times, liberal values based on constitutions, elections, and the rights of citi-
zens could be called into question by someone promising easy solutions.
Republican leaders attempted to strengthen citizen loyalty by instituting com-
pulsory and free public education in the 1880s. In public schools, secular teachers
who supported republicanism replaced the Catholic clergy, who usually favored a
return to monarchy. A common curriculum — identical in every schoolhouse in the
country — featured patriotic reading books and courses in French geography, litera-
ture, and history. The government established secular public high schools for young
women, seen as the educators of future citizens, while mandatory military service
for men inculcated pride in the republic rather than in the monarchy or the church.
Although many western European leaders believed in economic liberalism, con-
stitutions, and efficient government, these ideals did not always translate into univer-
sal male suffrage and citizens’ rights in the less powerful western European countries.
Spain and Belgium abruptly awarded suffrage to all men in 1890 and 1893, respec-
tively, while remaining monarchies. An alliance of conservative landowners and the
[1870–1890
Catholic church dominated Spain, although there was increasingly lively urban activ-
ism in the industrial centers of Barcelona and Bilbao. Reform in the Netherlands
increased male suffrage to only 14 percent by the mid-1890s, and an 1887 law in Italy
gave the vote to all men who had a primary school education, also 14 percent of the
male population. Without receiving the benefits of nation building — education,
urban improvements, industrial progress, and the vote — the average Italian in the
south felt less loyalty to the new nation than fear of the devastating effects of national
taxes and the draft on the family economy.
Power Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia diverged from the political paths taken by
western European countries in the decades 1870–1890. In all three countries, con-
servative large landowners remained powerful, often blocking improvements in
transport, sanitation, and tariff policy that would support a growing urban popula-
tion. But Bismarck, who had upset the European balance of power by humiliating
France in the Franco-Prussian War, created a powerful, unified Germany, with explo-
sive economic growth and rapid development of every aspect of the nation-state,
from transport to the thriving capital city of Berlin (Map 23.3).
His goals achieved, Bismarck now desired stability built on diplomacy instead
of war. Needing peace to consolidate the new nation, he pronounced Germany “satis-
fied,” meaning that it sought no new territory in Europe. To ensure Germany’s long-
term security, in 1873 Bismarck forged the Three Emperors’ League — an alliance of
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. The three conservative powers shared a
commitment to maintaining the political status quo.
MAP 23.3 Expansion of Berlin 0 1.5 3 miles

to 1914 0 1.5 3 kilometers
“A capital city is essential for the ing
edd
state to act as a pivot for its cul- W
ture,” the German historian Hein-
rich von Treitschke asserted. No Moabit
other capital city grew as dramati-
cally as Berlin after German unifi- Charlottenburg
cation in 1871. Industrialists and Sp
ree
bankers set themselves up in the R.
new capital, while workers migrated Schöneberg

there for jobs, swelling the popu-
lation. The city was newly dotted Wilmersdorf
with military monuments and with Walled city of 1738
museums to show off its culture. City and suburbs c. 1870
City and suburbs c. 1914
Railways 1914
Canals
[ 1870–1890
]
At home, Bismarck, who owned land and invested personally in industry, joined
with the liberals to create a variety of financial institutions, including a central bank
to advance German commerce and industry. After religious leaders defeated his Kul-
turkampf (see Chapter 22, page 737) against Catholicism, Bismarck turned to attack-
ing socialists and liberals instead of Catholics as enemies of the regime. He outlawed
the workers’ Social Democratic Party in 1878, and, hoping to lure the working class
away from socialism, between 1882 and 1884 he sponsored an accident and disability
insurance program — the first of its kind in Europe. In 1879, he put through tariffs
protecting German agriculture and industry from foreign competition but also rais-
ing the prices of consumer goods, including food for ordinary people. Ending his
support for laissez-faire economics, Bismarck broke with political liberals while
simultaneously increasing the power of the agrarian conservatives by attacking the
interests of Germany’s industrial sector.
Like Germany, Austria-Hungary frequently employed liberal economic policies
and practices. From the 1860s, liberal businessmen succeeded in industrializing parts
of the empire, and the prosperous middle classes erected conspicuously large homes,
giving themselves a prominence in urban life that rivaled the aristocracy’s. They
persuaded the government to enact free-trade provisions in the 1870s and to search
out foreign investment to build up infrastructure, such as railroads.
Despite these measures, Austria-Hungary remained monarchist and authoritar-
ian. Liberals in Austria — most of them ethnic Germans — saw their influence weaken
under the leadership of Count Edouard von Taaffe, Austrian prime minister from
1879 to 1893. Building a coalition of clergy, conservatives, and Slavic parties, Taaffe
used its power to weaken the liberals. In Bohemia, for example, he designated Czech
as an official language of the bureaucracy and school system, thus breaking the Ger-
man speakers’ monopoly on office holding. Reforms outraged individuals at whose
expense other ethnic groups received benefits, yet those who won concessions, such
as the Czechs, clamored for even greater autonomy. By playing nationalities off one
another, the government ensured the monarchy’s central role in holding together
competing interest groups.
Nationalists in the Balkans demanded independence from the declining Otto-
man Empire, raising Austro-Hungarian fears and ambitions. In 1876, Slavs in Bul-
garia and Bosnia-Herzegovina revolted against Turkish rule, killing Ottoman offi-
cials. As the Ottomans slaughtered thousands of Bulgarians in turn, two other small
Balkan states, Serbia and Montenegro, rebelled against the sultan, too. Russian Pan-
Slavic organizations sent aid to the Balkan rebels and so pressured the tsar’s govern-
ment that Russia declared war on Turkey in 1877 in the name of protecting Ortho-
dox Christians. With help from Romania and Greece, Russia defeated the Ottomans
and by the Treaty of San Stefano (1878) created a large, pro-Russian Bulgaria.
The Treaty of San Stefano sparked an international uproar. Austria-Hungary and
Britain feared that an enlarged Bulgaria would become a Russian satellite that would
enable the tsar to dominate the Balkans. Austrian officials worried about an uprising of
[1870–1890
their own restless Slavs. British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli moved warships into
position against Russia to halt the advance of Russian influence in the eastern Mediter-
ranean, so close to Britain’s routes through the Suez Canal. The public was drawn into
foreign policy: the music halls and newspapers of England echoed a new jingoism, or
political sloganeering, that throbbed with militarism: “We don’t want to fight, but by
jingo if we do, / We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!”
The other great powers, however, did not want a Europe-wide war, and in 1878
they attempted to revive the concert of Europe by meeting at Berlin under the aus-
pices of Bismarck — now a calming presence on the diplomatic scene. The Congress
of Berlin rolled back the Russian victory by partitioning the large Bulgarian state
carved out of Ottoman territory and denying any part of Bulgaria full independence
from the Ottomans (Map 23.4). Austria occupied (but did not annex) Bosnia and
Herzegovina as a way of gaining clout in the Balkans; Serbia and Montenegro became
fully independent. The Balkans remained a site of ambition for independence and
great-power rivalries.
Following the Congress of Berlin, the European powers attempted to guarantee
stability through a complex series of alliances and treaties. Anxious about the Bal-
kans, Austria-Hungary forged a defensive alliance with Germany in 1879. The Dual
Alliance, as it was called, offered protection against Russia and its potential for
inciting Slav rebellions. In 1882, Italy joined this partnership (henceforth called the
Triple Alliance), largely because of Italy’s imperial rivalries with France. Bismarck
negotiated the Reinsurance Treaty (1887) with Russia guaranteeing neutrality in case
of war unless the Habsburgs attacked Russia or Germany attacked France. The inten-
tion was to keep the Habsburgs from recklessly starting a war over Pan-Slavism.
Russia itself was beset by domestic problems in the 1870s and 1880s. Young
Russians were turning to revolution for solutions to political and social problems.
One such group, the Populists, wanted to rouse debt-ridden peasants to revolt. Other
people formed terrorist bands to assassinate public officials. The secret police
rounded up hundreds of members of one of the largest groups, Land and Liberty,
and subjected them to brutal torture and show trials. When in 1877 a young radical,
Vera Zasulich, tried unsuccessfully to assassinate the chief of the St. Petersburg
police, the people of the capital city applauded her act and acquittal, so great was
their outrage at government treatment of young radicals from respectable families.
Writers debated Russia’s future, mobilizing public opinion over these issues. Nov-
elists Leo Tolstoy, author of the epic War and Peace (1869), and Fyodor Dostoevsky,
a former radical, believed that Russia above all required spiritual regeneration — not
revolution. Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina (1877) tells the story of an impassioned
love affair, but it also weaves in the spiritual quest of Levin, a former “progressive”
landowner who, like Tolstoy, idealizes the peasantry’s stoic endurance. Dostoevsky
satirized Russia’s radicals in The Possessed (1871), a novel in which a group of revo-
lutionaries murders one of its own members. In Dostoevsky’s view, the radicals were
simply destructive, offering no solutions whatsoever to Russia’s ills.
[ 1870–1890
]
N 0 200 400 miles
E
W
S
RUSSIA
AU S T R IA- H U N G A RY
Belgrade ROMANIA
BOSNIA- Bucharest
HERZEGOVINA SERBIA Black Sea
Danube R.
Sarajevo
BULGARIA
Sofia
Ad East Rumelia
ria
tic MONTENEGRO Adrianople
Se
a O Constantinople
T
Macedonia T O San Stefano
ITALY Salonika
M
A N
Aegean E M
P I R
Sea E
GREECE Athens
Ottoman Empire before 1878

Ottoman Empire after 1878
Cyprus
Occupied by Austria-Hungary Crete (Br.)
Independent or autonomous
Autonomous Ottoman province Mediterranean Sea
MAP 23.4 The Balkans, c. 1878

After midcentury, the map of the Balkans was almost constantly redrawn. This resulted in part
from the weakness of the dominant Ottoman Empire but also from the ambitions of inhabitants
themselves and from great-power rivalry. In tune with the growing sense of national identities
based on shared culture, history, and ethnicity, various Balkan peoples sought to emphasize
local, small-group identities rather than merging around a single dominant group such as the
Serbs. Yet there was also a move by some intellectuals to transcend borders and create a
southern Slav culture.
Despite the influential critiques published by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, violent

action rather than spiritual uplift remained the foundation of radicalism. In 1881,
the People’s Will, a splinter group of Land and Liberty, killed Tsar Alexander II in a
bomb attack. The tsar’s death, however, failed to provoke the general uprising the
terrorists expected. Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) unleashed a new wave of oppression
against religious and ethnic minorities. Popular books and drawings depicted Tatars,
Poles, Ukrainians, and others as a horrifying menace to Russian culture. The five
million Russian Jews, confined to the eighteenth-century Pale of Settlement (the
[1870–1890
Torah Scrolls
After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, the government unleashed pogroms against
the Jews of the Russian Empire. The pogroms involved violent acts such as murder, beatings,
and the destruction of property on a grand scale. In this image, Jewish men survey the damage
done to the sacred texts of their religion during one such vicious attack. (© From the Jewish Chron-
icle Archive / Heritage Images / The Image Works.)
name for the restricted territory in which they were permitted to live), endured
pogroms. Their distinctive language, dress, and isolation in ghettos made them easy
targets. Government administrators encouraged these pogroms, blaming Jews for
rising living costs that were actually caused by the high taxes levied on peasants to
pay for industrialization.
As the tsar inflicted even greater repression across Russia, Bismarck’s delicate
system of alliances of the three conservative powers was coming apart. A brash but
deeply insecure young kaiser, William II (r. 1888–1918), came to the German throne
in 1888. William resented Bismarck’s power, and his advisers flattered the young man
into thinking that his own talent made Bismarck an unnecessary rival. William dis-
missed Bismarck in 1890 and let the Rein-
surance Treaty with Russia lapse in favor of
a pro-German relationship with Austria-
changes in political life from the 1870s to the
Hungary. He thus destabilized the diplo- 1890s, and which areas of Europe did they
matic scene just as imperial rivalries were most affect?
intensifying among the European powers.
[ 1870–1890
]
Conclusion
The period from the 1870s to the 1890s has been called the age of empire and industry
because Western society pursued both these ends in a way that rapidly transformed
Europe and the world. Much of Europe thrived due to industrial innovation, becoming
more populous and more urbanized. Using the innovative weapons streaming from
Europe’s factories, the great powers undertook a new imperialism that established
political rule over foreign peoples. As they tightened connections with the rest of the
globe, Europeans proudly spread their supposedly superior culture throughout the
world and, like Frieda von Bülow and Carl Peters, sought out more power and wealth.
Imperial expansion and industrial change affected all social classes. The upper
class attempted to maintain its position of social and political dominance, while an
expanding middle class was gaining influence. Working-class people often suffered
from the effects of rapid industrial change when their labor was replaced by machin-
ery. Millions relocated to escape poor conditions in the countryside and to find new
opportunities. Political reform, especially the expansion of suffrage, gave working-
class men a political voice. Workers formed unions and political parties to protect
their interests, but governments often responded to workers’ activism with
repression.
As workers struck for improved wages and conditions and the impoverished
migrated to find a better life, the advance of empire and industry was bringing
unprecedented tensions to national politics, the international scene, and everyday
life. By the 1890s, racism and anti-Semitism were spreading, and many were question-
ing the costs of empire both to their own nation and to conquered peoples. Politics
in the authoritarian countries of central and eastern Europe was taking a more con-
servative turn, resisting participation and reform. The rising tensions of modern life
would soon have grave consequences for the West as a whole.
[ 1870–1890
] Conclusion 779
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COLOMBIA GUIANA LIBERIA GOLD EQUATORIA
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GABON
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Colonial Empires c. 1890 BRAZIL SOUTH-WEST
BOLIVIA
WALVIS AFRICA INDIAN
BAY MADAGASCAR Fiji
British United States OCEAN New (Br.)
PORTUGUESE
AUSTRALIA Caledonia
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French Belgian CAPE EAST AFRICA
TINA
(MOZAMBIQUE)
CHILE
COLONY
Portuguese Personal ATLANTIC ORANGE SOUTH
G EN
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possession FREE AFRICAN ZEALAND
OCEAN STATE REPUBLIC
AR
Italian of Leopold II
British
German Japanese
FALKLAND IS.
Spanish Ottoman (Br.)
Dutch Other countries

Russian European
Danish migrations, 0 1,500 3,000 miles
c. 1820–1910
MAPPING THE WEST The West and the World, c. 1890

In the late nineteenth century, European trade and political reach spanned the globe. Needing
markets for the vast quantities of goods that poured from European factories and access to raw
materials to produce the goods, governments asserted that the Western way of life should be
spread to the rest of the world and that resources would be best used by Europeans. Explora-
tions and scientific discoveries continued both to build the knowledge base of Western nations
and to enhance their ability for greater conquest. Simultaneously, millions of Europeans left
their homes to find a better life elsewhere.
Chapter 23 Review
Leopold II (p. 747) impressionism (p. 766) Charles Stewart Parnell
outwork (p. 755) new unionism (p. 769) (p. 772)
capital-intensive industry Second International (p. 770) home rule (p. 772)
(p. 758) William Gladstone (p. 771) Third Republic (p. 772)
limited liability corporation Reform Act of 1884 (p. 771) Dual Alliance (p. 775)
(p. 758)
Review Questions
1. What were the goals of the new imperialism, and how did Europeans accomplish those
goals?
2. What were the major changes in Western industry and business by the end of the nine-
teenth century?
3. How did empire and industry influence art and everyday life?
4. What were the major changes in political life from the 1870s to the 1890s, and which
areas of Europe did they most affect?
Making Connections
1. How did the new imperialism differ from European expansion of two centuries earlier?
Of four centuries earlier?
2. Describe the effects of imperialism on European politics and society as a whole from 1870
to 1890.
3. Compare the political and social goals of the newly enfranchised male electorate with
those of people from the “best circles.”
The literature on imperialism is becoming increasingly exciting, especially as authors such as
Burbank and Cooper show imperialism’s relationship with the nation-state. Others show its con-
fusions and chaotic nature.
Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference.
2010.
Cain, P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism, 1688–2000. 2002.
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. 2001.
Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy: A History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. 2002.
Fisher, Michael. Migration: A World History. 2014.
Headrick, Daniel R. Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism 1400 to
the Present. 2010.
Koven, Seth. The Match Girl and the Heiress. 2014.
Lorcin, Patricia M. E., ed. Algeria and France 1800–2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia. 2006.
Maynes, Mary Jo, et al. Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750–
1960. 2005.
780
[1870–1890
Important Events
1860s–1890s Impressionism flourishes in the arts; absorption of Asian influences

1870s–1890s Vast emigration from Europe continues; the new imperialism
1871 Franco-Prussian War ends
1873 Extended economic recession begins with global impact
1876 British Parliament declares Victoria empress; invention of telephone
1878 Treaty of San Stefano
1879 Dual Alliance is formed between Germany and Austria-Hungary
1881 Tsar Alexander II is assassinated; France occupies Tunisia
1882 Triple Alliance is formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy;
Britain invades Egypt
1882–1884 Bismarck sponsors social welfare legislation
1884 British Parliament passes the Reform Act, doubling size of male
electorate
1884–1885 European nations carve up Africa at Berlin conference
1885 Invention of workable gasoline engine; formation of Indian National
Congress
1889 Japan adopts constitution based on European models; socialists meet
in Paris and establish Second International
1891 Construction of Trans-Siberian Railroad begins
Consider three events: Impressionism flourishes in the arts (1860s–1890s), Vast

emigration from Europe continues (1870s–1890s), and Bismarck sponsors social
welfare legislation (1882–1884). How were all of these related to empire and industry?
Price, Richard. Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-
Century Africa. 2008
Rappaport, Erika. Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End. 2000.
Reeder, Linda. Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women, Sicily,
1880–1920. 2003.
Schwarz, Bill. The White Man’s World. 2011.
Smith, Michael S. The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise in France, 1800–1930. 2005.
Weaver, Stewart, and Maurice Isserman. Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from
the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes. 2008.
Wildenthal, Lora. German Women for Empire, 1884–1945. 2001.
Modernity and the
24
Road to War
1890–1914
I
n the first decade of the twentieth century, a wealthy young Russian man trav-
eled from one country to another to find relief from a common malady of the
time called neurasthenia. Its symptoms included fatigue, lack of interest in life,
depression, and sometimes physical illness. In 1910, the young man consulted Sig-
mund Freud, a Viennese physician whose unconventional treatment — eventually
called psychoanalysis — took the form of a conversation about the patient’s dreams,
sexual experiences, and everyday life. Over the course of four years, Freud uncovered
his patient’s deeply hidden fear of castration,
Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)
which was disguised as a fear of wolves — thus
In some of his paintings, Norwegian the name Wolf-Man, by which he is known
artist Edvard Munch captured a cer- to us. Freud worked his cure, as the Wolf-
tain spirit of the turn of the century, Man himself put it, “by bringing repressed
depicting in soft pastel colors the ideas into consciousness” through extensive
newly leisured life of people strolling
talking.
in the countryside. Yet modern life
also had a tortured side, which Munch In many ways, the Wolf-Man could be
was equally capable of portraying. The said to represent his time. Born into a family
Scream is taken as emblematic of the that owned vast estates, he reflected Europe’s
torments of modernity as the individ- growing prosperity, though on a grander
ual turns inward, beset by neuroses, scale than most. Countless individuals were
self-destructive impulses, and even
madness. It can also be suggested
troubled, even mentally disturbed like the
that the screamer, like Europe, travels Wolf-Man, and suicides were not uncom-
the road to World War I. (The Scream, mon. The Wolf-Man’s own sister and father
1893 [oil, tempera & pastel on cardboard], died from intentional drug overdoses. As the
Munch, Edvard [1863–1944] / Nasjonalgalleriet,
Oslo, Norway / Bridgeman Images.)
twentieth century opened, Europeans raised
questions about family, gender relationships,
empire, religion, and the consequences of
technology. Every sign of imperial wealth brought on an apparently irrational sense
of Europe’s decline. British writer H. G. Wells saw in this prosperous era “the sunset
of mankind.” Gloom filled the pages of many a book and upset the lives of individu-
als like the Wolf-Man.
783
784 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
Conflict rattled the world as a growing number of powers, including Japan and
the United States, fought their way into even more territories. The nations of Europe
had lurched from one diplomatic crisis to another over access to global resources
and control of territory — both within Europe and outside it. Competition for empire
fueled an arms race that threatened to turn Europe — the most civilized region of
the world, according to its leaders — into a savage battleground. In domestic politics,
militant nationalism stirred ethnic hatreds and furthered anti-Semitic violence.
Women suffragists along with other politically disadvantaged groups such as the
Slavs and Irish demanded full citizenship, even as political assassinations and public
brutality swept away the liberal values of tolerance and human rights.
These were just some of the conflicts associated with the term modernity, often
used to describe the rise of mass politics, the spread of technology, and the faster
pace of life — all of which were visible in the West from the late nineteenth century
on. The word modern was also applied to art, music, science, and philosophy of this
period. Although many people today admire the brilliant, innovative qualities of
modern art, music, and dance, people of the time were offended, even outraged, by
the new styles and sounds. Freud’s theory that sexual drives exist in even the young-
est children shocked people. Every advance in science and the arts simultaneously
undermined middle-class faith in the stability of Western civilization.
That faith was further tested when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was
assassinated in June 1914. Few gave much thought to the global significance of the
event, least of all the Wolf-Man, whose treatment with Freud was just ending. He
viewed the fateful day of June 28 simply as the day he “could now leave Vienna a
healthy man.” Yet the assassination put the
spark to the powder keg of international
CHAPTER FOCUS How did developments in
social life, art, intellectual life, and politics
discord that had been building for several
at the turn of the twentieth century produce decades. The resulting disastrous war,
instability and set the backdrop for war? World War I, like the insights of Freud,
would transform life in the West.
Public Debate over Private Life

At the beginning of the twentieth century, an increasing number of people could
aspire to a comfortable family life because of Europe’s improved standard of living.
Yet as the twentieth century opened, traditional social norms such as heterosexual
marriage and woman’s domestic role as wife and mother came under attack by what
were seen as the forces of modernity. The falling birthrate, rising divorce rate, and
growing activism for marriage reform provoked heated accusations that changes in
private life were endangering national health. Discussions about sexual identity
became a political issue, and some feared the disappearance of distinct gender roles.
Women’s visibility in public life prompted one British songster in the late 1890s to
write:
[
1890–1914
] Public Debate over Private Life 785
Rock-a-bye baby, for father is near

Mother is “biking” she never is here!
Out in the park she’s scorching all day
Or at some meeting is talking away!
Discussions of gender roles and private life contributed to rising social tensions
because they challenged so many traditional ideals. Freud and other scientists tried
to be dispassionate in their study of such phenomena — sexuality, for example — and
to formulate treatments for so-called modern ailments such as those afflicting the
Wolf-Man.
Population Pressure
From the 1890s on, European politicians and the public hotly discussed urgent con-
cerns over trends in population, marriage, and sexuality. The European population
continued to grow as the twentieth century opened. Germany’s population increased
from 41 million in 1871 to 64 million in 1910, and tiny Denmark’s grew from 1.7 mil-
lion in 1870 to 2.7 million in 1911. Contributing to the increase were improvements
in sanitation and public health, which reduced infant mortality and extended the
average human life span. Following the earlier examples of Vienna and Paris, planners
tore apart and rebuilt Budapest, Moscow, and Berlin (whose population grew to over
4 million). Less-powerful states also rebuilt cities to absorb population growth: the
Balkan capitals of Sofia, Belgrade, and Bucharest gained tree-lined boulevards and
improved sanitation facilities.
While the absolute size of the population was rising in the West, the birthrate
(measured in births per thousand people) was falling. The birthrate had been decreas-
ing in France since the eighteenth century; other European countries began experi-
encing the decline late in the nineteenth century. The Swedish birthrate dropped
from thirty-five births per thousand people in 1859 to twenty-four per thousand in
1911; Germany went from forty births per thousand in 1875 to twenty-seven per
thousand in 1913.
Industrialization and urbanization helped bring about this change. Farm families
needed fewer hands because new agricultural machinery was taking the place of
human laborers. In cities, individual couples were free to make their own decisions
about limiting family size, learning from neighbors or, for those with enough money
and education, from pamphlets and advice books about birth-control practices,
including coitus interruptus (the withdrawal method of preventing pregnancy). Indus-
trial technology played a further role in curtailing reproduction: condoms, improved
after the vulcanization of rubber in the 1840s, proved fairly reliable in preventing
conception, as did the diaphragm. Abortions were also common.
The wider use of birth control roused critics who accused middle-class women
of holding a “birth strike.” Bishops in the Church of England condemned family
limitation as “demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare.” Politicians
[ 1890–1914
]
Large Czech Family

This photograph of a rural family in Czechoslovakia shows the differences that were coming to
distinguish urban from rural people. Although even members of a farm family, especially in east-
ern Europe, might proudly display technology such as a new phonograph, they might not practice
family limitation, which was gradually reducing the size of urban households. In eastern Europe,
several generations lived together more commonly in rural areas than in cities. How many gen-
erations do you see in this image? (© Scheufler Collection / Corbis.)
worried that the drop in the birthrate was due to a crisis in masculinity, which would
put military strength at risk. The “quality” of those being born troubled activists: If
the “best” classes had fewer children, politicians asked, what would society look like
if only the “worst” classes grew in number? The decline in fertility, one German
nationalist warned, would fill the country with “alien peoples, above all Slavs and
probably East European Jews as well.” Nationalist groups inflamed the political climate
with such racial hatreds. Instead of building consensus to create an inclusive political
community, politicians won votes by demonizing ethnic minorities, the poor, and
women who limited family size.
Reforming Marriage
Reformers thought that improving conditions within marriage would raise both
the quality and quantity of children born. Many educated Europeans believed in
eugenics — a set of ideas about producing “superior” people through selective breed-
ing. A famed Italian criminologist declared that “lower” types of people were not
humans but “orangutans.” Eugenicists wanted increased childbearing for “the fittest”
and decreased childbearing — even sterilization — for “degenerates,” that is, those
deemed inferior. Women of the “better” classes, reformers also believed, would have
[
1890–1914
more children if marriage were made more equal. One step would be to allow married
women to keep their wages and to own property, both of which in most legal systems
belonged to their husbands. Another step would be to allow women guardianship of
their own children.
Reformers worked to improve marriage laws to boost the birthrate, while femi-
nists sought to better the lot of mothers and their children. Sweden made men’s and
women’s control over property equal in marriage and allowed married women to work
without their husband’s permission. Other countries, among them France (1884), legal-
ized divorce and made it less complicated to obtain. Reformers reasoned that divorce
would allow unhappy couples to separate and undertake more loving and thus more
fertile marriages. By the early twentieth century, several countries had passed legis-
lation that provided government subsidies for medical care and child support as
concerns about population partially laid the foundations for the welfare state — that
is, a nation-state whose policies addressed not just military defense, foreign policy,
and political processes but also the social and economic well-being of its people.
The conditions of women’s lives varied across Europe. For example, a greater
number of legal reforms occurred in western versus eastern Europe, but women could
get university degrees in Austria-Hungary long before they could at Oxford or Cam-
bridge in England. However, in much of rural eastern Europe, the father’s power over
the extended family remained almost dictatorial. According to a survey of family
life in eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fathers married off their children so young
that 25 percent of women in their early forties had been pregnant more than ten
times. Yet reform of everyday customs did occur: for instance, among the middle
and upper classes of Europe, many grown children were coming to believe that they
had a right to select a marriage partner instead of accepting the spouse their parents
chose for them.
New Women, New Men, and the Politics of Sexual Identity

Rapid social change set the stage for even bolder behaviors among some middle-class
women. Adventurous women traveled the globe on their own to promote Christian-
ity, make money, or learn about other cultures. The increasing availability of white-
collar jobs for educated women meant that more of them could adopt an indepen-
dent way of life. The so-called new woman dressed more practically, with fewer
petticoats and looser corsets, biked down city streets and country lanes, lived apart
from her family, and supported herself. Italian educator Maria Montessori (1870–
1952), the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree and the founder of an
educational system that still bears her name, secretly gave birth to an illegitimate
child. Other new women lived openly with their lovers. Not surprisingly, there was
loud criticism: the new woman, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, had
led to the “uglification of Europe.”
Sexual identity also fueled debate. A popular book in the new field of “sexology,”
which studied sex scientifically, was Sexual Inversion (1896) by Havelock Ellis. Ellis,
[ 1890–1914
]
Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori, famous today for the
global network of schools that bear her
name, was the perfect example of a “new
woman.” Her work outside the home with
children was controversial; she was also a
highly skilled medical doctor and, secretly, an
unwed mother. While she developed a set of
sophisticated theories for the advancement
of young children generally, others cared for
her own son. (ullstein-bild / akg-images.)
a British medical doctor, claimed that

there was a new personality type — the
homosexual — identifiable by physical
affection for members of their own sex.
Homosexuals joined the discussion,
calling for recognition that they com-
posed a natural “third sex” and were not
just people behaving sinfully. Some maintained that, possessing both male and
female traits, they marked “a higher order” on the scale of human evolution. The
discussion of homosexuality started the trend toward seeing sexuality in general as
a basic part of human identity.
The issue became explosive in the spring of 1895, when Irish playwright Oscar
Wilde (1854–1900) was convicted of indecency — a charge that referred to his sexual
affairs with younger men — and sentenced to two years in prison. “Open the win-
dows! Let in the fresh air!” one newspaper rejoiced at the conviction. Between 1907
and 1909, German newspapers broadcast the courts-martial of military men in Kai-
ser William II’s closest circle who were condemned for homosexuality and transves-
titism. The government had to assure the public that William’s own family life was
“a fine model” for the German nation, as heterosexuality took on patriotic overtones.
Despite the harsh judgments against homosexuals, these cases paved the way for
growing sexual openness. Yet they also made sexual issues regular weapons in
politics.
Sciences of the Modern Self

Scientists and Social Darwinists found cause for alarm not only in the poor condition
of the working class but also in modern society’s mental complaints such as those
of the Wolf-Man. New sciences of the mind such as psychology and psychoanalysis
aimed to treat everyone, not just the insane. A number of books in the 1890s pre-
sented arguments on causes and cures for modern nervous ailments. Degeneration
(1892–1893), by Hungarian-born physician Max Nordau, blamed overstimulation for
both individual and national deterioration. According to Nordau, nervous complaints
[1890–1914
Oscar Wilde
The Irish-born writer Oscar Wilde sym-
bolized the persecution experienced by
homosexuals in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Convicted of indecency for having
sexual relations with another man, Wilde
served time in prison — a humiliation for
the husband, father, acclaimed author,
witty playwright, and human being. (©ILN /
Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works.)
and the increasingly bizarre art world

reflected a general downturn in the
human species. The Social Darwin-
ist remedy for such mental decline
was imperial adventure for men and
increased childbearing for both sexes
because it would restore men’s virility
and women’s femininity.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
devised a different approach to treat-
ing mental problems — one that chal-
lenged the widespread liberal belief
in a rational self that consistently acts
in its own best interest. Dreams, he
explained in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), reveal an unseen and powerful
part of one’s personality — the “unconscious” — where all sorts of desires are more
or less hidden from one’s rational understanding. Freud also held that the human
psyche is made up of three competing parts: the ego, the part that is most in touch
with the need to work and survive — that is, reality; the id (or libido), the part that
contains instincts and sexual energies; and the superego, the part that serves as the
conscience. Freud’s theory of human mental processes and his method for treating
their malfunctioning came to be called psychoanalysis.
Freud believed that sexual life should be understood objectively, free from reli-
gious or moral judgments. Children, he insisted, have sexual drives from the moment
of birth; for the individual to attain maturity and for society to remain civilized,
sexual desires — such as impulses toward incest — had to be repressed. Gender iden-
tity is more complicated than biology alone, he claimed, adding that girls and women
have powerful sexual feelings, an idea that broke sharply with existing beliefs that
women were passionless.
The influence of psychoanalysis became pervasive in the twentieth century. For
example, Freud’s “talking cure,” as his method of treatment was quickly labeled, gave
rise to a general acceptance of talking out one’s problems to a therapist. Terms such
[ 1890–1914
]
Freud’s Office and Collection

Sigmund Freud surrounded himself with imperial trophies such as Oriental rugs and African
art objects in his study and therapy room in Vienna. Freud was fascinated by cures brought
about through shamanism, trances, and other practices of non-Western medicine. Despite his
successes, Freud, like other Jews, was a target of anti-Semitism from Nazis and others; he
eventually escaped Vienna for exile in London in 1938. (ullstein bild / The Granger Collection, NYC —
as neurotic and unconscious came into widespread use. Freud attributed girls’ com-
plaints about sexual harassment or abuse to fantasy caused by “penis envy,” an idea
that led members of the new profession of social work to believe that most instances
of such abuse had not actually occurred.
Like Darwin, Freud rejected optimistic
REVIEW QUESTION How did ideas about the views of the world, believing instead that
self and about personal life change at the
humans individually and collectively were
beginning of the twentieth century?
motivated by irrational drives toward death
and destruction.
Modernity and the Revolt in Ideas

Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, intellectuals and artists so completely
rejected long-standing beliefs and traditional artistic forms that they ushered in a
new era. In science, the theories of Albert Einstein and other researchers established
[1890–1914
] Modernity and the Revolt in Ideas 791
new truths in physics. Artists and musicians produced shocking works but, like
Freud, they were influenced by advances in science and the progress of empire. Their
blending of the scientific and the irrational, and of Western and non-Western styles,
helped launch the revolution in ideas and creative expression called modernism.
The Opposition to Positivism

Late in the nineteenth century, many philosophers and social thinkers rejected the
century-old belief that using scientific methods would uncover enduring social laws.
This belief, called positivism, had emphasized the verifiable nature of fundamen-
tal laws and had motivated attempts to enact legislation based on studies of society.
Challenging positivism, some critics declared that because human experience is ever
changing, there are no constant social laws. German political theorist Max Weber
(1864–1920) maintained that the sheer number of facts involved in policymaking
could make decisive action by bureaucrats impossible. In times of crisis, a charis-
matic leader might usurp power because of his ability to act simply on intuition.
These turn-of-the-century thinkers, called relativists and pragmatists, influenced
thinking throughout the twentieth century.
The most radical among the scholars was the German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844–1900), who asserted that “truth” is not certain but rather a human
representation of reality. Neither scientists nor other careful observers, he said, can
have knowledge of nature that is not filtered through human perception. Nietzsche
was convinced that late-nineteenth-century Europe was witnessing the decline of
absolute truths such as those found in religion. Thus, he announced, “God is dead,
we have killed him.” Far from arousing dread, however, the death of God, according
to Nietzsche, would give birth to a joyful quest for new “poetries of life” to replace
worn-out religious and middle-class rules. Nietzsche believed that an uninhibited,
dynamic “superman,” free from traditional religious and moral values, would replace
the rule-bound middle-class person.
Nietzsche thought that each individual had a vital life energy that he called “the
will to power.” The idea inspired many people, including his students. As a teacher,
Nietzsche was so vibrant — like his superman — that his first students thought they
were hearing another Socrates. However, Nietzsche contracted syphilis and was
insane in the last eleven years of his life, cared for by his sister. She edited his attacks
on middle-class values into attacks on Jews and revised his complicated concepts of
the will to power and of superman to appeal to nationalists, anti-Semites, and mili-
tarists, all of whom he actually hated.
The Revolution in Science

While Nietzsche and other philosophers questioned the ability of traditional sci-
ence to provide timeless truths, scientific inquiry itself gained in prestige. Around
the turn of the century, however, discoveries by pioneering researchers shook the
[ 1890–1914
]
foundations of scientific certainty. In 1896, French physicist Antoine Becquerel dis-
covered radioactivity. He also suggested the mutability of elements by the rearrange-
ment of their atoms. French chemist Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie,
isolated the elements polonium and radium, which are more radioactive than the
uranium Becquerel used. From these and other discoveries, scientists concluded that
atoms are not solid, as had long been believed, but are composed of subatomic
particles moving about a core. In 1900, German physicist Max Planck announced
his quantum theory, stating that energy is delivered not in a steady stream but in
discrete packets, which he later called quanta.
In this atmosphere of discovery, physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) pro-
claimed his special theory of relativity in 1905. According to this theory, space
and time are not absolute categories but instead vary according to the vantage point
of the observer. Only the speed of light is constant. That same year, Einstein sug-
gested that the solution to problems in Planck’s theory lay in considering light
both as little packets and as waves. Einstein later proposed yet another blurring of
two distinct physical properties, mass and energy. He expressed this equivalence in
the equation E = mc 2, or energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light.
In 1916, Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which connected the
force, or gravity, of an object with its mass and proposed a fourth mathematical
dimension to the universe. Much more lay ahead once Einstein’s theories of energy
were applied to technology: television, nuclear power, and, within forty years, nuclear
bombs.
The findings of Planck, Einstein, and others were not readily accepted, because
long-standing scientific truths were at stake. Additionally, Marie Curie faced such
sexism from the scientific establishment that even after she became the first person
ever to receive a second Nobel Prize (1911), the prestigious French Academy of
Science turned down her candidacy for membership. The academy claimed that a
woman simply could not have done such outstanding work. Acceptance of these sci-
entists’ discoveries gradually came, and Einstein’s name became synonymous with
genius. Scientists of the modern era achieved what historians call a paradigm shift —
that is, despite resistance, they transformed the foundations of science as their theo-
ries came to replace those of earlier pioneers.
Modern Art
Conflicts between traditional values and new ideas also raged in the arts as artists
distanced themselves further from classical Western styles. French painter Paul
Cézanne initiated one of the most powerful trends in modern art by using rectan-
gular daubs of paint to portray his geometric vision of dishes, fruit, drapery, and
the human body. Cézanne’s art accentuated structure — the lines and planes found
in nature — instead of presenting nature as it appeared in everyday life. Following in
Cézanne’s footsteps, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) developed a style
[1890–1914
] Modernity and the Revolt in Ideas 793
called cubism. Its radical emphasis on planes and surfaces converted his models into
bizarre, almost unrecognizable forms. Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
(1907), for example, depicted the bodies of the demoiselles (“young ladies” or in this
case “prostitutes”) as fragmented and angular, with their heads modeled on African
masks. Picasso’s work showed the profound influences of African, Asian, and South
American arts, but his use of these features was less decorative and more brutal than
that of many other modern artists. Like imperialists who recounted their brutal
exploits in speeches and memoirs, Picasso brought knowledge of the empire home
in a disturbing style that captured the jarring uncertainties of society and politics in
these decades.
Across Europe, artists made stylistic changes in their work that incorporated
political criticism and even outrage. “Show the people how hideous is their actual
life,” anarchists challenged. Picasso, who had spent his youth in working-class Bar-
celona, a hotbed of anarchist thought, aimed to present the plain truth about indus-
trial society in his art. In 1912, Picasso and French painter Georges Braque devised
a new kind of collage that incorporated bits of newspaper stories, string, and various
useless objects. The effect was a work of art that appeared to be made of trash. The
newspaper clippings Picasso included described battles and murders, suggesting that
Western civilization was not as refined as it claimed to be. In eastern and central
Europe, artists criticized the boastful nationalism that determined royal purchases
of sculpture and painting: “The whole empire is littered with monuments to soldiers
and monuments to Kaiser William,” one German artist complained.
Scandinavian and eastern European artists produced works expressing the tor-
ment many felt at the time. Like the ideas of Freud, their style of portraying inner
feelings — called expressionism — broke with middle-class optimism. Norwegian
painter Edvard Munch aimed “to make the emotional mood ring out again as happens
on a gramophone.” His painting The Scream (1893), shown in the chapter-opening
illustration, used twisting lines and a tortured skeletal human form to convey the
horror of modern life that many artists perceived. The Blue Rider group of artists,
led by German painter Gabriele Münter and Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, used
geometric forms and striking colors to express an inner, spiritual truth. Kandinsky
is often credited with producing the first fully abstract paintings around 1909; shapes
in these paintings no longer bear any resemblance whatsoever to physical objects or
reality but are meant to express deep feelings. The work of expressionists and cubists
before World War I was a commercial failure in a marketplace run not only by
museum curators but by professional dealers — “experts” — like the professionals in
medicine and law.
Only one style of this period, art nouveau (“new art”), was an immediate, com-
mercial success. Designers manufactured everything from dishes, calendars, and
advertising posters to streetlamps and even entire buildings in this new style. As one
French official said about the first art nouveau coins issued in 1895, “Soon even the
most humble among us will be able to have a masterpiece in his pocket.” Adapting
[ 1890–1914
]
elements from Asian design, art nouveau replaced the impersonality of machines
with vines and flowers and the softly curving bodies of female nudes intended to
soothe the individual viewer. This idea directly contrasted with Picasso’s artistic
vision. Art nouveau was the notable exception to public rage at innovations in the
visual arts.
The Revolt in Music and Dance

“Astonish me!” was the motto of modern dance and music, both of which shocked
audiences in the concert halls of Europe. American dancer Isadora Duncan took
Europe by storm at the turn of the twentieth century when, draped in a flowing gar-
ment, she appeared barefoot in one of the first performances of modern dance. Her
sophisticated style was called “primitive” because it no longer followed the steps of
classical ballet. Experimentation with forms of bodily expression animated the Rus-
sian Ballet’s 1913 performance of The Rite of Spring, by Igor Stravinsky, the tale of an
orgiastic dance to the death performed to ensure a plentiful harvest. The dance troupe
struck awkward poses and danced to rhythms intended to sound primitive. At the
work’s premiere in Paris, one journalist reported that “the audience began shouting
its indignation. . . . Fighting actually broke out among some of the spectators.”
Composers had been rebelling against Western traditions for several decades,
producing music that was disturbing rather than pretty. Having heard Asian musi-
cians at international expositions, French composer Claude Debussy transformed his
style to reflect non-European musical patterns and wrote articles in praise of Asian
harmonies. Italian composer Giacomo Puccini used non-Western subject matter for
his opera Madame Butterfly, which debuted in 1904. Listeners were jarred when they
heard non-Western tonalities. Like the bizarre representation of reality in cubism,
the works of Austrian composer Richard Strauss added to the revolution in music
by using several musical keys simultaneously, thus distorting familiar musical pat-
terns. The early orchestral work of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who also
wrote cabaret music to earn a living, shocked even Strauss. Schoenberg proposed
eliminating tonality altogether; a decade later, he devised a new twelve-tone scale.
“I am aware of having broken through all the barriers of a dated aesthetic ideal,”
Schoenberg wrote of his music. Audiences,
however, found this music unpleasant and
REVIEW QUESTION How did modernism incomprehensible. “Anarchist! Nihilist!”
transform the arts and the world of ideas?
they shouted, using political terms to show
their distaste for modernist music.
Growing Tensions in Mass Politics

Alongside disturbances in artistic life, the political atmosphere grew charged. On the
one hand, liberal opinions led to political representation for workingmen. Networks
of communication, especially the development of journalism, created a common
[1890–1914
] Growing Tensions in Mass Politics 795
fund of political knowledge that made mass politics possible. On the other hand,
many political activists were no longer satisfied with the liberal rights such as the
vote sought by earlier reformers. Some militant nationalists, anti-Semites, socialists,
suffragists, and others demanded changes that challenged liberal values and individual
rights. Traditional elites, resentful of the rising middle classes and urban peoples,
aimed to overturn constitutional processes and crush city life. Politics soon threat-
ened national unity.
The Expanding Power of Labor

European leaders worried about the rise of working-class political power late in the
nineteenth century. Laboring people’s growing confidence came in part from expand-
ing educational opportunities. Workers in England, for example, avidly read works
by Shakespeare and took literally his calls for political action in the cause of justice
that rang out in plays such as Julius Caesar. Unions gained members among factory
workers, while the labor and socialist parties won seats in parliaments as men in the
lower classes received the vote. In Germany, Kaiser William II had allowed anti-
socialist laws to lapse after dismissing Bismarck as chancellor in 1890. Through grass-
roots organizing at the local level, the German Social Democratic Party became the
largest group in the Reichstag by 1912.
Winning elections actually raised problems among socialists. Some felt uncom-
fortable sitting in parliaments alongside the upper classes — in Marxism, the enemies
of working people. Others worried that accepting high public offices would weaken
socialists’ commitment to the goal of revolution. These issues divided socialist orga-
nizations. Between 1900 and 1904, the Second International wrestled with the ques-
tion of revisionism — that is, whether socialists should work from within governments
to improve the daily lives of laborers or push for a violent revolution to overthrow
governments. Powerful German Marxists argued that settling for reform would leave
the wealthy unchallenged while throwing small crumbs to a few working-class politi-
cians. Police persecution forced some working-class parties to operate in exile. The
Russian government, for instance, outlawed political parties, imprisoned activists,
and gave the vote to only a limited number of men when it finally introduced a par-
liament in 1905. Thus, Russian Marxist V. I. Lenin (1870–1924), who would take power
during the Russian Revolution of 1917, operated outside the country.
Lenin advanced the theory that a highly disciplined socialist elite — rather than
the working class as a whole — would lead a lightly industrialized Russia into social-
ism. At a 1903 party meeting of Russian Marxists, he maneuvered his opponents into
walking out of the proceedings so that his supporters gained control of the party.
Thereafter, his faction was known as the Bolsheviks, so named after the Russian word
for “majority,” which they had temporarily formed. They struggled to suppress the
Mensheviks (“minority”), who had been the dominant voice in Russian Marxism
until Lenin tricked them. Neither of these factions, however, had as large a constitu-
ency within Russia as the Socialist Revolutionaries, whose objective was to politicize
[ 1890–1914
]
peasants, rather than industrial workers, to bring about revolution. All of these
groups organized in secret instead of using electoral politics.
During this same period, anarchists, along with some trade union members
known as syndicalists, kept Europe in a panic with their terrorist acts. In the 1880s,
anarchists had bombed stock exchanges, parliaments, and businesses. By the 1890s,
they were assassinating heads of state: the Spanish premier in 1897, the empress of
Austria-Hungary in 1898, the king of Italy in 1900, and the president of the United
States in 1901, to name a few famous victims. Syndicalists advocated the use of direct
action, such as general strikes and sabotage, to paralyze the economy and give labor
unions more power. In response, politicians from the old landowning and military
elites of eastern and central Europe worked to reverse the trend toward constitution-
alism and mass political participation.
Rights for Women and the Battle for Suffrage

Women continued to agitate for the benefits of liberalism such as the right to vote
and to own their wages if married. German women focused on widening opportuni-
ties for female education. Their activism aimed to achieve the German cultural ideal
of Bildung — the belief that education can build character and that individual devel-
opment has public importance. In several countries, women worked to prevent pros-
titutes from being imprisoned on suspicion of having syphilis when men with syphi-
lis faced no such penalty. Other women took up pacifism — among them Bertha von
Suttner, whose popular writing emphasized how war inflicted terror on women and
families. (Von Suttner influenced Alfred Nobel to institute a peace prize and then
won the prize herself in 1903.)
By the 1890s, many women activists decided to focus their efforts on a single
issue — suffrage — as the most effective way to correct the many problems caused by
male privilege. Thereafter, suffragists created major organizations involving millions
of activists. British suffrage leader Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929) pressured
members of Parliament for women’s right to vote. Across the Atlantic, American
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) traveled the country to speak at mass suffrage rallies,
edited a suffragist newspaper, and founded the International Woman Suffrage Alli-
ance in 1904. Its leadership argued that despite men’s promises to protect women in
exchange for their inequality, the system of male chivalry had led to exploitation and
abuse. “So long as the subjection of women endures, and is confirmed by law and
custom, . . . women will be victimized,” a leading British suffragist claimed. Other
activists believed that the characteristics associated with mothering were necessary
in shaping a country’s policies.
Women’s rights activists were predominantly, though not exclusively, from the
middle class. Free from the need to earn a living, they simply had more time to
organize and to read the works of feminists such as Harriet Taylor and John Stuart
Mill. Working-class women also participated in the suffrage movement. Textile
[1890–1914
Woman Suffrage
in Finland
In 1906, Finnish
women became the
first in Europe to
receive the vote in
national elections
when the socialist
party there — usually
opposed to feminism
as a middle-class rather
than a working-class
project — supported
woman suffrage. The
Finnish vote encour-
aged activists in the
West, now linked
together by many inter-
national organizations
and ties, because it
showed that more than
a century of lobbying
for reform could lead to
gains. (© ILN / Mary Evans
Picture Library / The Image
Works.)
workers of Manchester, England, for example, put together a vigorous movement for
the vote, seeing it as essential to improved working conditions. Many of these women,
however, distrusted the middle class and believed suffrage to be less crucial than
women’s pressing economic concerns.
In 1906 in Finland, suffragists achieved their first major victory when the Finn-
ish parliament granted women the vote. The failure of parliaments elsewhere in
Europe to enact similar legislation provoked British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst
(1858–1928) and her daughters to found the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) in 1903. Starting in 1907, members of the WSPU held parades in English
cities, and in 1909 they began a campaign of violence, blowing up railroad stations,
slashing works of art, and chaining themselves to the gates of Parliament. Disguising
themselves as ordinary shoppers, they carried little hammers to smash the plate-
glass windows of department stores and shops. Parades and demonstrations made
suffrage a public spectacle; some outraged men responded by attacking the march-
ers. Arrested for disturbing the peace, the marchers went on hunger strikes in
prison. Like striking workers, these women were willing to use confrontational tac-
tics to obtain rights.
[ 1890–1914
]
Liberalism Tested
Governments in western Europe, where liberal institutions were seemingly well
entrenched, sought to control turn-of-the-century conflicts with pragmatic policies
that often struck at liberalism’s very foundations. Political parties in Britain discov-
ered that the recently enfranchised voter wanted solid benefits in exchange for his
support. In 1905, the British Liberal Party won a majority in the House of Commons
and pushed for social legislation aimed at the working class. “We are keenly in sym-
pathy with the representatives of Labour,” one Liberal politician announced. “We have
too few of them in the House of Commons.” The National Insurance Act of 1911
instituted a program of unemployment assistance funded by new taxes on the wealthy.
The Irish question, however, tested Britain’s commitment to such liberal values
as autonomy, opportunity, and individual rights. In the 1890s, new groups formed
to foster Irish culture as a way of heightening the political challenge to what they
saw as Britain’s continuing colonization of the country. In 1901, the circle around
poet William Butler Yeats and actress Maud Gonne founded the Irish National The-
ater to present Irish rather than English plays. Gonne took Irish politics into every-
day life by opposing British efforts to gain the loyalty of the young. Every time an
English monarch visited Ireland, he or she held special receptions for children.
Gonne and other Irish volunteers sponsored competing events, handing out candies
and other treats for patriotic youngsters. One home rule supporter marveled at “the
procession . . . of thirty thousand school children who refused to be bribed into
parading before the Queen of England.” Promoters of an “Irish way of life” encour-
aged speaking Irish Gaelic instead of English and supporting Catholicism instead
of the Church of England. This cultural agenda gained political force with the found-
ing in 1905 of Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”), a group that strove for complete Irish
independence.
Once committed to economic growth and the rule of law, Italian leaders, now
saddled with debt from unification, began to drift away from these liberal values.
Instead, corruption plagued Italy’s constitutional monarchy, which had not yet devel-
oped either the secure parliamentary system of England or the authoritarian mon-
archy of Germany to guide its growth. To forge national unity in the 1890s, prime
ministers used patriotic rhetoric and imperial adventure, notably a second unsuc-
cessful attempt to conquer Ethiopia in 1896. Giovanni Giolitti, who served as prime
minister for three terms between 1903 and 1914, adopted a policy known as trasform-
ismo (from the word for “transform”), using bribes and public works programs to
gain support from deputies in parliament. Political opponents called Giolitti the
“Minister of the Underworld” and accused him of preferring to buy the votes of local
bosses rather than spending money to develop the Italian economy. In a wave of
protest, urban workers in the industrial cities of Turin and Milan and rural laborers
in the depressed agrarian south demanded change. Giolitti appeased the protesters
by instituting social welfare programs and, in 1912, virtually complete manhood
suffrage.
[1890–1914
Anti-Semitism, Nationalism, and Zionism in Mass Politics

The real crisis for liberal political values of equal citizenship and tolerance came in
the two decades leading up to World War I when politicians used anti-Semitism and
militant nationalism to win elections. They told voters that Jews were responsible for
the difficulties of everyday life and that anti-Semitism and increased patriotism
would fix all problems. Voters from many levels of society responded enthusiastically,
agreeing that Jews were villains and the nation-state was the hero in the struggle to
survive. In both republics and monarchies, anti-Semitism and militant nationalism
provided those on the radical right with a platform to gain working-class votes and
thus combat the radical left of social democracy. This new radical right included
representatives of the agrarian nobility, aristocrats who controlled the military, and
highly placed clergy, and it broke with liberal ideas of the rule of law and the equality
of all citizens. Liberals had hoped that voting by the masses would make politics
more harmonious as parliamentary debate and compromise smoothed out class and
other differences. Instead politics became loud and hateful, a distinct departure from
consensus building and rational debate.
A strong tradition of anti-Semitism already existed in Russian politics. Russian
tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) believed firmly in Russian orthodox religion, auto-
cratic politics, and anti-Semitic social values. Taught as a child to hate Jews, Nicholas
blamed them for any failure in Russian policy. Pogroms became a regular threat to
Russian Jews, as Nicholas increasingly limited where Jews could live and how they
could earn a living.
Principles of equal citizenship and tolerance were also tested in France. Powerful
forces in the aristocracy, the military, and the Catholic church hoped that the Third
Republic, like earlier ones, could be overthrown. Economic downturns, widespread
corruption, and attempted coups made the republic more vulnerable, and the press
attributed failures of almost any kind to Jews. Despite an excellent system of primary
education promoting literacy and rational thinking, the public tended to agree, while
the clergy and monarchists kept hammering the message that the republic was noth-
ing but a conspiracy of Jews.
Amid rising anti-Semitism, a Jewish captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus,
was charged with spying for Germany in 1894. The military, whose upper echelons
were traditionally aristocratic, Catholic, and monarchist, produced manufactured
“evidence” to gain Dreyfus’s conviction even though the espionage continued. Then
several newspapers received proof that the army had fabricated documents to convict
Dreyfus. In 1898, the celebrated French novelist Émile Zola published an article titled
“J’accuse” (I accuse) on the front page of a Paris daily, exposing the web of perjury
that had created the impression of Dreyfus’s guilt.
The article, which named the truly guilty parties, led to public riots, quarrels
among families and friends, and denunciations of the army. The government finally
pardoned Dreyfus in 1899, dismissed the aristocratic and Catholic officers respon-
sible for the false accusations, and ended religious teaching orders to ensure a secular
[ 1890–1914
]
The Humiliation of
Alfred Dreyfus
French captain Alfred
Dreyfus was sent to a
harsh exile after being
convicted of spying for
Germany. Before he was
taken to Devil’s Island,
he was subjected to the
extreme humiliation of hav-
ing his officer’s insignia
and ribbons stripped from
his uniform and his sword
broken before hundreds
of troops and a mob of
screaming anti-Semites.
We can only imagine what
this meant to a man in his
mid-thirties who, despite
being Jewish, had worked
his way through an elite
military school and up the
ranks of the army. What do
you see in his bearing?
(The Granger Collection, NYC —
public school system that honored toleration and the rule of law. Still, the Dreyfus
Affair made anti-Semitism and official lies standard tools of politics by showing their
effectiveness with the public.
The ruling elites in Germany also used anti-Semitism to win support from those
who feared the consequences of Germany’s sudden and overwhelming industrializa-
tion. The agrarian elites, who still controlled the highest reaches of government, lost
ground to industry as agriculture (from which they drew their fortunes) declined as
a force in Germany’s economy. As industrialists grew wealthier and new opportu-
nities drew rural workers to the cities, the agrarian elites came to loathe industry for
challenging their traditional authority. A Berlin newspaper noted, “The agrarians’
hate for cities . . . blinds them to the simplest needs and the most natural demands
of the urban population.” To woo the masses, conservatives and a growing radical
right claimed that Jews, who made up less than 1 percent of the German population,
were responsible for destroying traditional society. They hurled diatribes against
Jews, new women, and Social Democrats, whom they branded as internationalist and
unpatriotic. This new right invented a modern politics that rejected the liberal value
of parliamentary consensus, relying instead on inventing enemies and thus dividing
what was supposed to be a unified nation-state.
[
1890–1914
Politicians in the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary also used militant nation-

alism and anti-Semitism to win votes, but here the presence of many ethnic groups
meant greater complexity in the politics of hate. Foremost among the nationalists
were the Hungarians, who wanted autonomy for themselves while forcibly imposing
Hungarian language and culture on all other, supposedly inferior, ethnic groups in
Hungary. Their nationalist claims rested on two pieces of evidence: Budapest was a
thriving industrial city, and the export of Hungarian grain from the vast estates of
the Magyar nobility saved the monarchy’s finances. The nationalists disrupted the
Hungarian parliament so regularly that it weakened the orderly functioning of the
government.
Although capable of causing trouble for the empire, Hungarian nationalists, who
mostly represented agrarian wealth, were themselves vulnerable. Hungary’s exploited
ethnic groups — Slovaks, Romanians, and Ruthenians — resisted Magyarization.
Industrial workers struck to protest horrendous labor conditions, and 100,000 activ-
ists gathered in the fall of 1905 in front of the Hungarian parliament to demonstrate
for the vote. Other nationalities across the Dual Monarchy intensified their demands
for rights. Croats, Serbs, and other Slavic groups in the south called for equality with
the Hungarians. The central government allowed the Czechs a greater number of
Czech officials in the government because of the growing industrial prosperity of their
region. But every step favoring the Czechs provoked outrage from the traditionally
dominant ethnic Germans. When Austria-Hungary decreed in 1897 that government
officials in the Czech region of the empire would have to speak Czech as well as Ger-
man, the Germans rioted. Discriminatory policies toward these groups and scorn for
the imperial government in Vienna created instability throughout Austria-Hungary.
Tensions mounted as German politicians in Vienna linked the growing power
of Hungarians and Czechs to Jews. Karl Lueger’s newly formed Christian Social Party
attracted members from among the aristocracy, Catholics, artisans, shopkeepers, and
white-collar workers. Lueger appealed to those for whom modern life meant a loss
of privilege and security. His hate-filled speeches helped elect him mayor of Vienna
in 1895, but his ethnic nationalism and anti-Semitism threatened the multinational-
ism on which Austria-Hungary was based. Thereafter a widening group of politicians
made anti-Semitism an integral part of their election campaigns, calling Jews the
“sucking vampire” of modernity and blaming them for the tumult of migration, the
economy, and just about anything else people found disturbing. Politics became a
thing not of debate in parliaments but of violent racism in the streets.
Anti-Semites lumped Jewish people into one hated group, but like members of any
other religion, Jews were divided by social class and education. Many Jews in western
Europe moved out of Jewish neighborhoods, intermarried with Christians, and in
some cases converted to Christianity — practices known as assimilation. Many well-
educated Jews favored the classical culture of the German Empire because it seemed
more rational and liberal than the ritualistic Catholicism of Austria-Hungary. By con-
trast, less prosperous Jews, such as those in Russia and Romania, were increasingly
[ 1890–1914
]
The Pale of Settlement
Other areas of large Jewish population
Cities with large Jewish population
General routes of Jewish exodus
0 200 400 miles

NORWAY
N SWEDEN St. Petersburg

W
Expelled
GREAT North 1881
S ea
E BRITAIN Sea Riga Moscow
S
t ic
DENMARK
al
Leeds B Expelled
Danzig Vilna 1881
Manchester
Hamburg
Minsk RUSSIA
NETH. Warsaw
London Berlin
To U.S. Lodz
BELG. GERMANY Kiev
Paris Prague
ATLANTIC Frankfurt Cracow Lemberg
OCEAN
FRANCE SWITZ. Vienna Budapest
Odessa
AUSTRIA-
IA
Trieste
HUNGARY
AN
ROM Black Sea
L
SERBIA
GA
ITALY BULGARIA
U
SPAIN
RT
Rome Constantinople
OTT
PO
OMA
N EMPI
RE
To U.S. and South Am
erica GREECE
CYPRUS
(Br.)
MOROCCO To
Pa
(Fr.) TUNISIA Medite r ranean S ea l es
(Fr.) tin
e
ALGERIA
(Fr.) LIBYA
(It.) EGYPT
MAP 24.1 Jewish Migrations in the Late Nineteenth Century

Pogroms in eastern Europe, increasingly violent anti-Semitism across the continent, and the
search for opportunity motivated Jews to migrate to many parts of the world. Between 1890
and 1914, some five million Jews left Russia alone. They moved to European cities, to North
and South America, and, as Zionism progressed, to Palestine.
singled out for persecution, legally disadvantaged, and forced to live in ghettos. Jews
from these countries might seek refuge in the nearby cities of central and eastern
Europe where they could eke out a living as day laborers or artisans. Jewish migra-
tion to the United States and other countries also swelled (Map 24.1). By 1900, some
Jews such as Freud were prominent in cultural and economic affairs in cities across
the European continent even as far more were discriminated against and victimized
elsewhere.
Amid vast migration and continued persecution, a spirit of Jewish nationalism
arose. “Why should we be any less worthy than any other . . . people?” one Jewish
[1890–1914
] European Imperialism Challenged 803
leader asked. “What about our nation, our language, our land?” In the 1880s, the
Ukrainian physician Leon Pinsker, seeing the Jews’ lack of national territory as fun-
damental to their persecution, advocated the migration of Jews to found a homeland.
In 1896, Theodor Herzl, strongly influenced by Pinsker, called not simply for migra-
tion but for the creation of a Jewish nation-state, the goal of a movement known as
Zionism. A Hungarian-born Jew, Herzl experienced anti-Semitism firsthand as a
Viennese journalist and a writer in Paris during the Dreyfus Affair. Backed by east-
ern European Jews, he organized the first
International Zionist Congress (1897). By REVIEW QUESTION What were the points
1914, some eighty-five thousand Jews had of tension in European political life at the
moved into Palestine — the region finally beginning of the twentieth century?
chosen for the Jewish nation.
European Imperialism Challenged

Anti-Semitism was only one sign that the conditions of modern life were deeply
troubling and that the rule of law and other liberal values like tolerance were threat-
ened. Militant nationalism across the West made it difficult for nations to calm inter-
national tensions. This nationalist atmosphere heated up, and newcomers Italy and
Germany now fought for a place at the imperial table, making imperial rivalries
among the European powers alarmingly worse. As colonized peoples challenged
European control, in 1904–1905, Japanese expansionism came close to toppling the
mighty Russian Empire. Chaos dotted the imperial world.
The Trials of Empire

Everyone was quick to violence when it came to 0 250 500 miles
Re
dS
empire, and Britain in its pursuit of the South Afri- 0 250 500 kilometers
ea
Blue
can War (or Boer War) of 1899–1902 was no excep- ERITREA

Nile
tion. In 1896, Cecil Rhodes, then prime minister of Adowa

R
1896
.
the Cape Colony in southern Africa, directed a raid BRITISH

into the neighboring territory of the Transvaal in SOMALILAND
ABYSSINIA
hopes of stirring up trouble between the Boers, (ETHIOPIA)
descendants of early Dutch settlers, and the more
recent immigrants from Britain who had come to ITALIAN
southern Africa in search of gold and other riches. SOMALILAND
BRITISH
Rhodes aimed for a British takeover of the Trans- EAST AFRICA
vaal and the Orange Free State, which the Boers
Italian territory
independently controlled. The Boers, however, dealt British territory
Britain a bloody defeat. French territory
In 1899, Britain began full-scale operations Independent
against the Boers. Foreign correspondents cover-
ing the South African War reported on appalling The Struggle for Ethiopia, 1896
[ 1890–1914
]
bloodshed, the unfit condition of the average British soldier, and the inhumane treat-
ment of South Africans herded into an unfamiliar institution — the concentration
camp, which became the graveyard of tens of thousands, mostly women and chil-
dren. Britain finally annexed the area after defeating the Boers in 1902, but promi-
nent Britons began to call imperialism not the work of civilization but an act of
barbarism (Map 24.2).
Nearly simultaneously with the South African War, the United States defeated
Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and took Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
Philippines as its trophies. Experienced in empire, the United States had successfully
crushed native Americans and annexed Hawaii in 1898. Both Cuba and the Philip-
pines had begun vigorous efforts to free themselves from Spanish rule before the
war. Urged on by the inflammatory daily press, the United States went to war against
Spain, but instead of allowing independence the U.S. government annexed Puerto
Rico and Guam and bought the Philippines from Spain. Cuba was theoretically inde-
pendent, but the United States monitored its activities.
The triumphant United States then waged a bloody war against the Filipinos,
who wanted independence, not another imperial ruler. British poet Rudyard Kipling
had encouraged the United States to “take up the white man’s burden” by bringing
the benefits of Western civilization to those liberated from Spain. However, reports
of American brutality in the Philippines, where 200,000 local people were slaugh-
tered, disillusioned some in the Western public, who liked to imagine native peoples
joyously welcoming the bearers of civilization.
Almost simultaneously, Italy won a costly victory over the Ottoman Empire in
Libya, and Italian hopes rose for imperial grandeur in the future. Germany likewise
joined the imperial contest, demanding an end to Britain’s and France’s domination
among the colonial powers. German bankers and businessmen were active across
Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, and by the turn of the century, Germany
had colonies in Southwest Africa, the Cameroons, Togoland, and East Africa. Despite
these successes, Germany, too, met humiliation and faced constant problems, espe-
cially in its dealings not only with Britain and France but also with local peoples in
Africa and elsewhere who resisted the German takeover. As Italy and Germany
joined the aggressive pursuit of new territory, the confident rule-setting for imperi-
alism at the Berlin Conference a generation earlier was diluted by general anxiety,
heated rivalry, and nationalist passion.
Japan’s rise as an imperial power further ate into Europeans’ confident approach
to imperialism. Japan defeated China in 1894 in the Sino-Japanese War, which ended
China’s domination of Korea. The European powers, alarmed by this victory, forced
Japan to relinquish most of its gains, a move that outraged and insulted the Japanese.
Japan’s insecurity had risen with Russian expansion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad
through Manchuria, sending millions of Russian settlers eastward. Angered by the
continuing presence of Russian troops in Manchuria, the Japanese attacked the tsar’s
forces at Port Arthur in 1904 (Map 24.3).
[ 1890–1914
SPANISH E
W
MOROCCO
TUNISIA S
MOROCCO Mediterranean Sea
Suez Canal
IFNI LIBYA
ALGERIA (TRIPOLI)
RIO DE EGYPT
Ni
le
ORO
R.
Re
d
Se
a
MAURITANIA
R.
ger FRENCH
Ni
WEST AFRICA ANGLO-EGYPTIAN ERITREA FRENCH
SENEGAL SUDAN
GAMBIA 1906, insurrection SOMALILAND
in Sokoto
RICA
PORTUGUESE
GUINEA BRITISH
GOLD NIGERIA Fashoda SOMALILAND
COAST
L AF
SIERRA CAMEROON ABYSSINIA

LEONE (KAMERUN) (ETHIOPIA)
R IA
LIBERIA 1904–1905, Germans

ITALIAN
TOGO
TO
suppress insurrection
1900, uprising; British SOMALILAND
go R.
UA
suppress Ushantis 1904, insurrection in Con UGANDA

southern Nigeria BRITISH
E
Q
EAST AFRICA
SPANISH GUINEA CH
(RIO MUNI) EN
FRFrench
(KENYA) 1899–1900, Mohammed
BELGIAN ben Abdullah
clashes with British,
Congo CONGO GERMAN Italians, Ethiopians
EAST AFRICA
AT LANT IC
1905, uprising ZANZIBAR
1905, insurrection
O C EAN CABINDA
NYASALAND
ANGOLA
1902, uprising suppressed by Portuguese
1907, uprising (inspired by Herero uprising NORTHERN
RHODESIA
E
in German S.W. Africa)

QU
BI
GERMAN SOUTHERN
AM
SOUTHWEST RHODESIA
MADAGASCAR
OZ
AFRICA
M
BECHUANALAND
1904–1908, uprising
British (Herero tribe plus Hottentots)
French
German SWAZILAND
BASUTOLAND
IND IAN
Italian 1903, Hottentot uprising UNION OF OCEAN
Portuguese SOUTH AFRICA
1899–1902, South African War
Independent African states
Belgian 1914, Boer uprising 0 250 500 miles
Spanish
MAP 24.2 Africa in 1914

Uprisings intensified in Africa in the early twentieth century as Europeans tried both to consoli-
date their rule and to extract more wealth from the Africans. As Europeans were putting down
rebellions against their rule, a pan-African movement arose, attempting to unite Africans as one
people despite the diversity of cultures and ethnicities.
[ 1890–1914
]
R U S S I A Sea of
Am
Okhotsk
Irt y
TRANS-SIBERIAN ur N
RA R
ILR
sh
R. OA Sakhalin
.
D
MONGOLIA (1905) E
Autonomous 1912; W
Aral under Russian influence
Sea MANCHURIA Sea of S
Ca
Japan
spi
Independent following the Port Arthur 1904

an
Chinese Revolution of 1911–1912 (Rus. 1898, Jap. 1905) JAPANESE

Sea
KOREA
C H I N A (1910) EMPIRE
AFGHANISTAN Tsushima Tokyo
Boxer Uprising Strait
PERSIA TIBET of 1900 (1905)
s R.
Shanghai East
Indu
R.
NEPAL tz e China RYUKYU IS.
Y a ng Sea (Japan)
Ga
ng
es BHUTAN
R. Formosa
INDIA Hong
(1895) PACIFIC
BURMA
Tonkin
Kong OCEAN
South
Arabian China
Sea Bay of SIAM Manila
Bengal FRENCH Sea PHILIPPINES
INDOCHINA
Saigon
Ceylon BRITISH
NORTH
MALAY BORNEO
STATES SARAWAK
Territories held by: Singapore
Borneo
Great Britain Celebes
INDIAN OCEAN Sumatra
Netherlands NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES New Guinea
France
Java
United States Timor
Japan
0 500 1,000 miles
Battle
0 500 1,000 kilometers AUSTRALIA
MAP 24.3 Imperialism in Asia, 1894–1914

The established imperialists came to blows in East Asia as they struggled for influence in China
and as they met a formidable new rival — Japan. Simultaneously, liberation groups like the Box-
ers were taking shape, committed to throwing off restraints imposed by foreign powers and
eliminating these interlopers altogether. In 1911, revolutionary Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Qing
dynasty, which had left China unprepared to resist foreign takeover, and started the country on
a different course.
The conservative Russian military proved inept in the ensuing Russo-Japanese

War, even though it often had better equipment or strategic advantage. Russia’s Baltic
Fleet sailed halfway around the globe only to be completely destroyed by Japan in
the battle of Tsushima Strait (1905). The Russian defeat opened an era of Japanese
domination in East Asian politics. As one English general observed, “I have today seen
the most stupendous spectacle it is possible for the mortal brain to conceive — Asia
advancing, Europe falling back.” Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and began to target
other areas for colonization.
[
1890–1914
The Russian Empire Threatened

Alongside the humiliating loss to Japan, revolution erupted in Russia in 1905, and
the empire tottered on the brink of chaos. The mighty Russian Empire had concealed
its weaknesses well: state-sponsored industrialization in the 1890s had made the
country appear modern to outside observers, and Russification attempted to impose
a unified national culture on Russia’s diverse population. Burdened by heavy taxes to
pay for industrialization and by debts owed for the land they acquired during eman-
cipation, peasants revolted in isolated uprisings at the turn of the century. Unrest
occurred in the cities, too: in 1903, skilled workers led strikes in Baku; the unity of
Armenians and Tatars in these strikes showed how Russification had made political
cooperation possible among the various ethnicities. Growing worker activism, along
with Japan’s victory, challenged the autocratic regime.
On a Sunday in January 1905, a crowd gathered outside the tsar’s Winter Palace
in St. Petersburg to march in a demonstration to make Nicholas II aware of the brutal
working conditions they suffered. Nicholas had often traveled the empire, displaying
himself as the divinely ordained “father” of his people; therefore, his “children”
thought it natural to appeal to him for aid. Leading the demonstration was a priest
who, unknown to the crowd, was a police informant and agitator. Instead of allowing
the marchers to pass, troops guarding the palace shot into the trusting crowd, killing
hundreds and wounding thousands. Thus began the Revolution of 1905, as news of
“Bloody Sunday” moved outraged workers elsewhere to rebel.
In almost a year of turmoil across Russia, urban workers struck over wages,
hours, and factory conditions and organized their own councils, called soviets. In
June, sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied; in October, a massive railroad
strike brought rail transportation to a halt; and in November, uprisings broke out in
Moscow. The tsar’s forces kept killing protesters, but their deaths produced an oppo-
sition of artisans and industrial workers, peasants, professionals, upper-class reform-
ers, and women, many demanding an end to discriminatory laws such as those firing
women teachers who married. Liberals from the zemstvos (local councils) and the
intelligentsia (a Russian word for well-educated elites) demanded the creation of a
constitutional monarchy and representative legislature. They believed that the reli-
ance on censorship and the secret police, characteristic of Russian imperial rule,
marked the empire as backward.
The tsar finally yielded to the violence by creating a representative body called
the Duma. Although very few Russians could vote for representatives to the Duma,
its mere existence, along with the new right of open public debate, liberalized gov-
ernment and allowed people to present their grievances to a responsive body. Politi-
cal parties committed to parliamentary rather than revolutionary programs also
took shape. From 1907 to 1917, the Duma convened, but twice when the tsar dis-
liked its recommendations he simply sent the delegates home. Nicholas had an able
administrator in Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin (1863–1911), who ended the mir
system of communal farming and canceled the land redemption payments that had
[ 1890–1914
]
burdened the peasants since their emancipation in 1861. His reforms allowed people
to move to the cities in search of jobs and created a larger group of independent
peasants.
Stolypin was determined to restore law and order. He clamped down on revo-
lutionary organizations, sentencing so many of their members to death by hanging
that nooses were nicknamed “Stolypin neckties.” Still rebels continued to assassinate
government officials, and Stolypin himself was assassinated in 1911. Stolypin’s reforms
promoted peasant well-being, which encouraged what one historian has called a “new
peasant assertiveness.” The industrial workforce also grew, but more strikes broke
out, culminating in a general strike in St. Petersburg in 1914. The imperial govern-
ment’s refusal to share power through the Duma left the way open to an even greater
upheaval in 1917.
Growing Resistance to Colonial Domination

Japanese military victories over the Qing in China and the Romanovs in Russia upset
the status quo in both countries and encouraged nationalist protests across the globe,
further setting the West on edge. Uprisings began in China after the 1895 defeat by
Japan. Nonhuman factors also affected the Chinese people as drought and famine
came to plague the empire. Despairing peasants organized into secret societies to expel
the foreigners and restore Chinese dignity and power. One organization was the
Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, commonly called the Boxers, whose
members maintained that ritual boxing would protect them from a variety of evils,
including bullets. Encouraged by the Qing ruler, the dowager empress Tz’u-hsi (Cixi;
1835–1908), the Boxers rebelled in 1900, massacring the missionaries and Chinese
Christians to whom they attributed China’s troubles. Seven of the colonial powers
united to put down the Boxer Uprising and to devastate the areas in which the Boxers
operated. Defeated once more, the Chinese had to pay a huge indemnity and allow
even greater foreign military occupation.
The Boxer Uprising thoroughly discredited the Qing dynasty, leading a group of
revolutionaries to overthrow the dynasty in 1911 and to declare China a republic the
next year. Their leader, Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), who had been educated in Hawaii
and Japan, combined Western ideas and Chinese values in his Three Principles of
the People: “nationalism, democracy, and socialism.” For example, Sun’s socialism
included the Chinese belief that all people should have enough food, and his Nation-
alist Party called for revival of the Chinese tradition of correctness in behavior
between governors and the governed, modern economic reform, and an end to West-
ern domination of trade. Sun’s stirring leadership and the changes brought about by
the 1911 revolution helped weaken Western imperialism.
In India, the Japanese victory over Russia and the Revolution of 1905 stimulated
politicians to take a more radical course than that offered by the Indian National
Congress. The anti-British Hindu leader B. G. Tilak, less moderate than Congress
reformers, urged noncooperation: “We shall not give them assistance to collect rev-
[1890–1914
The Foreign Pig Is Put to Death

The Boxers used brightly colored placards to spread information about their movement to build
wide support among the Chinese population. They felt that the presence of foreigners had
caused a series of disasters, including the defection of the Chinese from traditional religion,
the flow of wealth from the country, and a string of natural disasters such as famine. This depic-
tion shows the harsh judgment of the Boxers toward foreigners and their Chinese allies — they
are pigs to be killed. (‘Je Su, the Pig, is put to death’, propaganda against the foreigners [woodblock print],
Chinese School [19th century] / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
enue and keep peace. We shall not assist them in fighting beyond the frontiers or
outside India with Indian blood and money.” Tilak asserted the distinctiveness of
Hindu values from British ways and urged outright rebellion against the British. This
brand of nationalism contrasted with that based on assimilating to British culture
and promoting gradual change. Trying to stop Tilak, the British sponsored a rival
nationalist group, the Muslim League, in a blatant attempt to divide Muslims from
Hindus in the Congress. Faced with political activism, Britain conceded to Indians’
representation in ruling councils and their right to vote based on property owner-
ship. But discontent also mounted, sometimes silently, as did worries among the
most clear-sighted imperialists about the future.
Revolutionary nationalism was simultaneously weakening the Ottoman Empire,
which for centuries had controlled much of the Mediterranean. Rebellions plagued
Ottoman rule, and this resistance allowed European influence to grow even as Otto-
man reformers aimed to strengthen the government. Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–
1909) tried to revitalize the multiethnic empire by using Islam to counteract the rising
nationalism of the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. Instead, he unintentionally
[ 1890–1914
]
provoked Turkish nationalism, which built on the uniqueness of the Turks' culture,
history, and language, as many European ethnic groups were also doing. The Japa-
nese defeat of Russia in 1904–1905 electrified these nationalists with the vision of a
modern Turkey becoming “the Japan of the Middle East,” as they called it. In 1908,
a group of nationalists called the Young Turks took control of the government in
Constantinople. The Young Turks’ triumph motivated other ethnic groups in the
Middle East and the Balkans to demand an end to Ottoman domination in their
regions. Strong contingents of feminist-nationalists mobilized women to work for
independence. However, the Young Turks, often aided by European powers with
financial interests in the region, brutally repressed nationalist uprisings in Egypt,
Syria, and the Balkans that their own success had encouraged.
The rebellions were part of the turmoil in global relations during the years just
before World War I, as empires became the scene of growing opposition in the wake
of Japanese, Russian, and Turkish events. In German East Africa, colonial forces
responded to native resistance in 1905 with a scorched-earth policy, eventually kill-
ing more than 100,000 Africans there. To maintain their grip on Indochina, the
French closed the University of Hanoi, executed Indochinese intellectuals, and
deported thousands of suspected nationalists. A French general stationed there
summed up the fears of many colonial rulers: “The gravest fact of our actual politi-
cal situation in Indochina is not the recent
trouble in Tonkin [or] the plots under-
REVIEW QUESTION How and why did events
in overseas empires from the 1890s on chal- taken against us but in the muted but
lenge Western faith in imperialism? growing hatred that our subjects show
toward us.”
Roads to War
Internationally, competition intensified among the great powers and drove Western
nationalists to become more aggressive. In the spring of 1914, U.S. president Woodrow
Wilson (1856–1924) sent his trusted adviser Colonel Edward House to Europe to
observe the rising tensions there. “It is militarism run stark mad,” House reported,
adding that he foresaw an “awful cataclysm” ahead. Government spending on what
people called the arms race had promoted economic growth while it menaced the
future. As early as the mid-1890s, one socialist had called the situation a “cold war”
because the hostile atmosphere made war seem a certainty. By 1914, the air was even
more charged, with militant nationalism in the Balkan states and politics — both at
home and worldwide — propelling Europeans toward mass destruction.
Competing Alliances and Clashing Ambitions

As the twentieth century opened, the Triple Alliance that Bismarck had negotiated
among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy confronted an opposing alliance between
[1890–1914
] Roads to War 811
France and Russia, created in the 1890s. The wild card in the diplomatic scenario
was Great Britain, traditional enemy of France, especially in the contest for global
power. Britain and France — constant rivals in Africa — edged to the brink of war in
1898 over competing claims to Fashoda, a town in the Sudan. The threat of conflict
led France to withdraw, showing both nations as embracing a truce out of mutual
self-interest. To prevent another Fashoda, they entered into secret agreements, the
first of which (1904) recognized British claims in Egypt and French claims in
Morocco. This agreement marked the beginning of the British-French alliance called
the Entente Cordiale. Still, French statesmen feared that, should war break out, their
ally might decide to remain neutral.
Kaiser William II inflamed the diplomatic atmosphere just as France and Britain
were developing the Entente Cordiale. After victory in the Franco-Prussian War,
Bismarck had proclaimed Germany a “satisfied” nation and worked to avoid further
wars. William II, in contrast, was emboldened by Germany’s growing industrial might
and announced in 1901 that Germany needed greater global power to be achieved by
“friendly conquests.” His actions, however, were far from friendly, and he used the
opportunity presented by the defeat of France’s ally Russia in 1904–1905 to contest
French advances in Morocco. A boastful, blustery man who was easily prodded to
rash actions by his advisers, William landed in Morocco in 1905 to block the French.
To resolve what became known as the First Moroccan Crisis, an international confer-
ence met in Spain in 1906. There the powers upheld French claims in North Africa.
France and Britain, encountering German interference in Morocco, drew closer
together.
When the French took over Morocco completely in 1911, Germany triggered
the Second Moroccan Crisis by sending a gunboat to the port of Agadir and again
demanding concessions from the French. This time no power — not even Austria-
Hungary — backed Germany. The British and French now strengthened the Entente
Cordiale, and Germany, smarting from its setbacks on the world stage, refocused on
its own alliances.
Germany’s bold territorial claims unsettled the rest of Europe, particularly the
Balkans. German statesmen began envisioning their creation of a Mitteleuropa — a
term that literally meant “central Europe” but in their minds also included the Bal-
kans and Asia Minor. The Habsburgs, firmly backed by Germany, judged that their
own expansion into the Balkans and the resulting addition of even more ethnic
groups would weaken the claims of any single ethnic minority in the Dual Monarchy.
Russia, however, saw itself as the protector of Slavs in the region and wanted to replace
the Ottomans as the dominant Balkan power, especially since Japan had crushed Rus-
sian hopes for expansion to the east. Austria’s swift annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
during the Young Turks’ revolt in 1908 enraged not only the Russians but the Serbs
as well, who wanted Bosnia as part of an enlarged Serbia (Map 24.4).
Even without the many greedy eyes cast on the Balkans, the situation would have
been extremely volatile. The nineteenth century had seen the rise of nationalism and
[ 1890–1914
]
0 200 400 miles N
E
W
Vienna
RUSSIA S
AU S T R IA- H U N G A RY
D anu
be R
. ROMANIA
BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA Bla c k
Sarajevo
Sea
SERBIA
Annexed by Ceded to Romania
from Bulgaria, 1913
Austria-Hungary, 1908 BULGARIA
Ad
ria
tic
Se
a OTTOMAN Constantinople
MONTENEGRO EMPIRE
ALBANIA ia
ITALY on
c ed
Ma To Greece, 1913
Aegean
OTTOMAN
Sea EMPIRE
GREECE
To Italy, 1912
Ottoman Empire in 1912
MAP 24.4 The Balkans, 1908–1914

Balkan peoples — mixed in religion, ethnicity, and political views — were successful in asserting
their desire for independence, especially in the First Balkan War, which claimed territory from
the Ottoman Empire. Their increased autonomy sparked rivalries among them and continued to
attract attention from the great powers. Three empires in particular — the Russian, Ottoman,
and Austro-Hungarian — simultaneously wanted influence for themselves in the region, which
became a powder keg of competing ambitions.
ethnicity as the basis for the unity of the nation-state, and by late in the century,
ethnic loyalty challenged the dynastic rule of the Habsburgs and Ottomans in the
region. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro emerged as autonomous
states. All of them sought more Ottoman and Habsburg territory to cement a com-
mon ethnicity — an impossible desire given the dense intermingling of ethnicities
throughout the region. Nonetheless, war for territory was on these nationalists’ agenda.
[
1890–1914
] Roads to War 813
In the First Balkan War, in 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro
joined forces to gain Macedonia and Albania from the Ottomans. The victors divided
up their booty, with Bulgaria gaining the most territory, but in the Second Balkan
War, in 1913 Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro contested Bulgarian gains. The quick
victory of these allies increased Austria’s concern at Serbia’s rising power. The region
had become perilous: both Austria-Hungary (as ruler of many Slavs) and Russia (as
their would-be protector) stationed increasing numbers of troops along the borders.
The situation led strategists to think hopefully that a quick war there — something
like Bismarck’s brief wars — could resolve tension and uncertainty.
The Race to Arms

In the nineteenth century, global rivalries and aspirations for national greatness made
constant readiness for war seem increasingly necessary. On the seas and in foreign
lands, violence became an everyday occurrence in the drive for empire. Governments
began to draft ordinary citizens for periods of two to six years into large standing
armies, in contrast to the smaller forces that had served the more limited military
goals of the eighteenth century. The per capita expenditure on the military rose in all
the major powers between 1890 and 1914; the proportion of national budgets devoted
to defense in 1910 was lowest in Austria-Hungary (at 10 percent) and highest in
Germany (at 45 percent).
The modernization of weaponry also transformed warfare. Swedish arms manu-
facturer Alfred Nobel patented dynamite and developed a kind of gunpowder that
improved the accuracy of guns and produced a clearer battlefield environment by
reducing firearm smoke. By 1914, long-range artillery could fire on targets as far as
six miles away. Munitions factories across Europe manufactured ever-growing stock-
piles of howitzers, Mauser rifles, and Hotchkiss machine guns. In the Russo-Japanese
and South African wars, military leaders had devised new strategies to protect their
armies from the heavy firepower and deadly accuracy of the new weapons: in the
Russo-Japanese War, trenches and barbed wire blanketed the front around Port
Arthur.
Naval construction figured in both the arms race and the rising nationalism in
politics. To defend against powerful weaponry, ships built after the mid-nineteenth
century were made of metal rather than wood. Launched in 1905, HMS Dread-
nought, a warship with unprecedented firepower, was the centerpiece of the British
navy’s plan to construct at least seven battleships per year. Germany also built up its
navy and made itself a great land and sea power and planned naval bases as far away
as the Pacific. The Germans described their fleet buildup as “a peaceful policy,” but,
like British naval expansion, it only fed the hostile international climate and intense
competition in weapons manufacture.
Public relations campaigns encouraged military buildup. When critics of the arms
race suggested a temporary “naval holiday” to stop British and German building,
[ 1890–1914
]
British officials sent out news releases warning that such a cutback “would throw
innumerable men on the pavement.” Advocates of imperial expansion and nationalist
groups lobbied for military spending as boosting national pride, while businessmen
promoted large navies as beneficial to international trade and domestic industry.
When Germany’s Social Democrats questioned the use of taxes and their heavy bur-
den on workers, the press criticized the party for lack of patriotism. The Conserva-
tive Party in Great Britain, eager for more battleships, made popular the slogan “We
want eight and we won’t wait.” Public enthusiasm for arms buildups, militant nation-
alism, and growing international competition set the stage for war. When asked in
1912 about his predictions for war and peace, a French military leader responded
enthusiastically, “We shall have war. I will make it. I will win it.”
1914: War Erupts

June 28, 1914, began as an ordinary, even happy day not only for Freud’s patient the
Wolf-Man but also for the Austrian archduke and heir to the Habsburg throne,
Francis Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, as they ended a state visit to Sarajevo in
Bosnia riding in a motorcade. In the crowd was a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip,
who had traveled in secret for several weeks to reach this destination, dreaming of
reuniting his homeland of Bosnia-Herzegovina with Serbia and smuggling weapons
with him to accomplish his end. Princip shot dead the unprotected and unsuspecting
Austrian couple.
Some in the Habsburg government saw the assassination as an opportunity to
put down the Serbians once and for all. Evidence showed that Princip had received
arms and information from Serbian officials, who directed a terrorist organization
from within the government. Endorsing a quick defeat of Serbia, German statesmen
and military leaders urged the Austrians to be unyielding and promised support in
case of war. The Austrians sent an ultimatum to the Serbian government, demanding
suppression of terrorist groups and the participation of Austrian officials in an inves-
tigation of the crime, among other things. “You are setting Europe ablaze,” the Rus-
sian foreign minister remarked of the Austrians’ humiliating demands made on a
sovereign state. Yet the Serbs were conciliatory, accepting all the terms except the
presence of Austrian officials in the investigation. Kaiser William was pleased: “All
reason for war is gone.” His relief proved unfounded. Austria-Hungary, confident of
German backing, used the Serbs’ resistance to one demand as the pretext for declar-
ing war against them on July 28.
Some statesmen tried desperately to avoid war. Even the tsar and the kaiser
sent pleading letters to one another not to start a European war. Still, Germany
displayed firm support for Austria in hopes of convincing the French and British to
stay out of the war and thus keep Russia from mobilizing. Additionally, German
military leaders had become fixed on fighting a short, preemptive war that would
provide territorial gains leading toward the goal of a Mitteleuropa. As conservatives,
[1890–1914
] Roads to War 815
Arrest of the Assassin

Gavrilo Princip belonged to the Young Bosnians, a group devoted to killing Habsburgs in revenge
for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s having sent workers to colonize their homeland. In June
1914, at the age of nineteen, Princip lived out his dream, killing the heir to the Habsburg throne
and his wife. Here Princip is shown being apprehended. He spent the rest of his life in prison
and was appalled at the carnage of World War I. (© Bettmann / Corbis.)
they planned to impose martial law the minute war began, using it as an excuse for
arresting the leadership of the German Social Democratic Party, which threatened
their rule.
The European press caught the war fever of nationalist and pro-war organiza-
tions, and military leaders, especially in Germany and Austria-Hungary, promoted
mobilization rather than diplomacy in the last days of July. The Austrians declared
war and then ordered mobilization on July 31 in full confidence of German military
aid, because as early as 1909 Germany had promised to defend Austria-Hungary,
even if that country took the offensive. Nicholas II ordered the mobilization in
defense of the Serbs — Russia’s Slavic allies. Encouraging the Austrians to attack Ser-
bia, the German general staff mobilized on August 1. France declared war by vir-
tue of its agreement to aid its ally Russia,
and when Germany violated Belgian neu-
trality on its way to invade France, Britain factors leading to the outbreak of World
entered the war on the side of France and War I?
Russia.
[ 1890–1914
]
Conclusion
Rulers soon forgot their last-minute hesitations when in some capitals celebration
erupted with the declaration of war. “A mighty wonder has taken place,” wrote a Vien-
nese actor after watching the troops march off amid public enthusiasm. “We have
become young.” Both sides exulted, as militant nationalism led many Europeans to
favor war over peace. There were advantages to war: disturbances in private life and
challenges to established truths would disappear, it was believed, in the crucible of
war. A short conflict, people maintained, would resolve tensions ranging from the
rise of the working class to political problems caused by global imperial competition.
German military men saw war as an opportune moment to round up social demo-
crats and reestablish the traditional power of an agrarian aristocracy. Liberal govern-
ment based on rights and constitutions, some believed, had simply gone too far in
allowing new groups full citizenship and political influence.
Modernity helped blaze the path to war. New technology, mass armies, and new
techniques of persuasion supported the military buildup. With continuing violence
in politics, chaos in the arts, and problems in the industrial order, there was a belief
that war would save nations from the modern perils they faced and replace nervous
pessimism with patriotism. “Like men longing for a thunderstorm to relieve them
of the summer’s sultriness,” wrote an Austrian official, “so the generation of 1914
believed in the relief that war might bring.” Tragically, any hope of relief soon faded.
Instead of bringing the refreshment of summer rain, war opened an era of political
turmoil, widespread suffering, massive human slaughter, and even greater doses of
modernity.
[ 1890–1914
] Conclusion 817
0 200 400 miles

Triple Alliance, 1882–1915 0 200 400 kilometers
Triple Entente, 1907–1917
NORWAY FINLAND
St. Petersburg
N SCOTLAND SWEDEN
W
E
North Sea Moscow
IRELAND Se
a
S GREAT DENMARK
lti c
BRITAIN Ba
NETHERLANDS
ENGLAND
Berlin
R U S S IA
London
Amsterdam
Brussels GERMANY POLAND
BELGIUM
ATLANTIC Paris Prague
OCEAN
Vienna
FRANCE Bern
Budapest
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
MONTE-
NEGRO Belgrade
ROMANIA
Bucharest
Sarajevo
Black Sea
dr SERBIA
AL
ITALY Sofia
UG
Lisbon
Madrid Corsica BULGARIA
Constantinople
RT
SPAIN Rome
ALBANIA
PO
Sardinia
BALEARIC IS. Aegean OTTOMAN
GREECE Sea EMPIRE
Athens
Sicily
Crete
MOROCCO
(Fr.) TUNISIA M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
ALGERIA (Fr.)
(Fr.)
LIBYA
(It.)
MAPPING THE WEST Europe at the Outbreak of World War I, August 1914
All the powers expected a great, swift victory when war broke out. Many saw war as a chance
to increase their territories; as rivals for trade and empire, almost all believed that war would
bring them many advantages. However well prepared and invincible European nations appeared
at the start of the war, relatively few would survive the conflict intact.
Chapter 24 Review
new woman (p. 787) art nouveau (p. 793) Duma (p. 807)
Sigmund Freud (p. 789) Emmeline Pankhurst (p. 797) Entente Cordiale (p. 811)
modernism (p. 791) Nicholas II (p. 799) Mitteleuropa (p. 811)
Friedrich Nietzsche (p. 791) Zionism (p. 803)
Albert Einstein (p. 792) South African War (p. 803)
Review Questions
1. How did ideas about the self and about personal life change at the beginning of the twenti-
eth century?
2. How did modernism transform the arts and the world of ideas?
3. What were the points of tension in European political life at the beginning of the twentieth
century?
4. How and why did events in overseas empires from the 1890s on challenge Western faith
in imperialism?
5. What were the major factors leading to the outbreak of World War I?
Making Connections
1. How did changes in society at the turn of the twentieth century affect the development of
mass politics?
2. How was culture connected to the world of politics in the years 1890–1914?
3. How had nationalism changed since the French Revolution?
4. In what ways were imperial wars from the 1890s to 1914 relevant to the outbreak of World
War I?
The cultural ferment, social turmoil, and actual violence of the pre–World War I years come alive
in the works listed here.
Forth, Christopher E. The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood. 2005.
Gingeras, Ryan. Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1912–
1923. 2011.
Hull, Isabel. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany.
2005.
Hunt, Nancy Rose. A Nervous State: Violence, Sterility, and Healing Movements in Colonial Congo.
2015.
Kaplan, Morris B. Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times. 2005.
Marchand, Suzanne, and David Lindenfeld, eds. Germany at the Fin-de-Siècle. 2004.
Meir, Natan M. Kiev, Jewish Metropolis: A History, 1859–1914. 2010.
Nolan, Michael E. The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898–
1914. 2005.
Reagin, Nancy R. Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany
1870–1945. 2006.
818
[1890–1914
Important Events
1894–1895 Japan defeats China in Sino-Japanese War

1894–1899 Dreyfus Affair exposes anti-Semitism in France
1899–1902 South African War fought between Dutch descendants and British in
South African states
1900 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
1901 Irish National Theater is established by Maud Gonne and William Butler
Yeats; death of Queen Victoria
1903 Emmeline Pankhurst founds Women’s Social and Political Union
1904–1905 Japan defeats Russia in Russo-Japanese War
1905 Nicholas II establishes the Duma after revolution erupts in Russia;
Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity
1906 Women receive vote in Finland
1907 Pablo Picasso launches cubist painting with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
1908 Young Turks revolt against rule by sultan in Ottoman Empire
1911–1912 Revolutionaries overthrow Qing dynasty and declare China a republic
1914 Assassination of Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife by
Serbian nationalist precipitates World War I
Consider three events: Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900),
Emmeline Pankhurst founds Women’s Social and Political Union (1903), and Pablo
Picasso launches cubist painting with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). How did
these events help to bring about modernity?
Rieber, Alfred J. The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires
to the End of the First World War. 2014.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu
Stanislawski, Michael. Zionism and the Fin-de-Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau
to Jabotinsky. 2001.
Thompson, J. Lee. Theodore Roosevelt Abroad: Nature, Empire and the Journey of an American
President. 2010.
Willmott, H. P. The Last Century of Sea Power: From Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894–1922. 2009.
Witkovsky, Matthew S., ed. Avant-garde Art in Everyday Life: Early Twentieth-Century European
Modernism. 2011.
World War I and
25
Its Aftermath
1914 –1929
J
ules Amar, a French expert on improving the efficiency of industrial work,
changed his career as a result of war. After 1914, as hundreds of thousands of
soldiers returned from the battlefront missing body parts, plastic surgery and
the construction of masks and other devices to hide deformities developed rap-
idly. Amar devised artificial limbs that would allow the wounded soldier to return
to normal life by “making up for a function lost, or greatly reduced.” The artificial
arms featured hooks, magnets, and other mechanisms with which veterans could hold
a cigarette, play a violin, and, most important,
work with tools such as typewriters. Those who
Grieving Parents
had been mangled by the weapons of modern
Before World War I, the German art-
ist Käthe Kollwitz gained her artistic technological warfare would be made whole, it
reputation with woodcuts of hand- was thought, by technology such as Amar’s.
loom weavers whose livelihoods Jules Amar did his part to confront the
were threatened by industrialization. tragedy of the Great War, so named by contem-
From 1914 on, she depicted the suf- poraries because of its staggering human toll —
fering and death that swirled around
her — and never with more sober
forty million wounded or killed in battle. The
force than in these two monuments Great War did not settle problems or restore
to her son Peter, who died on the social order as the European powers hoped it
western front in the first months of would. Instead, the war produced political
battle. Today one can still travel to chaos, overturning the Russian, German, Otto-
Peter’s burial place in Vladslo, Bel-
man, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The bur-
gium, to see this father and mother
mourning their loss, like millions den of war crushed the European powers and
across Europe in those heartbreak- accelerated the rise of the United States, while
ing days. (Kathe Kollwitz / photo © Paul colonized peoples who served in the war inten-
Maeyaert / Bridgeman Images / © 2015 sified their demands for independence. In fact,
Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York /
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.)
the armistice in 1918 did not truly end con-
flict: many soldiers remained actively fighting
long into what was supposed to be peacetime,
and others had been so militarized that they longed for a life that was more like
wartime.
821
822 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
World War I transformed society, too. A prewar feeling of doom and decline
gave way to postwar cynicism. Many Westerners turned their backs on politics and
in the Roaring Twenties embraced life with wild gaiety, shopping for new consumer
goods, enjoying once forbidden personal freedoms, and taking pleasure in the enter-
tainment provided by films and radio. Others found reason for hope in the new
political systems the war made possible: Soviet communism and Italian fascism.
Modern communication technologies such as radio gave politicians the means to
promote a utopian mass politics that, ironically, was antidemocratic, militaristic, and
violent — like the war itself. A war that was
welcomed in some quarters as a remedy
CHAPTER FOCUS What political, social, and
for modernity destabilized Europe far into
economic impact did World War I have during
the conflict, immediately after it, and through the following decades leaving Europeans,
the 1920s? including Jules Amar and those he helped,
to deal with its violent aftermath.
The Great War, 1914–1918

When war erupted in August 1914, two months after the assassination of the Aus-
trian archduke and his wife at Sarajevo, there already existed long-standing alliances,
well-defined strategies, and a stockpile of military technologies such as heavy artil-
lery, machine guns, and airplanes. Most people felt that this would be a short, deci-
sive conflict similar to Prussia’s rapid victories in the 1860s and 1870–1871. In fact,
the war lasted for more than four long years. It was what historians call a total war,
meaning one built on the full mobilization of entire societies — soldiers and civilians —
and the industrial capacities of the nations involved. It was the war’s unexpected and
unprecedented horror that made World War I “great.”
Blueprints for War

World War I’s two sets of opponents were formed roughly out of the alliances devel-
oped during the previous fifty years. On one side stood the Central Powers (Austria-
Hungary and Germany), which had evolved from Bismarck’s Triple Alliance. On the
other side were the Allies (France, Great Britain, and Russia), which had emerged
as a bloc from the Entente Cordiale between France and Great Britain and the 1890s
treaties between France and Russia. In 1915, Italy, originally part of the Triple Alli-
ance, joined the Allies in hopes of postwar gain. The war soon exploded globally: in
late August 1914, Japan, eager to extend its empire into China, went over to the Allies,
while in the fall the Ottoman Empire united with the Central Powers against its
traditional enemy, Russia (Map 25.1).
Of the Central Powers, Germany wanted a bigger empire, to be gained by annex-
ing Russian territory and incorporating parts of Belgium, France, and Luxembourg.
Some German leaders wanted to annex Austria-Hungary as well. Austria-Hungary
hoped to keep its great-power status despite the competing nationalisms of ethnic
[ 1914–1929
] The Great War, 1914–1918 823
0 200 400 miles

N l FINLAND
h nava
W Britis
e
NORWAY
o c ka d
bl
E SWEDEN Petrograd
(St. Petersburg)
S
SCOTLAND Vo
lga R.
Sea
Jutland
1916
Dv Moscow
tic
GREAT l ina R.
IRELAND North Sea DENMARK Ba Tannenberg Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,
BRITAIN Masurian Lakes 1914 Vilnius
March 1918
NETHERLANDS 1914
ENGLAND Elb East Grodno
eR Prussia R U S S I A
.Berlin
Lusitania London Warsaw Brest-
sunk Eastern front, Litovsk Armistice line,
1915
Rhin
1915 May 1915 December 1917 Don R.

Somme Od
BELGIUM GERMANY e POLAND
eR
Marne 1916 Verdun Dnie
rR
Cracow
.
1914 1916 LUX. pe r R

.
.
Paris Stabilized western front CAR Galicia
PAT Bu
Se
in HIA Dnie gR
eR st
. Alsace- Vienna
NS
.
er
ATLANTIC Marne R. Lorraine
R.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
OCEAN FRANCE SWITZERLAND
Caporetto
1917 MONTE-
NEGRO ROMANIA
Italian front, Dan Bucharest
March 1918 ube R. Black Sea
SERBIA
ITALY Sofia
SPAIN BULGARIA
Constantinople
ALBANIA
Gallipoli OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GREECE 1915–16
Balkan front,
1917–18
Allied Powers Major Allied offensives Medite r ranean S ea

Central Powers Major Central Powers offensives
Neutral nations Farthest advance by Allied Powers
(east 1914, west 1918)
Land occupied by Central
Powers at their height Farthest advance by Central Powers
(west 1914, east 1918)
German submarine war zone
Major battle
MAP 25.1 The Fronts of World War I, 1914–1918

Because the western front remained relatively stationary, devastation of land and resources
was intense. All fronts, however, destroyed segments of Europe’s hard-won industrial and agri-
cultural capacity, while the immobile trenches increased military casualties whenever heavy
artillery fire pounded them. Men long engaged in trench warfare developed an intense camara-
derie based on their mutual suffering and deprivation.
groups within its borders. Among the Allies, Russia wished to reassert its status as
a great power and as the protector of the Slavs by adding a reunified Poland to the
Russian Empire and by taking formal leadership of other Slavic peoples. The French,
too, craved territory, especially the return of Alsace and Lorraine, ceded to Germany
after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The British wanted to cement their hold
on Egypt and the Suez Canal and keep the rest of their world empire secure. By the
[ 1914–1929
]
Treaty of London (1915), France and Britain promised Italy territory in Africa, Asia
Minor, the Balkans, and elsewhere in return for joining the Allies.
The colonies participated in the war too, providing massive assistance and serv-
ing as battlegrounds. Some one million Africans, one million Indians, and more than
a million men from the British commonwealth countries fought on the battlefronts.
The imperial powers also conscripted uncounted numbers of colonists as forced
laborers: a million Kenyans and Tanzanians alone are estimated to have been con-
scripted for menial labor in the battle for East Africa. Using Arab, African, and Indian
troops, the British waged successful war in the Ottoman lands of the Middle East. In
sub-Saharan Africa, the vicious campaign for East Africa cost many lives, including
many civilians whose resources were confiscated and whose villages were burned.
Unprecedented use of new machinery determined the course of war. In August
1914, machine guns, fast breech-loading rifles, and military vehicles such as airplanes,
battleships, submarines, and motorized transport (cars and trains) were all at the
armies’ disposal. New technologies such as chlorine gas, tanks, and bombs were devel-
oped between 1914 and 1918. The war itself became a lethal testing ground, as both
new and old weapons were used, often ineffectively. Many officers on both sides
believed in a cult of the offensive, which called for spirited attacks against the enemy
and high troop morale. Despite the
availability of powerful war tech-
nology, an old-fashioned, heroic
vision of war made many officers
unwilling to abandon the more
familiar sabers, lances, and bayo-
nets. In the face of massive fire-
power, the cult of the offensive
would cost millions of lives.
War in the Skies (1914)

As the war started, aviators and
the machines they piloted became
symbols of the human potential to
transcend time and space. The Great
War, however, featured the airplane
as the new weapon in what British
writer H. G. Wells called the “head-
long sweep to death.” Daring pilots,
or “aces,” took the planes on recon-
naissance flights and guided them in
the totally new practice of aerial com-
bat, as shown in this engraving from
an Italian newspaper of a French air-
plane shooting down a German one.
(by Achille Beltrame [1871–1945], from La
Domenica del Corriere / De Agostini Picture
Library / Alfredo Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
[
1914–1929
] The Great War, 1914–1918 825
The Battlefronts
The first months of the war crushed any hope of a quick victory. The Germans were
guided by the Schlieffen Plan, named after a former chief of the general staff. The
plan outlined a way to combat enemies on two fronts by concentrating on one foe at
a time. It called for a concentrated blow to the west against France, which would lead
to that nation’s defeat in six weeks, accompanied by a light holding action against
Russia to the east. The attack on France was to proceed without resistance through
neutral Belgium. Once France had fallen, Germany’s western armies would move
against Russia, which, it was believed, would mobilize far more slowly. None of the
great powers expected that war would turn into the prolonged massacre of their
nations’ youth.
When German troops reached Belgium and Luxembourg at the beginning of
August 1914, the Belgians surprisingly mounted a vigorous defense, which slowed the
German advance. In September, the British and French armies engaged the Germans
along the Marne River in France. Neither side could defeat the other, and in the first
three months of war, more than 1.5 million men fell on the western front alone. Guns
like the 75-millimeter howitzer, accurate at long range, turned what was supposed to
be an offensive war of movement into a stationary standoff along a line that stretched
from the North Sea through Belgium and northern France to Switzerland.
On the eastern front, the Russians drove far more quickly than expected into East
Prussia in mid-August. The Russians believed that no army could stand up to the
massive number of their soldiers, regardless of how badly equipped and poorly trained
those soldiers were. Their success was short-lived. The Germans overwhelmed the
tsar’s army in East Prussia. Victory made heroes of the German military leaders Paul
von Hindenburg (1847–1934) and Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937), who demanded
more troops for the eastern front, undermining the Schlieffen Plan by removing
forces from the west before the western front had been won.
War at sea proved equally indecisive. The Allies blockaded ports to prevent sup-
plies from reaching Germany and Austria-Hungary. Kaiser William and his advisers
planned a massive U-boat (Unterseeboot, “underwater boat,” or submarine) campaign
against Allied and neutral shipping. In May 1915, U-boats sank the British passenger
ship Lusitania and killed 1,198 people, including 124 Americans. Despite U.S. out-
rage, President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) maintained a policy of neutrality; Ger-
many, unwilling to provoke Wilson further, called off unrestricted submarine war-
fare. In May 1916, the navies of Germany and Britain finally clashed in the North Sea
at Jutland. This inconclusive battle demonstrated that the German fleet could not
master British seapower.
Ideas of a negotiated peace were discarded: “No peace before England is defeated
and destroyed,” William II stormed against his cousin King George V. French leaders
called for a “war to the death.” General staffs on both sides continued to prepare
fierce attacks several times a year. Campaigns opened with heavy artillery pound-
ing enemy trenches and gun emplacements. Troops then responded to the order to
go “over the top” by scrambling out of their trenches and into battle, usually to be
[ 1914–1929
]
War in the Trenches
Men at the front developed close
friendships while they lived with daily
discomfort, death, and the horrors of
modern technological warfare. Some
of the complexities of trench warfare
appear in this image showing soldiers
rescuing their fallen comrades after
fighting at Bagatelle in northern
France. (Private Collection / Stapleton Col-
lection / Bridgeman Images.)
mowed down by machine-gun

fire from defenders secure in their
own trenches. On the western
front, the French assaulted the
Germans throughout 1915 but
accomplished little. On the east-
ern front, Russian armies captured
parts of Galicia in the spring of
1915 and lumbered toward
Hungary.
The next year’s battles were
even more disastrous and futile.
To cripple French morale, the
Germans launched massive assaults on the fortress at Verdun, firing as many as a
million shells in a single day. Combined French and German losses totaled close to
a million men. Nonetheless, the French held. The British unleashed an artillery
pounding of German trenches in the Somme region in June 1916; 1.25 million men
were killed or wounded, but the final result was stalemate. By the end of 1916, the
French had suffered more than 3.5 million casualties. To help the Allies engaged at
Verdun and the Somme, the Russians struck again, driving into the Carpathian
Mountains, recouping territory, and menacing Austria-Hungary. The German army
stopped the advance, as the German general staff decided it would take over Austrian
military operations.
Had military leaders thoroughly dominated the scene, historians judge, all
armies would have been utterly demolished by the end of 1915. Yet ordinary soldiers
in this war were not automatons in the face of what seemed to them suicidal orders
from their commanders. Informal agreements to avoid battles against each other
allowed some battalions to go for long stretches with hardly a casualty. Enemies fac-
ing each other across the trenches frequently ate their meals in peace, even though
the trenches were within hand-grenade reach. Throughout the war, soldiers on both
fronts played an occasional game of soccer or made gestures of agreement not to
fight. A British veteran of the trenches explained to a new recruit that the Germans
[
1914–1929
] The Great War, 1914–1918 827
“don’t want to fight any more than we do, so there’s a kind of understanding between
us. Don’t fire at us and we’ll not fire at you.” Many ordinary soldiers came to feel
more warmly toward enemies who shared the trench experience than toward civil-
ians back home. This camaraderie relieved some of the misery of trench life and
aided survival. In some cases, upper-class officers and working-class recruits became
friends in that “wholly masculine way of life uncomplicated by women,” as another
soldier put it. Soldiers tended one another’s blistered feet and came to love one
another, sometimes even passionately. This sense of frontline community survived
the war and influenced postwar politics.
Troops of colonized soldiers from Asia and Africa often were put in the very
front ranks, where the risks were greatest. Yet, like class divisions, racial barriers
sometimes fell: a European might give extra blankets and clothing to soldiers from
warmer regions. These troops saw their “masters” completely undone and “uncivi-
lized,” for when fighting did break out, trenches became a veritable hell of shelling
and sniping, flying body parts, blinding gas, and rotting cadavers. Some soldiers
became hysterical or shell-shocked through the stress and violence of battle. Those
who had gone to war to escape ordinary life in industrial society learned, as one Ger-
man put it, “that in the modern war . . . the triumph of the machine over the indi-
vidual is carried to its most extreme form.”
The Home Front

Total war demanded the involvement of civilians in manufacturing shells, machine
guns, poisonous gases, bombs, airplanes, and eventually tanks — which together
formed the backbone of technological warfare. Increased production of coffins,
canes, wheelchairs, and artificial limbs (devised by the likes of Jules Amar) was also
required. Because their armies would have utterly failed without them, civilians had
to believe in the war and to work overtime and sacrifice for victory. To keep the war
machine operating smoothly, governments oversaw factories, transportation systems,
and the use of resources. People accepted tight government control as necessary to
win the war.
At first, most political parties put aside their differences. Many socialists and
working-class people who had formerly criticized the military buildup announced
their support for the war. For decades, socialist parties had preached that “the worker
has no country” and that nationalism was an ideology meant to keep workers dis-
united and subjected to the will of their employers. In August 1914, however, most
socialists became as patriotic as the rest of society. Although many feminists actively
opposed the conflict, the British suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst and her
daughter Christabel were among those who became militant nationalists. In the
name of victory, national leaders wanted to end political division of all kinds: “I no
longer recognize [political] parties,” William II declared on August 4, 1914. “I rec-
ognize only Germans.” Those who had been at the receiving end of discrimination
promoted unity. One rabbi proudly echoed the kaiser: “In the German fatherland
[ 1914–1929
]
there are no longer any Christians and Jews, any believers and disbelievers, there are
only Germans.”
Governments mobilized the home front with varying degrees of success. War
ministries set up boards to allocate labor on both the home front and the battlefront
and to give industrialists financial incentives to encourage productivity. The Russian
bureaucracy, however, only cooperated halfheartedly with industrialists and other
groups that could aid the war effort. In several countries, emergency measures allowed
the drafting of both men and women for military or industrial service. Municipal
governments set up canteens and day-care centers, but rural Russia, Austria-Hungary,
Bulgaria, and Serbia, where youths, women, and old men struggled to sustain farms,
had no such relief programs.
Governments throughout Europe passed sedition laws that made it a crime to
criticize war-related policies and created propaganda agencies, sometimes fabricat-
ing atrocities, to advertise the war as a patriotic mission to resist villainous enemies.
In Russia, Tsar Nicholas II had changed the German-sounding name of the capital
St. Petersburg to the Russian Petrograd as a patriotic move. Maintaining that Arme-
nians in the Ottoman Empire were plotting against the Central Powers, the Ottomans
drove those Armenians living in Turkey from their homes, forcing them onto long
marches or into concentration camps where they were murdered or simply died. The
Allies also caused the deaths of civilians en masse by creating famines, blockading
the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire in hopes that the people there would
rebel or die of starvation.
Despite widespread popular support for the war, some individuals worked to
bring about a negotiated peace. In 1915, activists in the international women’s move-
ment met in The Hague to call for an end to the war. “We can no longer endure . . .
brute force as the only solution of international disputes,” declared Dutch physician
Aletta Jacobs. The women had no success, though many brought their cause to
individual heads of state. In Austria-Hungary, agitating for ethnic self-determination,
the Czechs undertook a vigorous anti-Habsburg campaign, while Croats, Slovenes,
and Serbs in the Balkans formed a committee to plan a southern Slavic state inde-
pendent of Austria-Hungary. The Allies encouraged such independence movements
as part of their strategy to defeat Austria-Hungary.
The war upset the social order as well as the political one. In the war’s early days,
many women lost their jobs when luxury shops, textile factories, and other nones-
sential businesses closed. As more and more men left for the trenches, women who
had lost employment elsewhere joined with low-paid domestic workers to take over
higher-paying jobs in munitions and metallurgical industries. In Warsaw women
drove trucks, and in London they conducted streetcars. Some young women drove
ambulances and nursed the wounded near the front lines.
Women’s assumption of men’s jobs looked to many like a sign of social disorder.
In the words of one metalworker, women were “sending men to the slaughter.” Men
feared that women would remain in the workforce after the war, robbing men of the
breadwinner role. Others criticized young female munitions workers for squandering
[1914–1929
] The Great War, 1914–1918 829
A New Workforce in Wartime

With men at the front, women (at right in this French photograph) moved into factory work at
jobs from which they had been unofficially barred before the war. In addition, tens of thousands
of forced laborers from the colonies were moved to Europe also to replace men sent to the
front. The European experience of forced labor and ser vice at the front politicized colonial
subjects, fortifying independence movements in the postwar period. (Roger Viollet / Getty Images.)
their pay on ribbons and jewelry. The heated prewar debates over the “new woman”
and gender roles returned.
Although soldiers from different backgrounds often felt bonds of solidarity in
the trenches, difficult wartime conditions increasingly pitted civilians against one
another on the home front. Workers toiled long hours with less to eat, while many
in the upper classes bought fancy food and fashionable clothing on the black market
(outside the official system of rationing). The cost of living surged and thus contrib-
uted to social tensions as shortages of staples like bread, sugar, and meat occurred
across Europe and people went hungry. Reviving prewar anti-Semitism, some blamed
Jews for the shortages. Colonial populations suffered oppressive conditions as well.
The French forcibly transported some 100,000 Vietnamese to work in France for the
war effort. Africans also faced grueling forced labor along with skyrocketing taxes
and prices. Civilian suffering during the
war, whether in the colonies or in Europe, REVIEW QUESTION In what ways was World
laid the groundwork for ordinary people War I a total war?
to take political action.
[ 1914–1929
]
Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918
By 1917, the situation was becoming desperate for everyone — politicians, the mili-
tary, and civilians. Discontent on the home front started shaping the course of the
war. Neither patriotic slogans before the war nor propaganda during it had prepared
people for wartime devastation. Civilians rebelled in cities across Europe. While sol-
diers in some armies mutinied, nationalist struggles continued to plague Britain and
Austria-Hungary. Soon full-fledged revolution was sweeping Europe, toppling the
Russian dynasty, and threatening not just war but civil war as well.
War Protest
On February 1, 1917, the German government, hard-pressed by the public clamor
over mounting casualties and by the military’s growing control, resumed full-scale
submarine warfare. The British responded by mining their harbors and the sur-
rounding seas and by developing the convoy system of shipping to drive off German
submarines. The Germans’ submarine gamble not only failed to defeat the British
but also brought the United States into the war in April 1917, after German U-boats
sank several American ships.
Political opposition increased in Europe. Irish republicans attacked government
buildings in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 in an effort to gain Ireland’s indepen-
dence from Britain during the crisis. The ill-prepared rebels were easily defeated,
and many of them were executed. In the cities of Italy, Russia, Germany, and Austria,
women rioted to get food for their families, and factory hands and white-collar work-
ers alike walked off the job. Amid these protests, Austria-Hungary secretly asked the
Allies for a negotiated peace; the German Reichstag also made overtures for a “peace
of understanding and permanent reconciliation of peoples.” In January 1918, Presi-
dent Woodrow Wilson issued his Fourteen Points, a blueprint for a nonvindictive
peace settlement held out to the war-weary citizens of the Central Powers.
Revolution in Russia
Of all the warring nations, Russia sustained the greatest number of casualties — 7.5
million by 1917. In March,1 crowds of workingwomen swarmed the streets of Petro-
grad demanding relief from the harsh conditions. They soon fell in with other pro-
testers commemorating International Women’s Day and were then joined by factory
workers and other civilians. Instead of remaining loyal to the tsar, many soldiers were
embittered by the massive casualties and their leaders’ foolhardy tactics. The govern-
1
Until February 1918, Russia observed the Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind the Grego-
rian calendar used by the rest of Europe. Hence, the first phase of the revolution occurred in March
according to the Gregorian calendar (but February in the Julian calendar), the later phase in Novem-
ber on the Gregorian calendar (October according to the Julian). All dates used in this book follow
the Gregorian calendar.
[1914–1929
] Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918 831
ment’s incompetence and Nicholas II’s stubborn resistance to change had made the
war even worse in Russia than elsewhere. When the riots erupted in March 1917,
Nicholas finally realized the situation was hopeless. He abdicated, bringing the three-
hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty to a sudden end.
Aristocratic and middle-class politicians from the old Duma formed a new
administration called the Provisional Government. At first, hopes were high that
under the Provisional Government, as one revolutionary poet put it, “our false, filthy,
boring, hideous life should become a just, pure, merry, and beautiful life.” To survive,
the Provisional Government had to pursue the war successfully, manage internal affairs
better, and set the government on a firm constitutional footing, but other political
forces had also strengthened during the revolution. Among them, the soviets —
councils elected from workers and soldiers — competed with the government for
political support. Born during the Revolution of 1905, the soviets in 1917 campaigned
to end the deference usually given to the wealthy and to military officers, urged
respect for workers and the poor, and temporarily gave an air of celebration and
carnival to the political upheaval. The peasants, also competing for power, began to
confiscate landed estates and withhold produce from the market, threatening the
Provisional Government.
In hopes of adding to the turmoil in Russia, the Germans in April 1917 provided
safe rail transportation for V. I. Lenin (1870–1924) and other prominent Bolsheviks
to return to Russia through German territory. Lenin had devoted his entire existence
to bringing about socialism through the force of his small band of Bolsheviks. Upon
his return to Petrograd, he issued the April Theses, a radical document that called
for Russia to withdraw from the war, for the soviets to seize power on behalf of
workers and poor peasants, and for all private land to be nationalized. As the Bol-
sheviks aimed to supplant the Provisional Government, they employed such slogans
as “All power to the soviets” and “Peace, land, and bread.”
New prime minister Aleksandr Kerensky used his commanding oratory to arouse
patriotism, but he lacked the political skills needed to create an effective wartime
government. The Bolshevik leadership, urged on by Lenin, overthrew the weakened
Provisional Government in November 1917, an event called the Bolshevik Revolution.
In January 1918, elections for a constituent assembly failed to give the Bolsheviks a
plurality, so the party used troops to take over the new government completely. The
Bolsheviks, observing Marxist doctrine, abolished private property and nationalized
factories to stimulate production. The Provisional Government had allowed both men
and women to vote in 1917, making Russia the first great power to legalize universal
suffrage. This soon became a hollow privilege once the Bolsheviks limited the can-
didates to chosen members of the Communist Party.
The Bolsheviks asked Germany for peace and agreed to the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk (March 1918), which placed vast regions of the old Russian Empire under
German occupation. Because the loss of millions of square miles to the Germans put
Petrograd at risk, the Bolsheviks relocated the capital to Moscow and formally adopted
the name Communists (taken from Karl Marx’s writings) to distinguish themselves
[ 1914–1929
]
Lenin Addressing Soldiers

Lenin mobilized the masses with his oratory, but he also used traditional weapons of the Rus-
sian Empire such as secret police, imprisonment and torture, and executions. At the time of the
civil war, it was more important than ever to keep soldiers loyal. Understanding this, Lenin, with
the crucial aid of Leon Trotsky, began building the Red Army into a formidable fighting force.
(Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
from the socialists/social democrats who had voted for the disastrous war in the first
place. Lenin called the catastrophic terms of the treaty “obscene.” However, he
accepted them — not only because he had promised to bring peace to Russia but also
because he believed that the rest of Europe would soon rebel against the war and
overthrow the capitalist order.
A full-blown civil war now broke out in Russia, with the pro-Bolsheviks (or
“Reds”) pitted against an array of forces (the “Whites”) who wanted to turn back the
revolution (Map 25.2). Among the Whites were three distinct groups: the tsarist mili-
tary leadership, composed mainly of landlords and supporters of aristocratic rule;
the liberal educated class, including businessmen whose property had been national-
ized; and non-Russian nationalities who saw their chance for independence. In addi-
tion, before World War I ended, Russia’s former allies — notably the United States,
Britain, France, and Japan — landed troops in the country to fight the Bolsheviks.
The counterrevolutionary groups lacked a strong leader and unified goals, however.
Pro-tsarist forces, for example, alienated groups seeking independent nation-state
status, such as the Ukrainians, Estonians, and Lithuanians, by stressing the goal of
restoring the Russian Empire. Even with the presence of Allied troops, the opponents
of revolution could not defeat the Bolsheviks without a common purpose.
[1914–1929
] Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918 833
Murmansk Russian territorial losses after

the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918
Controlled by Bolsheviks, 1919
Archangel Occupied by Allied troops, 1919
Attacks by White forces
AY
RW
Attacks by non-Russian
anti-Bolshevik forces
NO
FINLAND Boundary of Bolshevik Russian

territory, March 1921
Helsinki
Petrograd
SWEDEN BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA OAD
ILR
RA
ESTONIA R IAN
E
IB
Riga S-S
Moscow AN
ea
R
LATVIA T
cS
Samara
i N
alt LITHUANIA
R.
B E
lga
Minsk Orel
Vo
W
S
Warsaw
GERMANY Tsaritsyn
POLAND (Stalingrad)
Kiev Kharkov
C ZEC Ukraine
HOSLOV Rostov Astrakhan
AK IA
Odessa Ca
s
HUNGARY Crimea
pi
ROMANIA CA
an
Sevastopol UC Tbilisi Baku
MONTE- ASU
Sea
.
YU
NEGRO Da n u be R Black Sea Batum S M

TS.
GO
BULGARIA
SLA
Constantinople
ITALY ALBANIA
VIA
0 200 400 miles

TURKEY 0 200 400 kilometers
GREECE
MAP 25.2 The Russian Civil War, 1917–1922

Nationalists, aristocrats, middle-class citizens, and property-owning peasants tried to combine
their interests to defeat the Bolsheviks, but they failed to create an effective political consen-
sus. As fighting covered the countryside, ordinary people suffered, especially when their grain
was confiscated by armies on both sides. The Western powers and Japan also sent in troops
to put down this threatening revolution.
The civil war shaped Russian communism. Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), Bolshevik
commissar of war, built the highly disciplined army by ending democratic procedures,
such as the election of officers, that had originally attracted soldiers to Bolshevism.
Lenin and Trotsky introduced the policy of war communism — seizing grain from
the peasantry to feed the civil war army and workforce. The Cheka (secret police)
imprisoned political opponents and black marketers and often shot them without
trial. The result was a more authoritarian government — a development that broke
Marx’s promise that revolution would bring a “withering away” of the state.
As the Bolsheviks clamped down on their opponents during the bloody civil
war, they organized their supporters to foster revolutionary Marxism across Europe.
In March 1919, they founded the Third International, also known as the Communist
[ 1914–1929
]
International (Comintern), to replace the Second International with a centralized
organization dedicated to preaching communism. By mid-1921, the Red Army had
defeated the Whites in the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Muslim borderlands in
central Asia. After ousting the Japanese from Siberia in 1922, the Bolsheviks gov-
erned a state as multinational as the old Russian Empire had been, and one at odds
with socialist promises for a humane and flourishing society.
Ending the War, 1918

In the spring of 1918, the Central Powers made one final attempt to smash through
the Allied lines using a new offensive strategy. It consisted of concentrated forces
piercing single points of the enemy’s defense lines and then wreaking havoc from
the rear. Using these tactics, the Central Powers had overwhelmed the Italian army
at Caporetto in the fall of 1917, but a similar offensive on the western front in the
spring of 1918 ground to a bloody halt within weeks. By then, the British and French
had started making limited but effective use of tanks supported by airplanes. The
German armies, suffering more than two million casualties between spring and sum-
mer, rapidly disintegrated.
By October 1918, the desperate German command helped create a civilian gov-
ernment to take over rule of the home front. As these inexperienced politicians took
power, they were also taking blame for the defeat. Shifting the blame from the mili-
tary, the generals proclaimed themselves fully capable of winning the war. Weak-
willed civilians, they announced, had dealt the military a “stab in the back” by forcing
a surrender. A sailors’ revolt and workers’ uprisings led the Social Democratic Party
to declare a German republic in an effort to prevent revolution. At the end of Octo-
ber, Czechs and Slovaks declared an independent state, while the Croatian parlia-
ment simultaneously announced Croatia’s independence. On November 9, 1918,
Kaiser William II fled as the Central Powers collapsed on all fronts. Finally, on the
morning of November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed and the guns fell silent.
In the course of four years, European civilization had been sorely tested, if not
shattered. Conservative figures put the battlefield toll at a minimum of ten million
dead and thirty million wounded, incapacitated, or doomed eventually to die of their
wounds. In every European combatant country, industrial and agricultural produc-
tion had plummeted. From 1918 to 1919, a worldwide influenza epidemic left as
many as one hundred million more dead. Soldiers returning home in 1918 and 1919
flooded the book market with their memoirs; whereas many had begun by emphasiz-
ing heroism and glory, others cynically
insisted that the fighting had been abso-
REVIEW QUESTION Why did people rebel dur- lutely meaningless. Total war had not only
ing World War I, and what turned rebellion into
drained society of resources and popula-
outright revolution in Russia?
tion but also sown the seeds of further
catastrophe.
[1914–1929
] The Search for Peace in an Era of Revolution 835
The Search for Peace in an Era of Revolution

World War I had unforeseen and dramatic consequences. Revolutionary fervor now
swept the continent, especially in the former empires of Germany and Austria-
Hungary. Many of the newly independent peoples of eastern and central Europe
supported socialist principles, and activists on both the left and the right hoped for
a political order based on military authority of the kind they had relied on during
the war. Diplomats from around the world arrived in Paris in January 1919 to nego-
tiate the terms of peace, though without fully recognizing the fact that the war was
still going on not only in city streets, where soldiers were bringing the war home, but
also in people’s hearts.
Europe in Turmoil
Urban citizens and returning soldiers ignited the protests that swept Europe in 1918
and 1919. In January 1919, the red flag of socialist revolution flew from the city hall
in Glasgow, Scotland, while in cities of the collapsing Austro-Hungarian monarchy,
workers set up councils to take over factory production and direct politics. Many
soldiers did not disband at the armistice but formed volunteer armies, preventing
the return to peacetime politics. Germany was especially unstable, partly because of
the shock of defeat; German workers and veterans filled the streets, demanding food
and back pay. Whereas in 1848, revolutionaries had marched to city hall or the king’s
residence, the protesters in 1919 took over newspapers and telegraph offices to con-
trol the flow of information. One of the most radical socialist factions was the Sparta-
cists, led by cofounders Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) and Rosa Luxemburg (1870–
1919). Unlike Lenin, the two leading Spartacists wanted workers to gain political
experience from any uprisings instead of simply following an all-knowing party lead-
ership on a set course.
German conservatives had believed that the war would put an end to Social
Democratic influence; instead, it brought German socialists to power. Social Demo-
cratic leader Friedrich Ebert, who headed the new German government, rejected
revolution and supported the creation of a parliamentary republic to replace the
monarchy. He called on the German army and the Freikorps — a roving paramilitary
band of students, demobilized soldiers, and others — to suppress the workers’ coun-
cils and demonstrators. “The enthusiasm is marvelous,” wrote one young soldier. “No
mercy’s shown. We shoot even the wounded.” Members of the Freikorps hunted
down Luxemburg and Liebknecht, among others, and murdered them.
Violence continued in Europe even as an assembly meeting in the city of Weimar
in February 1919 approved a constitution and founded a parliamentary republic
called the Weimar Republic. This time the right rebelled, for the military leadership
dreamed of a restored monarchy: “As I love Germany, so I hate the Republic,” wrote
one officer. To defeat a military coup by Freikorps officers, Ebert called for a general
strike. This action showed the lack of popular support for a military regime. Late in
[ 1914–1929
]
the winter of 1919, leftists proclaimed “soviet republics” — governments led by work-
ers’ councils — in Bavaria and Hungary. Volunteer armies and troops soon put the
soviets down. The Bolsheviks tried to establish a Marxist regime in Poland, but the
Poles resisted and drove the Red Army back in 1920, while the Allied powers rushed
supplies and advisers to Warsaw. Though they failed, the various revolts provided
further proof that total war had let loose the forces of political chaos. War, it seemed,
continued.
The Paris Peace Conference, 1919–1920

As political turmoil engulfed peoples from Berlin to Moscow, the Paris Peace Confer-
ence opened in January 1919. Visions of communism spreading westward haunted
the deliberations, but the assembled statesmen were also focused on the status of
Germany and the reconstruction of a secure Europe. Leaders such as French pre-
mier Georges Clemenceau had to satisfy angry citizens: France had lost 1.3 million
people — almost an entire generation of young men — and more than a million
buildings, six thousand bridges, and thousands of miles of railroad lines and roads.
Great Britain’s representative, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, caught the mood
of the British public by campaigning in 1918 with such slogans as “Hang the kaiser.”
The Italians arrived on the scene demanding the territory promised to them in the
1915 Treaty of London. Meanwhile, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, head of the
new world power that had helped achieve the Allied victory, had his own agenda.
His Fourteen Points, on which the truce had been based, were steeped in the lan-
guage of freedom and called for open diplomacy, arms reduction, and the right of
nationality groups to determine their own government.
The Fourteen Points did not represent the mood of all the victors. Allied pro-
paganda had made the Germans seem like inhuman monsters, and some military
experts feared that Germany was using the armistice only to regroup for more war-
fare. Indeed, Germans widely refused to admit that their army had lost the war. Eager
for army support, Ebert had given returning soldiers a rousing welcome: “As you
return unconquered from the field of battle, I salute you.” Wilson’s plan, based on
settlement as opposed to surrender, however, recognized that Germany was still the
strongest state on the continent. Economists and other specialists agreed that, harshly
dealt with and humiliated, Germany might soon become vengeful and chaotic — a
lethal combination.
After six months, the statesmen and their teams of experts produced the Peace
of Paris (1919–1920), a cluster of individual treaties that shocked the citizens of the
countries that had to accept them. The treaties separated Austria from Hungary,
reduced Hungary by almost two-thirds of its inhabitants and three-quarters of its
territory, broke up the Ottoman Empire, and treated Germany severely. They replaced
the Habsburg Empire with a group of small, internally divided, and economically
weak states: Czechoslovakia; Poland; and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes (soon renamed Yugoslavia). After a century and a half of partition, Poland
[1914–1929
was reconstructed from parts of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary — leaving

one-third of its population ethnically non-Polish. The statesmen in Paris also created
the Polish Corridor, which connected Poland to the Baltic Sea and separated East
Prussia from the rest of Germany (Map 25.3). Austria and Hungary were both left
reeling at their drastic loss of territory and resources.
The Treaty of Versailles, the centerpiece of the Peace of Paris, specifically dealt
with Germany. In it, France recovered Alsace and Lorraine, and the Allies would
temporarily occupy the left, or western, bank of the Rhine and the coal-bearing Saar
basin. Germany would pay substantial reparations for civilian damage during the war,
N Ceded by Germany
W
FINLAND Ceded by Austria-Hungary
NORWAY
E Ceded by Bulgaria
Oslo Helsinki
S SWEDEN Ceded by Russia
Petrograd
Stockholm (St. Petersburg) British mandates
ESTONIA
French mandates
ea
North
cS
LATVIA Moscow Demilitarized zone

GREAT Sea DENMARK
lti
BRITAIN Ba LITHUANIA Boundaries of German, Russian, and

Copenhagen Memel Austro-Hungarian empires in 1914
NETHERLANDS Danzig
East
Elb Prussia
eR
. U SSR
London
Amsterdam GERMANY Warsaw
Brussels Ruhr Weimar POLAND Kiev Vo
BELGIUM Frankfurt lga
R.
LUX.L Saar Prague
Versailles orr
Paris aine Rhine R. C ZECH
O SLOVAKIA Galicia
Strasbourg B
Lo ir e R. Vienna
ess
Alsace
ara
FRANCE SWITZ. AUSTRIA Budapest Ca

bia
Geneva S.
HUNGARY ROMANIA s
Locarno Tyrol
pi
.
Rhône R
P o R.
an
Genoa Venice Bucharest
CROATIA Belgrade
Sea
.
Rapallo eR Black Sea
D a n ub
YUGOSLAVIA
ITALY SERBIA BULGARIA
SPAIN
Sofia
Constantinople
Rome
ALBANIA
TURKEY
PERSIA
GREECE
Athens
SYRIA
IRAQ
Beirut Damascus Baghdad
TUNISIA Mediterranean Sea
(Fr.) PALESTINE
Jerusalem
TRANS-
JORDAN KUWAIT
ALGERIA Cairo (Gr. Br.)
(Fr.)
LIBYA
0 200 400 miles (It.) EGYPT SAUDI ARABIA
(independent 1922)
0 200 400 kilometers N O R T H A F R I C A
MAP 25.3 Europe and the Middle East after the Peace Settlements of 1919–1920
The political landscape of central, east, and east-central Europe changed dramatically as a
result of the Russian Revolution and the Peace of Paris. The Ottoman, German, Russian, and
Austro-Hungarian Empires were either broken up into multiple small states or territorially reduced.
The settlement left resentments among Germans and Hungarians and created a group of weak,
struggling nations in the heartland of Europe. The victorious powers took over much of the oil-
rich Middle East. Why is it significant that the postwar geopolitical changes were so concen-
trated in one section of Europe?
[ 1914–1929
]
set in 1921 at the crushing sum of 132 billion gold marks. Germany also had to reduce
its army, almost eliminate its navy, stop manufacturing offensive weapons, and
deliver a large amount of free coal each year to Belgium and France. Furthermore,
it was forbidden to have an air force and had to give up its colonies. Article 231 of
the treaty described Germany’s “responsibility” for damage caused “by the aggression
of Germany and her allies.” Outraged Germans interpreted this as a war guilt clause,
which blamed Germany for the war and allowed the victors to collect reparations
from their economically developed country rather than from ruined Austria. War
guilt made Germans feel like outcasts in the community of nations.
Besides redrawing the map of Europe, the Peace of Paris set up an organization
called the League of Nations, whose members had a joint responsibility for main-
taining peace — a principle called collective security. It was supposed to replace the
divisive secrecy of prewar power politics and arbitrate its members’ disputes. The
U.S. Senate failed to ratify the peace settlement and refused to join the league. More-
over, Germany and Russia initially were excluded from the league and were thus
blocked from working cooperatively with it. The absence of these three important
powers weakened the league as a global peacekeeper.
The League of Nations also organized the administration of the former colonies
and territories of Germany and the Ottoman Empire — such as Togo, Cameroon,
Syria, and Palestine — through systems of political control called mandates. While
the victorious powers exercised their mandates, local leaders retained limited author-
ity. The league justified the mandate system as providing governance by “advanced
nations” over territories “not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous
conditions of the modern world.” The mandate system not only kept imperialism
alive at a time when the powers were bankrupt and weak but also, like the Peace of
Paris, aroused anger and resistance.
Economic and Diplomatic Consequences of the Peace

The Peace of Paris extended at least two problems into the 1920s and beyond. The
first was economic recovery and its relationship to war debts and German reparation
payments. The second was ensuring that peace actually came about and lasted.
France, hardest hit by wartime destruction and billions of dollars in debt to the
United States, estimated that Germany owed it at least $200 billion. Britain, by con-
trast, had not been physically devastated and was worried instead about maintaining
its empire and restoring trade with Germany, not exacting huge reparations to rebuild.
Nevertheless, both France and Britain were dependent on some German payments
to settle their war debts to the United States.
Germany claimed that the demand for reparations strained its government,
already facing political upheaval. In fact, Germany’s economic problems had begun
long before the Peace of Paris. They had started with the kaiser’s policy of not raising
taxes — especially on the rich — to pay for the war, leaving the new republic with a
staggering debt. Now this republic, an experiment in democracy, needed to win over
[1914–1929
Inflation and the German

Elections
The extraordinary inflation that
struck the German economy in 1923
haunted those who lived through it
and lost their life savings as money
became worthless. The disaster
gravely affected both the social and
political order, leaving a legacy of
fear and outrage. In this poster, the
German Democratic Party rouses
terror with its highly charged image
of inflation as a monstrous enemy of
the nation in the election campaign
of 1924. (© Photo 12 / The Image Works.)
its citizens, and hiking taxes to

pay Germany’s debt would only
anger them. In 1921, when Ger-
mans refused to present a realis-
tic plan for paying reparations,
the French occupied several cit-
ies in the Ruhr basin until a set-
tlement was reached.
Germany’s relations with
powers to the west continued to deteriorate. In 1923, after Germany defaulted on
coal deliveries, the French (this time joined by the Belgians) again sent troops into
the Ruhr basin, planning to seize its output to pay the wartime debt. Urged on by
the government, Ruhr citizens shut down industry by staying home from work. The
German government printed trillions of marks to support the workers and to pay
its own war debts with practically worthless currency. The result was a staggering
inflation in Germany: at one point, a single U.S. dollar cost 4.42 trillion marks, and
wheelbarrows of money were required to buy a turnip. Negotiations to resolve this
economic chaos resulted in the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929), which
reduced reparations and restored the value of German currency. Before that hap-
pened, however, inflation had wiped out people’s savings and turned many more
Germans against their democratic government.
The second burning issue unresolved by the Peace of Paris involved making the
peace take hold and last. Statesmen determined that peace needed disarmament, a
return of Germany to the community of nations, and security for the new countries
of eastern Europe. Hard diplomatic bargaining produced two plans in Germany’s
favor. At the Washington Conference in 1921, the United States, Great Britain, Japan,
France, and Italy agreed to reduce their number of battleships and to stop constructing
[ 1914–1929
]
new ones for ten years. Four years later, in 1925, the League of Nations sponsored
a meeting of the great powers, including Germany, at Locarno, Switzerland. The
Treaty of Locarno provided Germany with a seat in the league as of 1926. In return,
Germany agreed not to violate the borders of France and Belgium and to keep the
nearby Rhineland demilitarized — that is, unfortified by troops.
To the east, statesmen feared a German attempt to regain territory lost to Poland,
to merge with Austria, or to launch any attack on states spun off from Austria-
Hungary. To meet this threat, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania formed the
Little Entente in 1920–1921, a collective security agreement intended to protect them
from Germany and Russia. Between 1924 and 1927, France allied itself with the Little
Entente and with Poland. In 1928, sixty nations, including the major European pow-
ers, Japan, and the United States, signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which formally
rejected international violence. The pact lacked any mechanism for enforcement and
thus resembled, as one critic put it, “an international kiss.”
The publicity surrounding the international agreements of the 1920s sharply
contrasted with old-style diplomacy, which had been conducted in secret and subject
to little public scrutiny. The development of a system of open, collective security
suggested a diplomatic revolution that would promote international peace. Yet open-
ness allowed diplomats to feed the press information designed to provoke the masses.
For example, the press and opposition parties whipped the German populace into
a nationalist fury whenever Germany’s diplomats appeared to compromise, even
though these compromises worked to undo the Treaty of Versailles. Journalists who
hated republican government used inter-
national meetings such as the one at
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major out- Locarno to fire up political hatreds rather
comes of the postwar peacemaking process?
than promote peace or rational public
discussion.
A Decade of Recovery: Europe in the 1920s

Even after the armistice and the peace treaties, the wartime spirit endured. Towns
and villages built their monuments to the fallen, and battlefield tourism sprang up
for veterans and their families in search of a relative’s final resting place. Words and
phrases from the battlefield became part of everyday speech. Before the war the word
lousy had meant “lice-infested,” but English-speaking soldiers returning from the
trenches now applied it to anything bad. Raincoats became trenchcoats. Maimed,
disfigured veterans were present everywhere. While some received prostheses
designed by Jules Amar, others without limbs were sometimes carried in baskets —
hence the expression basket case. Four autocratic governments had collapsed as a
result of the war, but whether these states would become workable democracies
remained an open question. The Roaring Twenties masked the serious problem of
restoring stability and implementing democracy amid the grim legacy of war.
[1914–1929
] A Decade of Recovery: Europe in the 1920s 841
Changes in the Political Landscape

The collapse of autocratic governments and the widespread extension of suffrage to
women brought political turmoil as well as the expansion of democracy. Woman suf-
frage resulted in part from decades of activism, but many men in government claimed
that suffrage was a “reward” for women’s war efforts. Women were voted into parlia-
ments in the first postwar elections. Yet French men pointedly denied women the
vote, threatening that women voters would bring back the rule of kings and priests.
(Only at the end of World War II would France and Italy extend suffrage to women.)
The welfare state also expanded, with payments being made to veterans and victims
of workplace accidents. These benefits stemmed from the belief that more evenly
distributed wealth — sometimes called economic democracy — would prevent the
outbreak of revolution.
The trend toward economic democracy was not easy to maintain, however,
because the cycles of boom and bust that had characterized the late nineteenth cen-
tury reemerged. A short postwar economic boom prompted by reconstruction and
consumer spending was followed by an economic downturn that was most severe
between 1920 and 1922. By the mid-1920s, women made up a smaller percentage of
the workforce than in 1913, and skyrocketing unemployment produced more dis-
content with governments. Veterans were especially angered by economic insecurity
after years of enduring the war’s horrors.
The new republics of eastern Europe in particular were unprepared for hard
economic times and poorly equipped to compete in the world market. None but
Czechoslovakia had a mature industrial sector, and agricultural techniques were
often primitive. Still more pressing problems hampered them. Vast migrations
occurred as some 1 million citizens escaped the civil war in Russia and 800,000
soldiers from the defeated Whites searched for safety. Two million people fled Tur-
key, Greece, and Bulgaria because the post-
war settlement called for the new nations Women Gain Suffrage in the West
to be built along “nationality” lines. Hun- 1906 Finland

dreds of thousands landed in new nations: 1913 Norway
Hungary, for example, had to receive 300,000
1915 Denmark, Iceland
people of Magyar ethnicity who were no
1917 Netherlands, Russia
longer welcome in Romania, Czechoslova-
1918 Czechoslovakia, Great Britain
kia, or Yugoslavia. Most of these millions of (limited suffrage)
refugees lacked land or jobs. They had noth-
1919 Germany
ing to do “but loaf and starve,” one English
1920 Austria, United States
journalist observed of refugees in Bulgaria.
1921 Poland
The influx of people brought more conflict
in various parts of eastern Europe. 1925 Hungary (limited suffrage)
Poland exemplified how postwar tur- 1945 Italy, France

moil could destroy a new nation’s parlia- 1971 Switzerland
mentary democracy. One-third of the
[ 1914–1929
]
0 75 150 miles reunified Poland consisted of Ukrainians, Belo-
LITHUANIA russians, Germans, and other ethnic minorities —
0 75 150 kilometers
Danzig many of whom had grievances against the domi-
EAST
PRUSSIA nant Poles. Varying religious and cultural traditions
USSR
also divided the Poles, who for 150 years had
been split among Austria, Germany, and Russia.
GE POLAND
RM Polish reunification occurred without a common
AN
Y currency or political heritage — even the railroad
CZE
tracks were not a standard size. Despite a new con-
CHOSLO
VAKIA stitution that professed equal rights for all ethnici-
ties and religions, declining crop prices and over-
Polish German population made life in the countryside difficult.
Czech Latvian
The economic downturn brought strikes and vio-
Slovak Lithuanian
Belorussian Magyar
lence in 1922–1923. Ultimately, former military
Ukrainian
(Hungarian) leader Jozef Pilsudski took power via a coup in
Romanian
1926 because of the government’s inability to bring
about prosperity. In postwar east-central Europe,
National Minorities in
military solutions to economic hardship demon-
Postwar Poland
strated the endurance of war long after the peace
had officially begun.
Germany was a different case. Although its economy picked up and the nation
became a center of experimentation in the arts, political life remained unstable
because so many people, nostalgic for imperial glory, associated defeat with the new
Weimar Republic. Extremist politicians heaped daily abuse on Weimar’s democracy.
A wealthy newspaper and film tycoon called anyone cooperating with the parlia-
mentary system “a moral cripple.” Right-wing parties favored violence rather than
consensus building, and nationalist thugs murdered democratic leaders and Jews.
Communists were not shy about jumping into street brawls, either.
Support for the far right came from wealthy landowners and businessmen,
white-collar workers whose standard of living had dropped during the war, and mem-
bers of the lower-middle and middle classes hurt by inflation. Bands of disaffected
youth and veterans multiplied, among them a group called the Brown Shirts. Their
leader was an ex-soldier named Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) — a favorite speaker among
antigovernment crowds. In the wake of the Ruhr occupation of 1923, Hitler and Ger-
man military hero Erich Ludendorff launched a coup d’état — or putsch in German —
from a beer hall in Munich. Government troops suppressed the Beer Hall Putsch and
arrested its leaders, but Ludendorff was acquitted and Hitler spent less than a year
in jail. To conservative judges, former aristocrats, and most of the prewar bureaucrats
who still staffed the government, such men were national heroes.
In France and Britain, parties on the right were less effective than in Germany
because representative institutions were better established and the upper classes were
not plotting to restore an authoritarian monarchy. In France, politicians from the
conservative right and moderate left successively formed coalitions and rallied gen-
[1914–1929
eral support to rebuild war-torn regions and to force Germany to pay for the recon-
struction. Hoping to stimulate population growth after the devastating loss of life,
the French parliament made distributing birth-control information illegal and abor-
tion a severely punished crime.
Britain encountered postwar boom-and-bust cycles and continuing conflict in
Ireland. Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), elected the first Labour prime minister in
1924, represented the political strength of workers. He had to face the unpleasant
truth that although Britain had the largest world empire, many of its industries were
obsolete or in poor condition. A showdown came in the ailing coal industry. On
May 3, 1926, workers launched a nine-day general strike against wage cuts and dan-
gerous conditions in the mines. The strike provoked unprecedented middle-class
resistance. University students, homemakers, and businessmen shut down the strike
by driving trains, working on docks, and replacing workers in other jobs. Seeing
strikers as those who were once again attacking the nation, citizens from many walks
of life began working through their wartime traumas with words and deeds, inflict-
ing their violence on conquered lands near and far.
In January 1919, Ireland’s republican leaders 0 50 100 miles
0 50 100 kilometers
declared their nation’s independence and created a SCOTLAND
separate parliament. The British government Ulster
(Northern Ireland)
refused to recognize the parliament and sent in the
Black and Tans, a volunteer army of demobilized
soldiers named for the color of their uniforms. Ter-
Dublin GREAT
ror reigned in Ireland, and by 1921, public outrage
IRISH BRITAIN
had forced the British to negotiate a treaty, one FREE STATE
that reversed the Irish declaration of independence ENGLAND
and made the Irish Free State a self-governing

dominion. Northern Ireland, a group of six north-
ern counties containing a majority of Protestants,
gained a separate status: it was self-governing but
still had representation in the British Parliament. The Irish Free State and Ulster,
1921
This settlement left bitter discontent.
War had also changed everything in the colonies. European politicians and mili-
tary recruiters had promised colonized peoples reforms, even independence, in exchange
for their support during the war. However, these peoples’ political activism — now
enhanced by increasing education, trade, and experience with the West — mostly met
with a brutal response. British forces massacred protesters at Amritsar, India, in
1919, put down revolts against the mandate system in Egypt and Iran in the early
1920s, and slaughtered women peacefully protesting in Nigeria in 1929. The Dutch
jailed political leaders in Indonesia; the French punished Indochinese nationalists.
Western governments thus continued warfare in the colonies; the Germans who had
lost their holdings brought the war home instead. Maintaining empires abroad was
also seen as crucial to ensuring democratic government, for any hint of declining
national prestige fed antidemocratic forces.
[ 1914–1929
]
Despite resistance, the 1920s marked the high tide of imperialism. Britain and
France, enjoying new access to Germany’s colonies in Africa and the territories of
the fallen Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, were at the height of their global
power because of the growing profitability that enterprise around the world could
bring. Middle Eastern and Indonesian oil, for instance, fueled the West’s growing
number of automobiles, airplanes, trucks, ships, and buses. Products like chocolate
and tropical fruit became regular items in Westerners’ diets.
The balance of power among the imperial nations was shifting, however. The
most important change was Japan’s surging competition for markets, resources, and
ultimately colonies. During the war, Japanese output of industrial goods such as metal
and ships grew dramatically because the Western powers outsourced their wartime
needs for such products. Japan’s prosperity skyrocketed, allowing the country to
become the dominant power in China. The Japanese government advertised its suc-
cess as a sign of hope for non-Westerners. Japan’s prosperity, the country’s politi-
cians claimed, would end the West’s domination. Ardently nationalist, the Japanese
government was not yet strong enough to challenge the Western powers militarily.
Thus, although outraged when the Western powers at Paris refused a nondiscrimina-
tion clause in the charter of the League of Nations, Japan cooperated in the Anglo-
American-dominated peace.
Reconstructing the Economy

The war had weakened European economies and allowed rivals — Japan, India, the
United States, Australia, and Canada — to flourish. At the same time, the war had
forced European manufacturing to become more efficient and had expanded the
demand for automotive and air transport, electrical products, and synthetic goods.
The prewar pattern of mergers and cartels continued after 1918, giving rise to gigan-
tic food-processing firms such as Nestlé in Switzerland and petroleum enterprises
such as Royal Dutch Shell. By the late 1920s, Europe was enjoying renewed economic
prosperity.
The United States had become the trendsetter in economic modernization: by
1929, Ford Motor Company’s Detroit assembly line was producing a Ford automobile
every ten seconds. Increased productivity, founder Henry Ford (1863–1947) pointed
out, resulted in a lower cost of living and thus increased workers’ purchasing power.
American efficiency expert Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) had developed methods
to streamline workers’ tasks for maximum productivity. Industrialists who adopted
Taylor’s methods were also influenced by European psychologists who emphasized
the mental aspects of productivity and thus the need to balance work and leisure
activities. In theory, increased productivity not only produced prosperity for all but
also united workers and management, avoiding Russian-style worker revolution. For
many workers, however, the emphasis on efficiency seemed inhumane; in some busi-
nesses restrictions were so severe that workers were allowed to use the bathroom
only on a fixed schedule.
[
1914–1929
The managerial sector in industry had expanded during the war and continued
to do so thereafter. Workers’ knowledge became devalued, with managers alone seen
as creative and innovative. Managers reorganized work procedures and classified
workers’ skills. They categorized jobs held by women as requiring less skill — whether
they did or not — and therefore deserving of lower wages. With male workers’ jobs
increasingly threatened by labor-saving machinery, unions usually agreed that women
should receive lower wages to keep them from competing with men for scarce high-
paying jobs. Like the managerial sector, a complex union bureaucracy had ballooned
during World War I to help monitor labor’s part in the war. Unions could mobilize
masses of people, as evidenced by their actions against coups in Weimar Germany
and by the general strike in Great Britain in 1926.
Restoring Society
Civilians met the returning millions of brutalized, incapacitated, and shell-shocked
veterans with combined joy and apprehension — and that apprehension was often
valid. Tens of thousands of German, central European, and Italian soldiers refused to
disband; some British veterans vandalized university classrooms and assaulted women
streetcar conductors and factory workers. Many veterans were angry that civilians
had protested wartime conditions instead of enduring them. Patriotic when the war
erupted, civilians, especially women, sometimes felt estranged from the returning
warriors who had inflicted so much death and who had lived daily with filth, rats,
and decaying human flesh. While women who had served on the front had seen the
soldiers’ suffering firsthand and could sympathize with them, many British suffrag-
ists, for instance, who had fought for equality in men’s and women’s lives before the
war, now embraced separate spheres for men and women, so fearful were they of
returning veterans.
For their part, veterans returned to a world that differed from the home they
had left. They found that the war had blurred class distinctions, giving rise to expec-
tations that life would be fairer afterward. Despite their expectations, veterans often
had few or no jobs open to them, and some found that their wives and sweethearts
had abandoned them. Many found, too, that women’s roles had gone through other
changes: middle-class women did their own housework because former servants
could earn more money in factories, and greater numbers of women worked outside
the home. Women of all classes cut their hair short, wore sleeker clothes, smoked,
and had money of their own because of war work.
Focusing on veterans’ needs, governments tried to make civilian life as comfort-
able as possible to reintegrate men into society and reduce the appeal of communism.
Politicians believed in the calming power of family life and supported social pro-
grams such as veterans’ pensions and housing and benefits for out-of-work men. The
new housing — “homes for heroes,” as politicians called the program in Vienna,
Frankfurt, Berlin, and Stockholm — provided common laundries, day-care centers,
and rooms for socializing. Gardens, terraces, and balconies provided a soothing
[ 1914–1929
]
New Housing in Vienna

Politicians saw to the building of “homes for heroes” across postwar Europe, and Vienna was
one leader in constructing modern housing for the working class. With many veterans enraged
by the war experience and with socialist revolution a looming threat, new housing, it was hoped,
would help return men to peaceful civilian life. (© Bettmann/Corbis.)
country ambience that offset the hectic nature of industrial life. Inside, they boasted
modern kitchens and bathrooms, central heating, and electricity.
Despite government efforts to restore traditional family life, freer relationships
and more open discussions of sex characterized the 1920s. Middle-class youths of
both sexes visited jazz clubs and attended movies together. Revealing bathing suits,
short skirts, and body-hugging clothing emphasized women’s sexuality, seeming to
invite men and women to join together and replenish the postwar population. Brit-
ish scientist Marie Stopes published the best seller Married Love in 1918, and Dutch
author Theodor van de Velde produced the wildly successful Ideal Marriage: Its
Physiology and Technique in 1927. Both authors described sex in glowing terms and
offered precise information about birth control and sexual physiology. One Viennese
reformer promoted working-class marriage as “an erotic-comradely relationship of
equals” rather than the economic partnership of past centuries. Meanwhile, such
writers as the Briton D. H. Lawrence and the American Ernest Hemingway glorified
men’s sexual vigor in, respectively, Women in Love (1920) and The Sun Also Rises
(1926). Mass culture’s focus on heterosexuality encouraged the return to normality
after the gender disorder that had troubled the prewar and war years.
[1914–1929
] Mass Culture and the Rise of Modern Dictators 847
As images of men and women changed, people paid more attention to bodily
improvement. The increasing use of toothbrushes and toothpaste, safety and electric
razors, and deodorants reflected new standards for personal hygiene and grooming.
A multibillion-dollar cosmetics industry sprang up almost overnight. Women went
to beauty parlors regularly to have their short hair cut, dyed, straightened, or curled.
They also tweezed their eyebrows, applied makeup, and even submitted to cosmetic
surgery. Ordinary women “painted” their faces (something only prostitutes had done
formerly) and competed in beauty contests. Instead of wanting to look plump and
pale, people aimed to become thin and tan, often through exercise and playing
sports. Consumers’ new focus on personal health coincided with industry’s need for
a physically fit workforce.
As prosperity returned in the mid-1920s, people could afford to buy more con-
sumer goods. Middle- and upper-class families snapped up sleek modern furniture,
washing machines, and vacuum cleaners. Other modern conveniences such as elec-
tric irons and gas stoves appeared in better-off working-class households. Installment
buying, popularized from the 1920s on, helped people finance these purchases.
Family intimacy increasingly depended on
machines of mass communication like
radios, phonographs, and even automo- political, social, and economic problems facing
biles, which not only transformed private postwar Europe, and how did governments
life but also brought changes to the public attempt to address them?
world of mass culture and mass politics.
Mass Culture and the Rise of Modern Dictators

Wartime propaganda had aimed to unite all classes against a common enemy. In the
1920s, new technology made the process of integrating diverse groups into a single
Western or mass culture easier. The tools of mass culture — primarily radio, film, and
newspapers — expanded their influence in the 1920s. Some intellectuals who wanted
to use modern media and art to reach the masses saw their potential for creating an
informed citizenry and thus strengthening democracy. At the same time, the media
allowed authoritarian rulers and would-be dictators such as Benito Mussolini, Joseph
Stalin, and Adolf Hitler to shape uniform political thought and to control citizens’
behavior far beyond what previous rulers had been able to do.
Culture for the Masses

The media received a big boost from the war. Bulletins from the battlefront whetted
the public’s craving for news and real-life stories, and sales of nonfiction books soared.
After years of deprivation, people were driven to achieve material success, and they
devoured books about how to gain it. A biography of Henry Ford, telling his story of
upward mobility and technological accomplishment, became a best seller in Germany.
Phonographs, radio programs, and movies also widened the scope of national culture.
[ 1914–1929
]
The Flapper
This modern workingwoman smoking her cigarette stood for all that had changed — or was
said to have changed — in the postwar world. Women worked and had money of their own, they
were out in public and could vote in many countries, and they were liberated from old constraints
on their sexual and other behavior. (General Photographic Agency / Getty Images.)
In the 1920s, film evolved from an experimental medium to a thriving interna-

tional business in which large corporations set up theater chains and marketed mov-
ies worldwide. Films of literary classics and political events developed people’s sense
of a common heritage and were often sponsored by governments. Bolshevik leaders
backed the inventive work of director Sergei Eisenstein, whose films Potemkin (1925)
and Ten Days That Shook the World (1927–1928) presented a Bolshevik view of his-
tory to Russian and international audiences.
Films incorporated familiar elements from everyday life. The popular comedies
of the 1920s made the flapper more visible to the masses, attracting some hundred
million weekly viewers, the majority of them women. Films also played to postwar
fantasies and fears. In Germany, the influential hit The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
(1919) depicted frightening events in an insane asylum as horrifying symbols of state
power. Popular detective and cowboy films portrayed heroes who could restore
wholeness to the disordered world of murder, crime, and injustice. The plight of
gangsters appealed to veterans, who had been exposed to the cheap value of modern
life in the trenches. Films featured characters from around the world and were often
set in faraway deserts and mountain ranges; newsreels showed athletic, soldier-like
bodies in sporting events such as boxing.
Like film, radio evolved from an experimental medium to an instrument of mass
culture during the 1920s. Developed from the wireless technology of Italian inventor
[1914–1929
Guglielmo Marconi, the radio quickly became an affordable consumer item, allowing
the public concert or lecture to penetrate the individual’s private living space. Special-
ized programming for men (such as sports reporting) and for women (such as advice
on home management) attracted listeners. Through radio, disabled veterans found
ways to participate in public events and keep up-to-date. By the 1930s, radio helped
politicians to reach the masses wherever they might be — even alone at home.
Cultural Debates over the Future

Cultural leaders in the 1920s either were obsessed with the horrendous experience
of war or held high hopes for creating a fresh, utopian future that would have little
relation to the past. German artists, especially, produced bleak or violent visions. The
sculpture and woodcuts of German artist Käthe Kollwitz, whose son had died in the
war, portrayed bereaved parents, starving children, and other heart-wrenching anti-
war images (see the chapter-opening image). Others thought that Europeans needed
to search for answers in far-off cultures. Seeing Europe as decadent, some turned to
the spiritual richness of Asian philosophies and religions. An “Asiatic fever” seemed
to grip intellectuals, including the British writer Virginia Woolf, who drew on ideas
of reincarnation in her novel Orlando (1928), and the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein,
who modeled new techniques of film shots (montage) on Japanese calligraphy.
Other artists used satire and contempt to express postwar rage at civilization’s
wartime failure. George Grosz
(1893–1959), stunned by the war’s
carnage, produced works marked by
nonsense and shrieking expressions
of alienation. Grosz’s paintings and
George Grosz, “Twilight” from the

Series Ecce Homo (1922)
George Grosz’s series of postwar art
was named after a book by Friedrich
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Behold the
Man). The “man” to behold was the
veteran, opportunistically called a hero
by postwar politicians to get their votes
but in fact living a grim reality, as Grosz
saw it. Surrounded by prosperous busi-
nessmen, fashionable women, and
strutting military officers, the veteran
was pushed to the background, gray
and lonely amid the colorful peacetime
society. (bpk, Berlin / Kunstbibliothek, Staat-
liche Museen, Berlin, Germany / photo by Kund
Petersen / Art Resource, NY / Art © Estate of
George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.)
[ 1914–1929
]
cartoons of maimed soldiers and brutally murdered women reflected his self-
proclaimed desire “to bellow back.” In the postwar years, the modernist practice of
shocking audiences became more savage while portrayals of seedy everyday life
flourished in cabarets and theaters in the 1920s and reinforced veterans’ beliefs in
civilian decadence.
The art world itself became a battlefield, especially in defeated Germany, where
it mirrored the Weimar Republic’s contentious politics. Popular writers such as vet-
eran Ernst Jünger glorified life in the trenches and called for the militarization of
society. In contrast, Erich Maria Remarque, also a veteran, cried out for an end to
war in his controversial novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1928). This interna-
tional best seller depicted the shared life of enemies on the battlefield, thus aiming
to overcome the national hatred aroused by wartime propaganda. Remarque’s novel
was part of a flood of popular, and often bitter, literature appearing on the tenth
anniversary of the war’s end. It coincided with an interest in “Great War tourism”
such as visiting battlefields.
The postwar arts produced many a utopian fantasy turned upside down; dysto-
pias of life in a war-traumatized Europe multiplied. In the bizarre stories of Franz
Kafka, who worked by day in a large insurance company in Prague, the world is a
vast, impersonal machine. His novels The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926) show
the hopeless condition of individuals caught between the cogs of society’s relentlessly
turning gears. His themes seemed to capture for civilian life the helplessness that
soldiers had felt at the front. As the prewar way of life collapsed in the face of politi-
cal and technological innovation, other writers depicted the complex, sometimes
nightmarish inner life of individuals.
Irish writer James Joyce portrayed this interior self built on memories and sensa-
tions, many of them from the war. Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) illuminates the fast-moving
inner lives of its characters in the course of a single day. In one of the most celebrated
passages in Ulysses, a long interior monologue traces a woman’s lifetime of erotic and
emotional sensations. The technique of using a character’s thoughts to propel a story
was called stream of consciousness. Virginia Woolf, too, used this technique in her
novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925). For Woolf, the war had dissolved the solid society from
which absorbing stories and fascinating characters were once fashioned. Her char-
acters experience fragmented conversations and incomplete relationships. Woolf ’s
novel Orlando also reflected the postwar attention to women. In the novel, the hero
Orlando lives hundreds of years and in the course of his long life is eventually trans-
formed into a woman.
There was another side to the postwar story, however — one based on the prom-
ise of technology. Before the war, avant-garde artists had celebrated the new, the
futuristic, the utopian. After the war, like Jules Amar crafting prostheses for shattered
limbs, many postwar artists were optimistic that technology could make an entire
wounded society whole. The aim of art, observed one of them, “is not to decorate
our life but to organize it.” German artists, calling themselves the Bauhaus (after the
idea of a craft association, or Bauhütte), created streamlined office buildings and
[
1914–1929
designed functional furniture and utensils, many of them inspired by forms from
“untainted” East Asia and Africa. Russian artists, temporarily caught up in the com-
munist experiment, optimistically wrote novels about cement factories and created
ballets about steel.
Artists fascinated by technology and machinery were drawn to the most modern
of all countries — the United States. Hollywood films, glossy advertisements, and the
bustling metropolis of New York tempted careworn Europeans. They loved films
about the Wild West or the supposedly carefree “modern girl.” They were especially
attracted to jazz, the improvisational music developed by African Americans. Per-
formers like Josephine Baker (1906–1975) and Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) became
international sensations when they toured Europe’s capital cities. Like jazz, the New
York skyscraper pointed to the future, not to the grim wartime past.
The Communist Utopia

Communism also promised a shining future and a modern, technological culture.
As the Bolsheviks met powerful resistance, however, they became ever more ruthless
and authoritarian. In the early 1920s, peasant bands called Green Armies revolted
against the Bolshevik policy of war communism that confiscated their crops. Indus-
trial production stood at only 13 percent of prewar levels, and millions of refugees
clogged the cities and roamed the countryside. In the early spring of 1921, workers
in Petrograd and sailors at the naval base at Kronstadt revolted, protesting the privi-
leged standard of living that Bolshevik supervisors enjoyed. They called for “soviets
without Communists” — that is, a worker state without elite leaders.
The Bolsheviks had many of the rebels shot, but the Kronstadt revolt pushed
Lenin to institute reform. His New Economic Policy (NEP) returned parts of the
economy to capitalist methods that allowed peasants to sell their grain and others
to trade consumer goods freely. Although the state still controlled large industries
and banking, the NEP encouraged people to produce and even, in the spirited slogan
of one official, “get rich.” As a result, consumer goods and more food became avail-
able; some peasants and merchants prospered. The rise of these wealthy “NEPmen,”
who bought and furnished splendid homes, broke the Bolshevik promise of a class-
less utopia.
Further protests erupted within Communist ranks. At the 1921 party congress,
a group called the Worker Opposition objected to the party’s takeover of economic
control from worker organizations and pointed out that the NEP was not a proletar-
ian program for workers. In response, Lenin suppressed the Worker Opposition and
set up procedures for purging opponents — a policy that would become a deadly
feature of Communist rule. Bolshevik leaders also worked to make the Communist
revolution a cultural reality in people’s lives and thinking. The Communist Party set
up classes to improve the literacy rate — which had been only 40 percent on the eve
of World War I. To create social equality between the sexes, which had been part of
the Marxist vision of the future, the state made birth control, abortion, and divorce
[ 1914–1929
]
readily available. As commissar for public welfare, Aleksandra Kollontai (1872–1952)
promoted birth-control education for adults and day care for children of working
parents. To encourage literacy, she wrote simply worded novels about love and work
in the new socialist state for ordinary readers.
The bureaucracy swelled to promote modern ways, and hygiene and efficiency
became watchwords, as they were in the rest of Europe. Agencies such as the Zhenotdel
(“Women’s Bureau”) taught women about sanitary housekeeping, while efficiency
experts aimed to replace backwardness with American-style technological modernity.
The short-lived government agency Proletkult tried to develop proletarian culture
through such undertakings as workers’ universities, a workers’ theater, and workers’
publishing. Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote verse praising his Communist passport
and essays promoting toothbrushing, while composers punctuated their music with
the sound of train or factory whistles. As with war communism, many resisted attempts
to change everyday life and culture. In Islamic regions of central Asia, incorporated
from the old Russian Empire into the new Communist one, Bolsheviks urged Muslim
women to remove their veils and generally to become more “modern,” but Muslims
often attacked both Zhenotdel workers and women who followed their advice.
Lenin suffered a debilitating stroke in the spring of 1922, and amid ongoing
cultural experimentation and factional fighting, this architect of the Bolshevik Revo-
lution died in January 1924. The party congress changed the name of Petrograd to
Leningrad and elevated the deceased leader into a secular god. Joseph Stalin (1879–
1953), who served in the powerful post of general secretary of the Communist Party,
was the chief mourner at Lenin’s funeral, using the occasion to hand out good jobs.
He advertised his role in joining Russian and non-Russian regions into the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1923. Concerned with Stalin’s influence and
ruthlessness, Lenin in his last will and testament had asked that “the comrades find
a way to remove Stalin.” Stalin, however, prevented Lenin’s will from being publicized
and discredited his chief rival, Trotsky, as an unpatriotic internationalist. Simultane-
ously, Stalin organized the Lenin cult, which included the public display of Lenin’s
embalmed corpse — still on view today. By 1929, Stalin had achieved virtually com-
plete control of the USSR.
Fascism on the March in Italy

In Italy, the rise to power of political journalist Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), who
had turned from socialism to the radical right, kept the war alive. Italians raged when
the Allies at Paris refused to honor the territorial promises of the Treaty of London,
and peasants and workers protested their economic plight during the slump of the
early 1920s. Many Europeans blamed parliaments and constitutions for their troubles,
so Italians backed Mussolini when he gathered veterans and unemployed men into
a personal army (the Black Shirts) to overturn parliamentary government. In 1922,
his supporters, known as the Fascists, started a march on Rome, forcing King Victor
Emmanuel III (r. 1900–1946) to make Mussolini prime minister.
[1914–1929
Mussolini and the Black Shirts, 1922

Mussolini always struck a tough military pose, even when not in uniform, as in this photo taken
in 1922 with his Black Shirt supporters, many also without uniforms. Once in power, Mussolini
continued the militarization of society that had begun during World War I, instilling a cult of obe-
dience and submission to state authority that he viewed as more important than fancy theories
of politics and government. (The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
Like the Bolsheviks, Mussolini promised an efficient military utopia and the
restoration of men’s warrior status. The Black Shirts attracted many young men who
felt cheated of wartime glory and many veterans who missed the vigor of military
life. The fasces, an ancient Roman symbol depicting a bundle of sticks wrapped
around an ax with the blade exposed (representing both unity and force), served as
the movement’s emblem and provided its name: fascism. Unlike Marxism, fascism
scoffed at coherent ideology: “Fascism is not a church,” Mussolini announced. “It is
more like a training ground.” The Fascist Party was defined by deeds — specifically
its promotion of male violence and its attacks on parliamentary rule.
Mussolini criminalized any criticism of the state and used violence against oppo-
nents in parliament. Bands of men from the Fascist Party attacked striking workers,
using their favorite tactic of forcing castor oil (which caused diarrhea) down the
throats of socialists, and even murdering rivals. Yet the sight of the Black Shirts
marching through the streets like disciplined soldiers signaled to many Italians that
their country was orderly and modern. Large landowners and businessmen approved
the Fascists’ attacks on strikers and therefore financed the movement. Their generous
funding allowed Mussolini to build a large staff by hiring the unemployed, creating
the illusion that the Fascists could rescue the economy when no one else could.
[ 1914–1929
]
Like a wartime leader, Mussolini used mass propaganda to build support for a
kind of military campaign to remake Italy. Peasant men huddled around radios to
hear him call for a “battle of wheat” to enhance farm productivity. Peasant women
adored him for appearing to value motherhood. In the cities the government launched
avant-garde architectural projects and used public relations promoters to advertise
its achievements. The modern city became a stage set for Fascist spectacles captured
by newsreel cameras and broadcast by radio. Mussolini claimed that he made the
trains run on time, and this triumph of modern technology fanned people’s hopes
that he could restore order, albeit violently.
Mussolini added traditional values and prejudices to his modern order. An athe-
ist himself, he recognized the importance of Catholicism in Italian life. In 1929, the
Lateran Agreement between the Italian government and the church made the Vatican
an independent state under papal sovereignty. The government recognized the
church’s right to determine marriage and family policy; in return, the church ended
its criticism of Fascist tactics. Mussolini also outlawed labor unions, replacing them
with organized groups of employers, workers, and professionals to settle grievances
and determine conditions of work. Mussolini drew praise from business leaders and
professionals when he announced cuts in women’s wages and a ban on women in
the professions. Mussolini aimed to confine women to low-paying jobs as part of his
scheme for reinvigorating men.
Mussolini’s numerous admirers across the West included Adolf Hitler, who
throughout the 1920s had been building a paramilitary group of storm troopers
alongside a political organization called the National Socialist German Workers’
Party (the Nazi Party). During his brief stint in jail for the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch,
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle); in the book, he expressed both his vicious
anti-Semitism and his recipe for manipulating the masses. Hitler was fascinated by
Mussolini’s legal accession to power and his triumph over all opposition. Late in the
1920s, however, the conditions that had
allowed Mussolini to rise to power in 1922
REVIEW QUESTION How did the postwar
no longer existed in Germany. Although the
atmosphere influence cultural life and encour-
age the trend toward dictatorship?
Nazi Party was becoming a strong political
instrument, Weimar democracy was func-
tioning better as the decade wore on.
Conclusion
The year 1929 was to prove just as fateful as 1914 had been. In 1914, World War I
began an orgy of death, causing tens of millions of casualties and the destruction of
major dynasties. For four years, the war promoted military technology, fierce nation-
alism, and the control of everyday life by bureaucracy. As dynasties fell, the Peace
of Paris treaties of 1919–1920 left Germans bitterly resentful. In eastern and central
Europe the creation of new states by the treaties failed to guarantee a peaceful future.
Massive migrations produced additional chaos, as refugees fled political upheaval
such as that in Russia and as some new nations expelled minority groups.
[ 1914–1929
] Conclusion 855
War furthered the development of mass society. It leveled social classes on the
battlefield and in the graveyard, standardized political thinking through wartime
propaganda, and extended many political rights to women. Production techniques,
improved during wartime, were used in peacetime for manufacturing consumer
goods. Technological innovations — from the prostheses built by Jules Amar to air
transport, cinema, and radio transmission — became available. Modernity in the arts
intensified, probing the nightmarish war that continued to haunt the population.
By the end of the 1920s, the war had so militarized the population that strongmen
had come to power in several countries, including the Soviet Union and Italy, with
Adolf Hitler waiting in the wings in Germany. These strongmen and their followers
kept alive the wartime commitment to violence. Many Westerners were impressed
by the tough, modern efficiency of Fascists and Communists who made parliaments
and citizen rule seem out of date, even effeminate. When the U.S. stock market
crashed in 1929 and economic disaster circled the globe, authoritarian solutions and
militarism continued to look appealing. What followed was a series of catastrophes
even more devastating than those of World War I.
FINLAND
GREENLAND SWEDEN 1920
NORWAY
ICELAND NETH. 4
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS N
GREAT DEN. 5
CANADA BRITAIN
8 POL. 6
BELG. 2 CZECH. 7 W E
FRANCE ROM. MONGOLIA
SWITZ. YUGO. 3
PORTUGAL SPAIN ITALY S
UNITED STATES GR. TURKEY KOREA JAPAN
TUNISIA 1 SYR. CHINA
MOROCCO (Fr.) PALESTINE IRAQ IRAN AFG. TIBET
(Fr.) TRANS-
ALGERIA LIBYA
CUBA
HAITI (Fr.) (It.) EGYPT JORDAN PACIFIC OCEAN
DOM. REP. SAUDI INDIA
MEXICO 1924
FRENCH ARABIA OMAN
BR. SUDAN SIAM
HONDURAS WEST AFRICA CAMEROON
GUATEMALA NICARAGUA ATLANTIC FR.
EL SALVADOR 1924 NIGERIA INDOCHINA PACIFIC IS.
OCEAN FR. ABYSSINIA
COSTA RICA 1920–1925 VENEZUELA CAMEROON
PANAMA COLOMBIA LIBERIA
FR.
ECUADOR TOGO BISMARCK ARCH.
BR. TOGO RUANDA-
URUNDI TANGANYIKA DUTCH EAST INDIES
BRAZIL INDIAN
1920–1926 ANGOLA OCEAN
PACIFIC PERU SAMOA
OCEAN BOLIVIA
MADAGASCAR
PARAGUAY S.W.
AFRICA
AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
CHILE URUGUAY AFRICA
ARGENTINA
League of Nations 1 Albania, 1920 NEW
ZEALAND
Original members 2 Austria, 1920
Subsequent members, 3 Bulgaria, 1920
with date of membership 4 Estonia, 1921
Possessions of member states 5 Latvia, 1920
Non-member states 6 Lithuania, 1921
Mandated territories 7 Hungary, 1922–1937
0 1,000 2,000 miles
8 Germany, 1926–1933
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the World in 1929

The map reflects the partitions and nations that came into being as a result of war and revolu-
tion, while it obscures the increasing movement toward throwing off colonial rule. The high point
of empire was still unfolding with the mandate system and the 1930s drive by Germany, Italy,
and Japan, all of which searched for land and resources to fuel growth.
Chapter 25 Review
total war (p. 822) V. I. Lenin (p. 831) League of Nations (p. 838)
cult of the offensive (p. 824) Bolshevik Revolution (p. 831) mandate system (p. 838)
Schlieffen Plan (p. 825) Weimar Republic (p. 835) Aleksandra Kollontai (p. 852)
Fourteen Points (p. 830) Peace of Paris (p. 836) Benito Mussolini (p. 852)
soviets (p. 831) war guilt clause (p. 838) fascism (p. 853)
Review Questions
1. In what ways was World War I a total war?
2. Why did people rebel during World War I, and what turned rebellion into outright revolution
in Russia?
3. What were the major outcomes of the postwar peacemaking process?
4. What were the major political, social, and economic problems facing postwar Europe, and
how did governments attempt to address them?
5. How did the postwar atmosphere influence cultural expression and encourage the trend
toward dictatorship?
Making Connections
1. How did the experience of war shape postwar mass politics?
2. What social changes from World War I carried over into the postwar years, and why?
3. How did postwar artistic and cultural innovations build on the modern movements that
developed between 1890 and 1914?
4. What changes did the war bring to relationships between European countries and their
colonies?
Readers of history and scholars continue to explore the gripping and tragic events of World
War I. Hanna’s work captures the often heartrending relationship between the battlefront and
home front, while Matera’s study provides an example of the tragic aftermath in the colonies.
Arthurs, Joshua. Excavating Modernity: The Roman Past in Fascist Italy. 2012.
Hanna, Martha. Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War. 2006.
Healy, Maureen. Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World
War I. 2004.
Horne, John, ed. State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War. 2002.
Jensen, Eric N. Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender and German Modernity. 2010.
Kent, Susan Kingsley. Aftershocks: The Politics of Trauma in Britain, 1918–1931. 2009.
Marks, Sally. The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933. 2003.
Matera, Marc, et al. The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria. 2012.
McMeekin, Sean. The Russian Origins of the First World War. 2011.
Northrup, Douglas. Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia. 2004.
Panchasi, Roxanne. Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars. 2009.
Robb, George. British Culture and the First World War. 2002.
856
[1914–1929
Important Events
1913–1925 Suffrage for women expands in much of Europe

1914 August: World War I begins
1916 Irish nationalists stage Easter Uprising against British rule
1917 March: Revolution in Russia overturns tsarist autocracy
April: United States enters World War I
November: Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
1918 November: Armistice ends fighting of World War I; revolutionary turmoil
throughout Germany; kaiser abdicates
1918–1922 Civil war in Russia
1919 Weimar Republic is established
1919–1920 Paris Peace Conference redraws map of Europe
1922 Ireland gains independence; Fascists march on Rome; Mussolini becomes
prime minister; Joyce, Ulysses; Hitler builds Nazi Party
1924 Lenin dies; Stalin and Trotsky contend for power
1924–1929 Period of general economic prosperity and stability
1929 October: Stock market crash in United States
Consider three events: Joyce, Ulysses (1922), Fascists march on Rome (1922), and
Period of general economic prosperity and stability (1924–1929). How do these events
illustrate the complexities of postwar life?
Roshwald, Aviel. Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle
East, 1914–1923. 2001.
Satia, Priya. Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire
in the Middle East. 2008.
Scales, Rebecca. Radio Nation: The Politics of Auditory Culture in Interwar France. 2015.
Stovall, Tyler. Paris and the Spirit of 1919: Consumer Struggles, Transnationalism, and Revolution.
2012.
Weitz, Eric D. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. 2009.
*World War I Document Archive: http://www.lib.byu.edu/%7Erdh/wwi
*Primary source.
The Great Depression
26
and World War II
1929–1945
W
hen Etty Hillesum moved to Amsterdam from the Dutch provinces
in 1932 to attend law school, an economic depression gripped the world.
A resourceful young woman, Hillesum pieced together a living as a
housekeeper and part-time language teacher so that she could continue her studies.
Absorbed in her everyday life, she took little note of Adolf Hitler’s spectacular rise
to power in Germany, even when he demonized her fellow Jews as responsible for
the economic slump and for virtually every other problem Germany faced. In 1939,
the outbreak of World War II awakened her to
the reality of what was happening. The German
Nazis on Parade conquest of the Netherlands in 1940 led to the
By the time Hitler came to power in
1933, Germany was mired in the
persecution of Dutch Jews, bringing Hillesum
Great Depression. Hated by Com- to note in her diary: “What they are after is
munists, Nazis, and conservatives our total destruction.” The Nazis started relo-
alike, the Weimar Republic had few cating Jews to camps in Germany and Poland.
supporters. Hitler took his cue from Hillesum went to work for Amsterdam’s Jewish
Mussolini by promising an end to
Council, which was forced to organize the
democracy and tolerance and by
using the visual power of Nazi sol- transport of Jews to these death camps. Chang-
diers marching through the streets ing from self-absorbed student to heroine, she
during the depression to win support did what she could to help other Jews and
for overthrowing the government. began carefully recording the deportations.
(Hugo Jaeger / Time & Life Pictures / Getty
Images.)
When she and her family were captured and
deported in turn, she smuggled out letters from
the transit camps along the route to Poland,
describing the inhumane conditions and brutal treatment of the Jews. “I wish I could
live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it,” she wrote. Etty
Hillesum never got her wish: she died at Auschwitz in November 1943.
The economic recovery of the late 1920s came to a halt with the U.S. stock market
crash in 1929, which launched a worldwide economic depression. Economic distress
attracted many people to military-style strongmen for solutions to their problems.
Among these dictators was Adolf Hitler, who called on the German masses to restore
859
860 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
[ 1929–1945
]
the national glory that had been damaged by defeat in 1918. He urged Germans to
scorn democratic rights and root out those he considered to be inferior people: Jews,
Slavs, and Sinti and Roma (often called Gypsies), among others. Militaristic and fas-
cist regimes spread to Spain, Poland, Hungary, Japan, and countries of Latin Amer-
ica, crushing representative institutions. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin justified
the killing of millions of citizens as necessary for the USSR’s industrialization and
the survival of communism. For millions of hard-pressed people in the 1930s, dic-
tatorship had great appeal.
Elected leaders in the democracies reacted cautiously to both economic depres-
sion and the dictators’ aggression. In an age of mass media, leaders following dem-
ocratic principles appeared timid, while dictators dressed in uniforms looked bold
and decisive. Only the German invasion of Poland in 1939 pushed the democracies
to strong action, as World War II erupted in Europe. By 1941, the war had spread
across the globe with the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and many
other nations united in combat against Germany, Italy, Japan, and their allies. Tens
of millions would perish in this war
because both technology and ideology had
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the main eco-
become more deadly than they had been
nomic, social, and political challenges of the
years 1929–1945, and how did governments just two decades earlier. More than half
and individuals respond to them? the dead were civilians, among them Etty
Hillesum, killed for being Jewish.
The Great Depression

The U.S. stock market crash of 1929 and economic developments around the world
triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s. Rural and urban folk alike suffered as
tens of millions lost their jobs and livelihoods. The whole world felt the depression’s
impact: commerce and investment in industry fell off, social life and gender roles were
upset, and the birthrate plummeted. From peasants in Asia to industrial workers in
Germany and the United States, the Great Depression shattered the lives of millions.
Economic Disaster Strikes

In the 1920s, U.S. corporations and banks as well as millions of individual Americans
had not only invested their money but also borrowed funds to make these investments
in the soaring stock market. They used easy credit to buy shares in popular companies
based on electric, automotive, and other new technologies. By the end of the decade,
the Federal Reserve Bank — the nation’s central bank, which controlled financial
policy — tried to slow speculation by limiting credit availability and causing brokers
to demand that their clients immediately pay back the money they had borrowed to
buy stock. As stocks were sold to raise the necessary cash, the market collapsed.
Between early October and mid-November 1929, the value of businesses listed on the
U.S. stock exchange dropped from $87 billion to $30 billion. For individuals and for
[1929–1945
] The Great Depression 861
Unemployed in Germany (1932)

“I’m looking for work of any kind,” this
respectably dressed unemployed man
announces on his sign. Germans were
among those hardest hit by the Great
Depression, and when demagogues
pointed to such sights as evidence that
democracy did not work, it helped pull
down the rule of constitutions, represen-
tative government, and guaranteed rights.
(ullstein bild / The Granger Collection, NYC —
the economy as a whole, it was the

beginning of catastrophe.
The crash helped bring on a
global depression that unfolded over
the course of several years. The United
States had financed the international
economic growth of the previous five
years, so when the suddenly strapped
U.S. banks cut back on loans and
called in debts, they undermined
businesses at home and abroad. Jobs
dwindled and a decline in consumer
buying slowed the world economy,
including the young businesses of
eastern Europe.
The Great Depression left no sector of the world economy unscathed, but gov-
ernment actions made the depression worse. To try to spur their economies, govern-
ments cut budgets and set high tariffs against foreign goods; these policies discour-
aged the consumer spending and international trade needed to spark the economy.
Officials in charge of the flow of global money that fostered commerce desperately
guarded their own supplies of gold. Unemployment soared: Great Britain — with its
outdated textile, steel, and coal industries — had close to three million unemployed
in 1932. By 1933, almost six million German workers, or about one-third of the
workforce, had lost their jobs.
Agricultural prices had been declining for several years because of technologi-
cal advances and abundant harvests around the world. With their incomes slashed,
millions of small farmers had no money to buy the chemical fertilizers and motor-
ized machinery they needed to remain competitive. Now creditors confiscated farms.
Eastern and southern European peasants, who had pressed for the redistribution of
land after World War I, could not afford to operate their newly acquired farms, and
they, too, went under.
[ 1929–1945
]
Social Effects of the Depression
The Great Depression had complex effects on society. First, life was not uniformly
bleak, and despite the slump, modernization continued. Bordering English slums,
one traveler in the mid-1930s noticed, were “filling stations and factories that look
like exhibition buildings, giant cinemas and dance halls and cafés, bungalows with
tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworth’s [and] swimming pools.” Municipal and
national governments continued road construction and sanitation projects. New fac-
tories manufactured synthetic fabrics, automobiles, and electrical products such as
stoves — all of them in demand. With government assistance, eastern European
industry developed: Romanian industrial production, for example, increased by 55
percent between 1929 and 1939. Second, the majority of Europeans and Americans
had jobs throughout the 1930s, and people with steady employment benefited from
a drastic drop in prices. Service workers, managers, and business magnates often
prospered. In contrast, towns with heavy industry often saw more than half the popu-
lation out of work, spreading fear beyond the unemployed.
Economic catastrophe upset gender relations and weakened social ties. Women
often found low-paying jobs doing laundry and cleaning house, while unemployed
men sometimes stayed home all day and took over housekeeping chores. Some,
however, felt that this “women’s work” demeaned their masculinity, and as many
women became breadwinners, albeit for low wages, men could be seen standing on
street corners begging — a change in gender expectations that fed discontent. Young
men in cities faced severe unemployment; with nothing to do but loiter in parks, they
became ripe for movements like Nazism. Demagogues everywhere attacked democ-
racy’s failure to stop the collapse of traditional life, clearing the way for Nazi and
Fascist politicians who promised to create jobs and thus restore male dignity.
Politicians drew attention to the declining birthrates. In difficult economic times,
people chose to have fewer children than ever before. In addition, compulsory educa-
tion, enforced more strictly after the war, reduced the income once earned by chil-
dren, who now cost their families money while they went to school. Family-planning
centers opened, receiving many clients, and knowledge of birth control spread across
the working and lower middle classes. The situation, leaders believed, would lead to
a national collapse in military readiness as “superior” peoples selfishly failed to breed
and “inferior” peoples waited to take their place. This racism took a particularly
violent form in eastern Europe, where political parties also blamed Jewish bankers
for farm foreclosures and Jewish civil servants (of whom there were actually very few)
for inadequate relief programs. Thus, population issues along with economic misery
produced discord, especially in the form of ethnic hatred and anti-Semitism.
The Great Depression beyond the West

The depression spread discontent in European empires. World War I and postwar
investment had produced economic growth, a rising population, and explosive urban-
ization in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The depression, however, cut the demand
[1929–1945
] The Great Depression 863
Gandhi Speaks to Women and Children

Mohandas K. Gandhi, an English-trained lawyer, was central to making the Indian independence
movement a mass phenomenon. He made Indians see the superior values in their own culture
in contrast to those of the West. The West, he maintained, including the United States, valued
only money. Gandhi riveted his audiences, addressing women and children as well as men.
(Archiv Peter Rühe / akg-images.)
for copper, tin, and other raw materials and for the finished products made in urban
factories worldwide. Rising agricultural productivity drove down the price of food-
stuffs like rice and coffee, a disaster for colonial peoples who had been forced to grow
a single cash crop. Just as in Europe, however, the economic picture in the colonies
was uneven. For instance, established Indian industries such as the textile business
gained strength, with India no longer needing British cloth.
Economic distress led to anticolonial action. Colonial farmers withheld produce
like cocoa from imperial trade, and colonial workers went on strike to protest the wage
cuts imposed by imperial landlords. In India, millions of working people, including
hundreds of thousands of veterans, joined with the upper-class Indians, who had orga-
nized to gain rights from Britain in the late nineteenth century. Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869–1948), called Mahatma (“great-souled”), emerged as the charismatic leader for
Indian independence. Trained in England as a Western-style lawyer, Gandhi preached
Hindu self-denial and rejected British love of material wealth. He wore simple clothing
made of thread he had spun himself and advocated civil disobedience — deliberately
but peacefully breaking the law — a tactic he claimed to have taken from the British
suffragists and from the teachings of spiritual leaders like Jesus and Buddha. Gandhi
aimed to end Indian deference to the British, who jailed him repeatedly and tried to
[ 1929–1945
]
split the Indian independence movement by promoting Hindu-Muslim antagonism.
Instead, commitment to independence in India grew.
The end of the Ottoman Empire following World War I led to efforts to build
modern, independent nations in the Middle East. Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), who
later took the name Atatürk (“first among Turks”), led the Turks to found an inde-
pendent republic in 1923 and to craft a capitalist economy. In an effort to Westernize
Turkish culture and promote the new Turkish state, Kemal moved the capital from
Constantinople to Ankara in 1923, officially changed the name Constantinople to
the Turkish name Istanbul in 1930, mandated Western dress for men and women,
introduced the Latin alphabet, and abolished polygamy. In 1936, Turkish women
received the vote and were made eligible to serve in the parliament. Persia, which
changed its name to Iran in 1935, similarly loosened the European grip on its econ-
omy by updating its government and by forcing the renegotiation of oil contracts to
keep Western countries from taking the oil for virtually nothing.
Anticolonial activism thrived in French colonies, too, but the government made
few concessions. Like all other imperial countries during the depression, France
depended increasingly on the profits it could take from its empire; therefore, its trade
with its colonies increased as trade with Europe lagged. France also depended on
the growing colonial population for sheer numbers. One official estimated what
colonial numbers meant for national security: “One hundred and ten million strong,
France can stand up to Germany.” Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Indochinese Com-
munist Party, rallied his people to protest French imperialism, but in 1930 the French
government brutally crushed the peasant uprising he led. Needing their empires,
Britain and France increased the number
REVIEW QUESTION How did the Great
of their troops stationed around the world.
Depression affect society and politics? As a result, fascism spread largely unchecked
in Europe during the 1930s.
Totalitarian Triumph
Representative government collapsed in many countries under the sheer weight of
social and economic crisis. After 1929, Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in the USSR, and
Hitler in Germany were able to mobilize vast support for their regimes. Desperate
for economic relief, many citizens supported political violence as key to restoring
well-being. Scholars have classified the fascist, Nazi, and communist regimes of the
1930s as totalitarian. The term totalitarianism refers to highly centralized systems of
government that attempt to control society and ensure obedience through a single
party and police terror. Born during World War I and gaining support in its after-
math, totalitarian governments broke with liberal principles of freedom and natu-
ral rights and came to wage war on their own citizens. Still, important differences
existed among totalitarian states, especially between fascist and communist states.
Whereas communism denounced private ownership of property and economic
inequality, fascism supported them as crucial to national might.
[
1929–1945
] Totalitarian Triumph 865
The Rise of Stalinism

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) led the transformation of the USSR from a
rural society into an industrial power. Stalin ended Lenin’s New Economic Policy,
which had allowed individuals to profit from trade and agriculture, and in 1929 laid
out the first of several bold five-year plans for industrializing the country. Without
an end to economic backwardness, Stalin warned, “the advanced countries . . . will
crush us.” He thus established economic planning — that is, government direction of
the economy used on both sides in World War I and increasingly implemented
around the world. Between 1928 and 1940, the number of Soviet workers in industry,
construction, and transport grew from 4.6 million to 12.6 million and factory output
soared. Stalin’s first five-year plan helped make the USSR a leading industrial nation.
A new bureaucratic elite implemented the plans, and despite limited rights to
change jobs or even move from place to place, skilled workers benefited from the
privileges that went along with their new industrial role. Communist officials received
additional rewards such as country homes, good food, and luxurious vacations. New
or unskilled workers enjoyed no such benefits, however. Newcomers from the coun-
tryside were herded into barracks or tents and subjected to dangerous factory condi-
tions. Despite the hardships, many took pride in their new skills. “We mastered this
profession — completely new to us — with great pleasure,” a female lathe operator
recalled. More often workers fresh from the countryside lacked the technical skills
necessary to accomplish goals of the five-year plans, so official lying about produc-
tivity became part of the economic system. The attempt to turn an illiterate peasant
society into an advanced industrial economy in a single decade brought intense
suffering, but people tolerated hardship to achieve a communist society.
Stalin demanded more grain from peasants both to feed the urban workforce
and to provide exports whose sale abroad would finance industrialization. Some
peasants resisted government demands by withholding produce from the market,
prompting Stalin to demand a “liquidation of the kulaks.” The word kulak, which
literally means “fist,” was a negative term for prosperous peasants, but in practice it
applied to anyone who opposed Stalin’s plans to end independent farming. Party
workers began searching villages, seizing grain, and forcing villagers to identify the
kulaks among them. One Russian remembered believing the kulaks were “blood-
suckers, cattle, swine, loathsome, repulsive: they had no souls; they stank.” Denounced
as “enemies of the state,” whole families were robbed of their possessions, left to
starve, or even murdered outright. Confiscated kulak land formed the basis for the
new collective farms, or kolkhoz, where the remaining peasants were forced to share
facilities. Traditional peasant life was brought to a violent end.
Failure across the economy followed. Factory workers, farmers, and party offi-
cials alike were too inexperienced with advanced industrialization to meet quotas.
The experiment with collectivization, combined with the murder of farmers, resulted
in a drop in the grain harvest from 83 million tons in 1930 to 67 million in 1934.
Soviet citizens starved. Blaming failure on “wreckers” deliberately plotting against
[ 1929–1945
]
communism, Stalin instituted purges — that is, state violence in the form of wide-
spread arrests, imprisonments in labor camps, and executions — to rid society of
these “villains.”
The purges touched all segments of society, beginning with engineers who were
condemned for causing low productivity. Beginning in 1936, the government next
charged prominent Bolshevik leaders with conspiring to overthrow Soviet rule. In a
series of “show trials” — trials based on trumped-up charges, fabricated evidence, and
coerced confessions — Bolshevik leaders were tortured and forced to confess in court.
Most of those found guilty were shot. Some of the top leaders accepted their fate,
seeing the purges as good for the future of socialism. Just before his execution, one
Bolshevik loyalist and former editor of the party newspaper Pravda wrote to Stalin
praising the “great and bold political idea behind the general purge.”
The spirit of purge swept through society: one woman poet described the scene
in towns and cities: “Great concert and lecture halls were turned into public confes-
sionals. . . . Beating their breasts, the ‘guilty’ would lament that they had ‘shown politi-
cal short-sightedness’ and ‘lack of vigilance’ . . . and were full of ‘rotten liberalism.’ ” In
1937 and 1938, military leaders were arrested and executed without public trials; some
ranks were entirely wiped out. Although the massacre of military leaders appeared
suicidal at a time when Hitler threatened war, thousands of high military posts became
open to new talent. Stalin would not have to worry about an officer corps wedded to
old ideas, as had happened in World War I. Simultaneously, the government expanded
the system of prison camps, founded under Lenin, into an extensive network stretch-
ing several thousand miles from Moscow to Siberia. In the Gulag — an acronym for
the government department that ran the camps — some one million died annually as
a result of the insufficient food, inadequate housing, and twelve- to sixteen-hour days
of crushing physical labor. Regular beatings and murders of prisoners rounded out
Gulag life, which became another aspect of totalitarian violence.
In the 1930s, toleration in Soviet social life ended. The birthrate in the USSR,
like that in the rest of Europe, declined rapidly. The Soviet Union needed to replace
the millions of people lost since 1914. To meet this need, Stalin restricted access to
birth-control information and abortion. Lavish wedding ceremonies came back into
fashion, divorces became difficult to obtain, and the state made homosexuality a
crime. Whereas Bolsheviks had once attacked the family as a capitalist institution,
propaganda now referred to the family as a “school for socialism.” At the same time,
women in rural areas made gains in literacy and received improved health care.
Positions in the lower ranks of the party opened to women as the purges continued,
and more women were accepted into the professions.
Avant-garde experimentation in the arts also ended under Stalin. He called art-
ists and writers “engineers of the soul” and, thus recognizing their influence, con-
trolled their output through the Union of Soviet Writers. The union not only assigned
housing, office space, equipment, and secretarial help but also determined the types
of books authors could write. In return, the “comrade artist” adhered to the official
style of “socialist realism,” derived from the focus on the common worker as hero.
[
1929–1945
Although some writers and artists went underground, others found ways to adjust
their talents to the state’s demands. The composer Sergei Prokofiev, for example,
composed scores both for the delightful Peter and the Wolf and for Sergei Eisenstein’s
1938 film Alexander Nevsky, a work that flatteringly compared Stalin to the medieval
rulers of the Russian people. Aided by adaptable artists, workers, and bureaucrats,
Stalin stood triumphant as the 1930s drew to a close. He was, as two different work-
ers put it, “our beloved Leader” and “a god on earth.”
Hitler’s Rise to Power

A different but ultimately no less violent system emerged when Adolf Hitler and
his followers put an end to democracy in Germany. Since the early 1920s, Hitler had
harangued the German masses to destroy the Weimar Republic and drummed at
a message of anti-Semitism and the rebirth of the German “race.” When the Great
Depression struck Germany in 1929, his Nazi Party began to outstrip its rivals in
elections, thanks in part to financial support from big business. Film and press tycoon
Alfred Hugenberg helped, constantly slamming the Weimar government as respon-
sible for the disastrous economy and for the loss of German pride after World War I.
Nazi supporters took to the streets, attacking young Communist groups who agitated
just as loudly on behalf of the new Soviet experiment. Hugenberg’s newspapers always
reported such incidents as the work of Communist thugs who had assaulted blame-
less Nazis, thus building sympathy for the Nazis among the middle classes.
Parliamentary government practically ground to a halt during the depression,
adding to unrest and the sense of disorder. The Reichstag, or German assembly, failed
to approve emergency plans to improve the economy, first because its members dis-
agreed over policies and second because Nazi and Communist deputies disrupted its
sessions. Its failure to act discredited democracy among the German people. To make
parliamentary government look incapable of providing basic law and order, Hitler’s
followers rampaged unchecked through the streets and attacked Jews, Communists,
and Social Democrats. Many thought it was time to replace democratic government
with a bold new leader who would take on these enemies military-style, without
concern for constitutions, laws, or individual rights. It was time for war at home.
Every age group and class of people supported Hitler, though like Stalin, he
especially attracted young people. In 1930, 70 percent of Nazi Party members were
under forty and many thought of war as exciting, like the games they played as
children during World War I. They believed that a better world was possible under
Hitler’s command. The largest number of supporters came from the industrial work-
ing class, but many white-collar workers and members of the lower middle class also
joined the party in percentages out of proportion with their numbers in the popula-
tion. The inflation that had wiped out savings left them especially bitter and open
to Hitler’s rhetoric. In the deepening economic crisis, the Nazi Party, which had
received little more than 2 percent of the vote in 1928, won almost 20 percent in the
Reichstag elections of 1930 and more than twice that in 1932.
[ 1929–1945
]
Hitler used modern propaganda techniques to build up his following. Nazi Party
members passed out thousands of recordings of Hitler’s speeches, and teenagers
painted their fingernails with swastikas. Nazi rallies were carefully planned displays
in which Hitler captivated the crowds, who saw him as their strong, vastly superior
Führer (“leader”). In actuality, Hitler regarded the masses with contempt, and in Mein
Kampf he discussed how to deal with them:
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a
very few points and must harp on those in slogans until the last member of
the public understands what you want him to understand.
Hitler’s media techniques were so successful that they continue to influence

political campaigns today, particularly in the use of simple messages often filled with
hate or threats.
In the 1932 elections, both Nazis and Communists did very well, making the
leader of one of these two parties the logical choice as chancellor. Influential con-
servative politicians loathed the Communists for their opposition to private property
and favored Hitler as someone they could easily control. When Hitler was invited to
become chancellor in January 1933, he accepted.
The Nazification of German Politics

Millions of Germans celebrated Hitler’s ascent to power. “My father went down to
the cellar and brought up our best bottles of wine. . . . And my mother wept for
joy,” one German recalled. “Now everything will be all right.” Yet instead of being
easy to control, Hitler took command brutally, quickly closing down representative
government with an ugly show of force. Tens of thousands of his paramilitary
supporters — the Stürmabteilung (SA), or “storm troopers” — paraded through the
streets with blazing torches. When the Reichstag building was gutted by fire in Febru-
ary 1933, Nazis used the fire as the excuse for suspending civil rights, censoring the
press, and prohibiting meetings of other political parties. Hitler had always claimed
to hate democracy and diverse political opinions, declaring of parties other than his
own: “I have set myself one task, namely to sweep those parties out of Germany.”
The storm troopers’ violence silenced democratic politicians but also made those
who participated in the violence feel part of a glorious whole. At the end of March,
intimidated Reichstag delegates let pass the Enabling Act, which suspended the
constitution for four years and allowed Nazi laws to take effect without parliamen-
tary approval. Solid middle-class Germans approved the Enabling Act as a way to
advance the creation of a Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) of like-minded,
racially pure Germans — Aryans, the Nazis named them. Heinrich Himmler headed
the elite Schutzstaffel (SS), Hitler’s “protection squadron,” and he commanded the
Reich’s political police system. These and the Gestapo, the secret police force run by
[1929–1945
Hermann Goering, had vast powers to arrest people and either execute them or
imprison them in concentration camps, the first of which opened at Dachau, near
Munich, in March 1933. The Nazis filled it and later camps with political enemies
like socialists, and then with Jews, homosexuals, and others said to be enemies of
the Volksgemeinschaft.
Hitler deliberately blurred authority in the government and his political party
to encourage confusion and competition. He then settled disputes, often with vio-
lence. When Ernst Roehm, leader of the SA and Hitler’s longtime collaborator, called
for a “second revolution” to end the business and military elites’ continuing influence
on top Nazis, Hitler ordered Roehm’s assassination. The bloody Night of the Long
Knives (June 30, 1934), during which hundreds of SA leaders and innocent civilians
were killed, strengthened the support of the conservative upper classes for the Nazi
regime. They saw that Hitler would deal ruthlessly with those favoring a leveling-out
of social privilege. Nazism’s terrorist politics served as the foundation of Hitler’s
Third Reich — a German empire grandly advertised as the successor to the First
Reich of Charlemagne and the Second Reich of Bismarck and William II.
New economic programs, especially those putting people back to work, were
crucial to the survival of Nazism. The Nazi government pursued pump priming —
that is, stimulating the economy through government spending on tanks and airplanes
and on public works programs such as building the Autobahn, or highway system.
Unemployment declined from a peak of almost 6 million in 1932 to 1.6 million by
1936. The Nazi Party closed down labor unions, and government managers deter-
mined work procedures and set pay levels, rating women’s jobs lower than men’s
regardless of the level of expertise required. Nazi programs produced large budget
deficits, but Hitler was already planning to conquer and loot neighboring countries
to cover the costs.
Nazi officials devised policies to control everyday life, including gender roles. In
June 1933, a bill took effect that encouraged Aryans (those people defined as racially
German) to marry and have children. The bill provided for loans to Aryan newly-
weds, but only if the wife left the workforce. The loans were forgiven on the birth
of the pair’s fourth child. The ideal woman gave up her job, gave birth to many
children, and completely surrendered her will to that of her husband, allowing him
to feel powerful despite military defeat and economic depression. A good wife “joy-
fully sacrifices and fulfills her fate,” as one Nazi leader explained.
The government also controlled culture, destroying the rich creativity of the
Weimar years. Although 70 percent of households had radios by 1938, programs
were severely censored. Books like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western
Front were banned, and in May 1933 a huge book-burning ceremony rid libraries of
works by Jews, socialists, homosexuals, and modernist writers. In the Hitler Youth,
which boys and girls over age ten were required to join, children learned to report
those adults they suspected of disloyalty to the Third Reich, even their own parents.
People boasted that they could leave their bicycles out at night without fear of rob-
bery, but their world was filled with informers — some 100,000 of them on the Nazi
[ 1929–1945
]
payroll. In general, the improved economy led many to see Hitler working an eco-
nomic miracle while restoring pride in Germany and strengthening the Aryan com-
munity. For hundreds of thousands if not millions of Germans, however, Nazi rule
in the 1930s brought anything but harmony and community.
Nazi Racism
The Nazis defined Jews as an inferior “race” dangerous to the superior Aryan “race”
and responsible for most of Germany’s problems, including defeat in World War I and
the economic depression. The reasons for targeting Jews, Hitler declared in a 1938
speech, were “based on the greatest of scientific knowledge.” Hitler attacked many
ethnic and social groups, but he took anti-Semitism to new and frightening heights.
In the rhetoric of Nazism, Jews were “vermin,” “abscesses,” and “Bolsheviks.” They
were enemies, biologically weakening the race and plotting Germany’s destruction —
all of which, given scientific knowledge then and now, was of course utterly false.
Thus Hitler’s concept of building community also included making some members
of the community enemies within. By branding Jews both as evil businessmen and as
working-class Bolsheviks, Nazis fashioned an enemy for the population to hate.
Nazis insisted that terms such as Aryan and Jewish (a religious category) were
scientific racial classifications that could be determined by physical characteristics
such as the shape of the nose. In 1935, the government enacted the Nuremberg
Laws, legislation that deprived Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriage between
Jews and other Germans. Abortions and birth-control information were readily
available to enemy outcast groups, including Jews, Slavs, Sinti and Roma, and men-
tally or physically disabled people, but were forbidden to women classified as Aryan.
In the name of improving the Aryan race, doctors helped organize the T4 project,
which used carbon monoxide poisoning and other means to kill large numbers of
people — 200,000 handicapped and elderly — late in the 1930s. The murder of the
disabled aimed to eliminate those whose “racial inferiority” endangered the Aryans.
These murders prepared the way for even larger mass exterminations in the future.
Jews were forced into slave labor, evicted from their apartments, and prevented
from buying most clothing and food. In 1938, a Jewish teenager, reacting to the
harassment inflicted on his parents, killed a German official. In retaliation, Nazis and
other Germans attacked some two hundred synagogues, smashed windows of Jewish-
owned stores, ransacked apartments of known or suspected Jews, and threw more
than twenty thousand Jews into prisons and camps. The night of November 9–10
became known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Faced with such relent-
less persecution, more than half of Germany’s 500,000 Jews had emigrated by the out-
break of World War II in 1939. Their enormous emigration fees helped finance Ger-
many’s economic recovery, while neighbors
REVIEW QUESTION What role did violence
and individual Nazis used anti-Semitism to
play in the Soviet and Nazi regimes? justify stealing Jewish property and taking
the jobs Jews were forced to leave.
[
1929–1945
] Democracies on the Defensive 871
Democracies on the Defensive

Nazism, communism, and fascism offered bold new approaches to modern politics.
These ideologies maintained that democracy was effeminate and that it wasted pre-
cious time in building consensus among citizens. Totalitarian leaders’ military style
made representative government and the democratic values of the United States,
France, and Great Britain appear feeble — a sign that these societies were on the
decline. Totalitarianism put democracies on the defensive as they aimed to restore
prosperity while still upholding individual rights and the rule of law.
Confronting the Economic Crisis

As the depression wore on through the 1930s, some governments experimented with
ways to solve social and economic crises in a democratic fashion. In the early days
of the economic slump, U.S. president Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) had opposed
direct help to the unemployed and even ordered the army to drive away jobless
veterans who had marched on Washington, D.C. With unemployment close to fifteen
million, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), the wealthy governor of New York,
defeated Hoover in the presidential election of 1932 on the promise of relief and
recovery. Roosevelt, or FDR as he became known, pushed through a torrent of leg-
islation: relief for businesses, price supports for hard-pressed farmers, and public
works programs for the unemployed. The Social Security Act of 1935 set up a fund
to which employers and employees contributed. It provided retirement benefits for
workers, unemployment insurance, and payments to dependent mothers, their chil-
dren, and people with disabilities.
Programs such as these in the United States advanced a new kind of state taking
shape across the West: the welfare state, in which the government guarantees a cer-
tain level of economic well-being for individuals and businesses. Although his “New
Deal” angered businesspeople and the wealthy, Roosevelt maintained widespread
support. Like other successful politicians of the 1930s, he was an expert at using the
new mass media, especially in his broadcasts by radio. Unlike Mussolini and Hitler,
however, Roosevelt’s public statements promoted rather than attacked democratic
rights and government. The participation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sharply
contrasted with the antiwoman ideology of Nazis and Fascists, and the Roosevelts
insisted that human rights must not be surrendered in difficult times. “We Ameri-
cans of today . . . are characters in the living book of democracy,” FDR told a group
of teenagers in 1939. “But we are also its author.” Racial violence continued to cause
great suffering in the United States, and the economy did not fully recover, yet Amer-
icans’ faith in democracy was strong.
Sweden also developed a coherent program for solving economic and population
problems, assigning the government a central role in promoting social welfare and
economic democracy. Sweden devalued its currency to make Swedish exports more
attractive on the international market, and addressed the population problem with
government programs, but without the racism and coercion of Nazism. Alva Myrdal,
[ 1929–1945
]
A Fireside Chat with FDR

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a master of words, inspiring Americans during the
depression and World War II. Aware of its growing power in making politicians look dynamic,
the press never showed that Roosevelt was actually confined to a wheelchair (after being para-
lyzed by polio). Instead, FDR became a symbol of U.S. resolve and might. Here he addresses
the nation over a radio hookup on August 23, 1938, while First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and
the president’s mother, Sara, observe — a far different image from that of Hitler and Mussolini.
(Keystone / Getty Images.)
a leading member of Sweden’s parliament, believed that boosting childbirth depended

both on the economy and on individual well-being. It was undemocratic, she main-
tained, that “the bearing of a child should mean economic distress” to parents. Acting
on Myrdal’s advice, the government introduced prenatal care, free childbirth in a
hospital, a food relief program, and subsidized housing for large families. By the end
of the decade, almost 50 percent of all mothers in Sweden received government aid,
most effectively in the form of a family allowance to help cover the costs of raising
children. Because all families — rural and urban, poor or prosperous — received these
social benefits, there was widespread approval for developing a welfare state.
The most powerful democracy, the United States, had withdrawn from world
leadership by refusing to participate in the League of Nations, leaving Britain and
France with greater responsibility for international peace and well-being than their
postwar resources could sustain. When the Great Depression hit, British prime min-
[1929–1945
] Democracies on the Defensive 873
ister Ramsay MacDonald, though leader of the Labour Party, reduced payments to
the unemployed, and Parliament denied unemployment insurance to women even
though they had contributed to the unemployment fund. To protect jobs, the govern-
ment imposed huge tariffs on imported goods, but these only discouraged a revival
of international trade and did not relieve British misery. Finally, in 1933, with the
economy continuing to worsen, the government began to take effective steps with
massive programs of slum clearance, new housing construction, and health insurance
for the needy. British leaders rejected pump-priming methods of stimulating the
economy as foolish and thus resorted to them only when all else had failed.
Depression struck later in France, but the country endured a decade of public
strife in the 1930s. Deputies with opposing solutions to the economic crisis fre-
quently came to blows in the Chamber of Deputies, Parisians took to the streets to
protest the government’s budget cuts, and Nazi-style paramilitary groups flourished,
attracting the unemployed, students, and veterans to the cause of ending representa-
tive government. In February 1934, the paramilitary groups joined Communists and
other outraged citizens in riots around the parliament building. “Let’s string up the
deputies,” chanted the crowd. “Let’s beat in their faces, let’s reduce them to a pulp.”
The right-wing enemies of democratic government, however, lacked both substantial
support and a charismatic leader like Hitler or Mussolini.
Shocked into action by fascist violence, French liberals, socialists, and Commu-
nists established an antifascist coalition known as the Popular Front. Until that time,
such a merging of groups had been impossible because Stalin had directed Commu-
nists across Europe not to cooperate with other political parties. As fascism attracted
followers around the world, however, Stalin allowed Communists to join efforts to
protect democracy. For just over a year in 1936–1937 and again briefly in 1938, the
French Popular Front led the government, with the socialist leader Léon Blum as
premier. Like the American New Dealers and the Swedish reformers, the Popular
Front instituted social-welfare programs, including family subsidies. Blum appointed
women to his government (though women in France were still not allowed to vote).
In June 1936, the French government guaranteed workers two-week paid vacations,
a forty-hour workweek, and the right to bargain collectively. Working people would
long remember Blum as the man who improved their living standards and provided
them with the right to vacations.
During its brief life, the Popular Front offered citizens a youthful but democratic
political culture. “In 1936 everyone was twenty years old,” one man recalled, evoking
the atmosphere of idealism. To express their opposition to fascism, the French cel-
ebrated democratic holidays like Bastille Day with new enthusiasm. Not everyone
liked the Popular Front, however. Bankers and industrialists sent their money out of
the country in protest, leaving France financially strapped. “Better Hitler than Blum”
was the slogan of the upper classes. Blum’s government lost crucial liberal support
for refusing to aid the fight against fascism in Spain because of antiwar sentiment.
The collapse of the antifascist Popular Front showed the difficulties that democratic
societies had facing the revival of militarism during hard economic times.
[ 1929–1945
]
Fledgling democracies in central Europe, hit hard by the depression, also
struggled for economic survival and representative government, but with little suc-
cess. In 1932, Engelbert Dollfuss came to power in Austria, dismissing the parliament
and ruling briefly as a dictator. Despite his authoritarian stance, Dollfuss would not
submit to the Nazis, who stormed his office and assassinated him in 1934 in an unsuc-
cessful coup attempt. In Hungary, where outrage over the Peace of Paris remained
intense, a crippled economy allowed right-wing general Gyula Gömbös to take over
in 1932. Gömbös reoriented his country’s foreign policy toward Mussolini and Hitler.
He stirred up anti-Semitism and ethnic hatreds and left considerable pro-Nazi feeling
after his death in 1936. In democratic Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks, who were poorer
than the urbanized Czechs, built a strong Slovak Fascist Party as the appeal of fas-
cism grew during the Great Depression.
Cultural Visions in Hard Times

Responding to the hard times and political menace, cultural leaders in the democra-
cies captured the spirit of everyday struggle. Some sympathized with the situations
of factory workers, homemakers, and shopgirls straining to support themselves and
their families; others looked to interpret the lives of an ever-growing number of
unemployed. Artists portrayed the inhuman, regimented side of modern life. In
1931, French director René Clair’s film Give Us Liberty likened the routine of prison
to work on a factory assembly line. In the film Modern Times (1936), the Little Tramp
character created by Charlie Chaplin is a factory worker so molded by his monoto-
nous job that he assumes anything he can see, even a coworker’s body, needs mechani-
cal adjustment.
Media portrayed women alternately as the cause and as the cure for society’s
problems. The Blue Angel (1930), a German film starring Marlene Dietrich, contrasted
a powerfully seductive woman with an impractical, bumbling professor, showing
how mixed-up gender roles could destroy men — and civilization. Such films worked
to strengthen fascist claims. In comedies and musicals, by comparison, heroines
pulled their men out of the depths of despair. In such films as Keep Smiling (1938),
the British comedienne Gracie Fields portrayed spunky working-class women who
remained cheerful despite the challenges of living in hard times. To drive home their
antifascist, pacifist, or pro-worker beliefs, writers created realistic studies of human
misery and the threat of war that haunted life in the 1930s. The British writer George
Orwell described the unemployed in the north of England and published an account
of atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). German writer
Thomas Mann, a Christian, was so outraged at Hitler’s ascent to power that he went
into voluntary exile. Mann’s series of novels based on the Old Testament hero Joseph
convey the struggle between humane values and barbarism. One volume praised
Joseph’s welfare state, in which the granaries were full and the rich paid taxes so that
the poor might live decent lives. In Three Guineas (1938), one of her last works,
English writer Virginia Woolf attacked militarism, poverty, and the oppression of
[1929–1945
] The Road to Global War 875
women, claiming they were interconnected parts of a single, devastating ethos

undermining Europe in the 1930s.
Scientists in research institutes and universities pointed out limits to human
understanding — limits that seemed at odds with the grandiose pronouncements of
dictators. Astronomer Edwin Hubble in California determined in the early 1930s
that the universe was an expanding entity and thus an unpredictably changing one.
Czech mathematician Kurt Gödel maintained that all mathematical systems contain
some propositions that are undecidable. The German physicist Werner Heisenberg
developed the uncertainty, or indeterminacy, principle in physics. Scientific observa-
tion of atomic behavior, according to this theory, itself disturbs the atom and thereby
makes precise formulations impossible. Even scientists, Heisenberg asserted, had to
settle for statistical probability. Approximation, probability, and limits to understand-
ing were not concepts that military dictators lived by.
Religious leaders helped foster a spirit of resistance to dictatorship among the
faithful. Some prominent clergymen hoped for a re-Christianization of ordinary
people so that they might choose religious values rather than fascist ones. The Swiss
theologian Karl Barth encouraged opposition to the Nazis, teaching that religious
people had to take seriously biblical calls for resistance to oppression. In his 1931
address to the world on social issues, Pope Pius XI (r. 1922–1939) condemned the
failure of modern societies to provide their citizens with a decent, moral life. To
critics, the proclamation seemed an endorsement of the heavy-handed intervention
of the fascists. In Germany, nonetheless,
German Catholics opposed Hitler, and
REVIEW QUESTION How did the democra-
religious commitment inspired many other cies’ responses to the twin challenges of
individuals to oppose the rising tide of fas- economic depression and the rise of fascism
cism and protect Jews and other fellow differ from those of totalitarian regimes?
citizens whose lives were now threatened.
The Road to Global War

The economic crash intensified competition among the major powers and made exter-
nal colonies more important than ever. Governments did not let up on the collection
of taxes in the colonies. As Britain, France, and other imperial powers guarded their
holdings, Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan’s military leaders believed that their nation’s
destiny was to rule a far larger territory. At first, statesmen in Britain and France
hoped that sanctions imposed by the League of Nations would stop these new aggres-
sors. Other people, still traumatized by memories of the past war, wanted to turn a
blind eye both to expansionism and to the fascist attack on the Spanish republic.
A Surge in Global Imperialism

The global imperialism of the 1930s ultimately produced a thoroughly global war.
The French, Dutch, British, and Belgians increased their control over their colonies,
[ 1929–1945
]
while in Palestine European Jews continued to arrive and claim the area from local
peoples especially as Hitler enacted his harsh anti-Jewish policies in 1933. Japan’s
military and business leaders longed to control more of the Asian continent and saw
China, the Soviet Union, and the Western powers as obstacles to the empire’s pros-
perity and the fulfillment of its destiny.
Japan suffered from a weak monarchy in the person of Hirohito, just twenty-five
years old when he became emperor in 1926, which led military and other groups
to seek control of the government. Nationalists encouraged these leaders to pursue
an expanded empire as key to pulling agriculture and small business from the depths
of economic depression. A belief in racial superiority and in the right to take the
lands of “inferior” peoples led the Japanese army to swing into action. In 1931, Japa-
nese officers blew up a train in the Chinese province of Manchuria, where Japanese
businesses had invested heavily. The army made the explosion look like a Chinese
plot and used it as an excuse to take over the territory, set up a puppet government,
and push farther into China. Amid journalistic calls in Japan for aggressive expan-
sion, Japan continued to attack China from 1931 on, angering the United States, on
which Japan depended for natural resources and markets. Advocating Asian con-
quest as part of Japan’s “divine mission,” the military solidified its influence in the
government. By 1936–1937, Japan was spending 47 percent of its budget on arms.
The situation in East Asia affected international politics. The League of Nations
condemned the invasion of Manchuria but imposed no sanctions. The league’s con-
demnation outraged Japanese citizens and goaded the government to ally with Hitler
and Mussolini. In 1937, Japan attacked China again, justifying its offensive as a first
step toward liberating the region from Western imperialism. Hundreds of thousands
of Chinese were massacred in the Rape of Nanjing — an atrocity so named because
of the Japanese soldiers’ brutality, especially toward girls and women. President Roo-
sevelt immediately announced a U.S. embargo on the exportation of airplane parts
to Japan and later drastically cut the flow of the crucial raw materials that supplied
Japanese industry. Nonetheless, the Western powers, including the Soviet Union, did
not effectively resist Japan’s territorial expansion.
Like Japanese leaders, Mussolini and Hitler called their countries “have-nots” and
demanded land and resources more in line with the other imperial powers. Mussolini
threatened “permanent conflict” to expand Italy’s borders. Hitler’s agenda included
gaining Lebensraum (“living space”), to be taken from the “inferior” Slavic peoples
and Bolsheviks, who would be moved to Siberia or would serve as slaves. The two
dictators portrayed themselves as peace-loving men who resorted to extreme measures
only to benefit their country and humanity. Their anticommunism appealed to states-
men across the West, and Hitler’s anti-Semitism also had widespread support.
Germany and Italy now moved to plunder other countries openly. In the autumn
of 1933, Hitler announced Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations. In
1935, he loudly rejected the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles that limited German
military strength. Germany had been rearming in secret for years, but now it started
doing so openly. Mussolini chose in 1935 to invade Ethiopia, one of the few African
[
1929–1945
states not overwhelmed by European imperialism. “The Roman legionnaires are

again on the march,” one soldier exulted. The poorly equipped Ethiopians resisted,
but their capital, Addis Ababa, fell in the spring of 1936. Although the League of
Nations voted to impose sanctions against Italy, Britain and France opposed an
embargo with teeth in it — that is, one including oil — and thus kept the sanctions
from being effective while also suggesting a lack of resolve to fight aggression. In
March 1936, Hitler defiantly sent his troops into what was supposed to be a perma-
nently demilitarized zone in the Rhineland bordering France. The inhabitants greeted
the arrival with wild enthusiasm, and the French, whose security was most endan-
gered by this action, protested to the League of Nations instead of occupying the
region, as they had done in the Ruhr in 1923. The British simply accepted the German
military move. The Italian and German dictators thus appeared as powerful heroes,
creating, in Mussolini’s muscular phrase, a dynamic “Rome–Berlin Axis.” Next to
them, the politicians of France and Great Britain looked timid and weak.
The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

Spain seemed to be headed toward democracy when, in 1931, Spanish republicans
overthrew the monarchy and the dictatorship that ruled in its name. For centuries,
the Spanish state had backed the domination of large landowners and the Catholic
clergy in the countryside. These ruling elites kept an impoverished peasantry in their
grip, making Spain a country of economic extremes. People in industrial cities
reacted enthusiastically to the end of the dictatorship and began debating the course
of change, with constitutionalists, anarchists, Communists, and other splinter groups
disagreeing on how to create a democratic nation. For republicans, the air was elec-
tric with promise. As one woman recalled: “We saw a backward country suddenly
blossoming out into a modern state. We saw peasants living like decent human
beings. We saw men allowed freedom of conscience.”
With little political experience, however, the republic had a hard time putting in
place a political program that would gain support in the countryside. Instead of
building popular loyalty by enacting land reform, the various antimonarchist factions
struggled among themselves to shape the new government. They wanted political
and economic modernization, but they failed to mount a unified effort against their
reactionary opponents. In 1936, growing monarchist opposition frightened the pro-
republican forces into forming a Popular Front coalition to win elections and prevent
the republic from collapsing.
In response to the Popular Front victory, a group of army officers led by General
Francisco Franco (1892–1975) staged an uprising against the republic in 1936. The
rebels, who included monarchist landowners, the clergy, and the fascist Falange Party,
soon had the help of fascists in other parts of Europe. Pro-republican citizens — male
and female — fought back by forming armed volunteer units. In their minds, citizen
armies symbolized republicanism, while professional troops followed the aristocratic
rebels against democracy. As civil war gripped the country, the republicans generally
[ 1929–1945
]
0 100 200 miles MAP 26.1 The Spanish Civil War,
Germans bomb
civilians, 1937 1936–1939
FRANCE Republican and antirepublican forces
Guernica
N bitterly fought one another to deter-
W mine whether Spain would be a
AL
E democracy or an authoritarian state.

G
S Germany and Italy sent military assis-

RTU
Madrid Barcelona
tance to the rebels, notably airplanes
SPAIN
PO
to experiment with bombing civilians,

while volunteers from around the
Surrendered
world arrived to fight for the republic.
March 28, 1939 Defeating the ill-organized republican
ATLANTIC
OCEAN Mediterranean Sea groups, General Francisco Franco
SPANISH
instituted a pro-fascist government
MOROCCO that sent many to jail and into exile.
ALGERIA
Nationalist, July 1936 Republican, February 1939
Nationalist, October 1937 Main Nationalist attacks
Nationalist, July 1938 Main Republican attacks
Nationalist, February 1939
held Madrid, Barcelona, and other commercial and industrial areas. The right-wing
rebels took the agricultural west and south (Map 26.1).
Spain became a training ground for World War II. Hitler and Mussolini sent
military personnel in support of Franco, gaining the opportunity to practice the ter-
ror bombing of civilians. In 1937, German planes attacked the town of Guernica,
mowing down civilians in the streets. This useless slaughter inspired Pablo Picasso’s
memorial mural to the dead, Guernica (1937), in which the intense suffering is
starkly displayed. The Spanish republic appealed everywhere for assistance, but only
the Soviet Union answered. Britain and France refused to provide aid despite the
outpouring of popular support for the cause of democracy. Instead, a few thousand
volunteers from a variety of countries — including many students, journalists, and
artists — fought for the republic. “Spain was the place to stop fascism,” these volun-
teers believed. The aid Franco received helped his professional armies defeat the
republicans in 1939, strengthening the cause of military authoritarianism in Europe.
Tens of thousands fled Franco’s brutal revenge; remaining critics found themselves
jailed or worse.
Hitler’s Conquest of Central Europe, 1938–1939

The next step toward World War II was Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938.
Many Austrians had actually wished for a merger, or Anschluss, with Germany after
the Paris peace settlement stripped them of their empire. So Hitler’s troops simply
entered Austria, and the joy of Nazi sympathizers there made the Anschluss appear
an example of the Wilsonian idea of self-determination by unifying so-called Aryan
[1929–1945
Bombing of Barcelona, 1938

The Spanish Civil War gave fair warning that major wars to come would target civilians as well
as soldiers. The forces aiming to overthrow the republic, with the aid of their Fascist allies in
Germany and Italy, bombed cities large and small without regard to civilians. This indiscriminate
bombing shocked the democracies, though not enough for any of them to intervene. (AP Photo.)
peoples into one nation. The Nazi seizure of Austria’s gold marked an important step
in financing German expansion, as Austria was declared a German province. Nazi
thugs ruled once-cosmopolitan Vienna; an observer later commented on the scene:
“University professors were obliged to scrub the streets with their naked hands, pious
white-bearded Jews were dragged into the synagogue by hooting youths and forced
to do knee-exercises and to shout ‘Heil Hitler’ in chorus.” Nazis gained additional
support in Austria by attacking the stubborn problem of unemployment — especially
among the young and out-of-work rural migrants to the cities. Factories sprang up
overnight, and German policies eliminated some of the pain Austrians had suffered
when their empire had been reduced to a small country after World War I.
With Austria firmly in his grasp, Hitler turned next to Czechoslovakia and its
rich resources. Conquering this democracy looked more difficult, however, because
Czechoslovakia had a large army, strong border defenses, and efficient armament
factories. The Nazi propaganda machine swung into action, accusing Czechoslova-
kia of persecuting its German minority. By October 1, 1938, Hitler warned, Czecho-
slovakia would have to grant autonomy (amounting to Nazi rule) to the German-
populated border region, the Sudetenland, or face German invasion.
Hitler gambled correctly that the other Western powers would choose appease-
ment, the prevention of conflict by making concessions for grievances (in this case,
[ 1929–1945
]
Germany in 1933 Annexed, September 1939
Plebiscite joins Germany in 1935 Occupied by Germany, September 1939
Remilitarized in 1936 Annexed by Soviet Union, September 1939 ESTONIA
Annexed, 1938–1939 Annexed by Hungary, March 1939
Satellite states, March 1939 International boundaries, 1936
U SS R
a
Se
Riga
LATVIA
SWEDEN
ic
lt
North DENMARK Memel
a
N Sea B LITHUANIA
Vilnius
W
E
Danzig East Minsk
S NETHERLANDS Prussia
Hamburg
Elb White Russia
eR
Bremen .
Vi
stu Warsaw Pinsk
Ruhr la R.
Brest-Litovsk
GERMANY
Weser
Dunkirk Cologne POLAND

BELGIUM
Rhi
Od
er GOVERNMENT
R.
R GENERAL
n
nland
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ete OF POLAND
.
.
Rhineland ud 1939
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LUXEMBOURG Bohemia ZEC

HO
Saar Moravia SLOVAKIA Dnie
ster
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Munich ub e R .
Vienna
FRANCE AUSTRIA Budapest

SWITZERLAND (the Ostmark) HUNGARY
ROMANIA
ITALY
Ad
0 100 200 miles at

ri
ic
Se
YUGOSLAVIA
0 100 200 kilometers a
MAP 26.2 The Growth of Nazi Germany, 1933–1939

German expansion was rapid and surprising, as Hitler’s forces and Nazi diplomacy achieved the
annexation of several new states of central and eastern Europe. Although committed to defend-
ing the independence of these states through the League of Nations, French and British diplo-
mats were more concerned with satisfying Hitler in the mistaken belief that doing so would
prevent his claiming more of Europe. In the process, Hitler acquired the human and material
resources of adjacent countries to support his Third Reich. What is the relationship between Ger-
many’s expansion during the 1930s and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I?
the treatment of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles). As the October deadline

approached, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, French premier Edouard
Daladier, and Mussolini met with Hitler at Munich and agreed not to oppose Ger-
many’s claim to the Sudetenland. Appeasement was widely seen as positive at the
time, and the Munich Pact prompted Chamberlain to announce that he had secured
“peace in our time.” Having portrayed himself as a man of peace, Hitler waited until
March 1939 to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia (Map 26.2). Whether the Munich
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 881
Pact bought Hitler time to build his army and gave him the green light for further
aggression or whether it wisely provided France and Britain precious time to beef
up their own armies is heatedly debated even today.
Stalin, excluded from the Munich deliberations, saw that the democracies were
not going to fight to protect eastern Europe. He took action. To the astonishment
of people in the West, on August 23, 1939, Germany and the USSR signed a non-
aggression agreement. The Nazi-Soviet Pact provided that if one country became
embroiled in war, the other country would remain neutral. Moreover, the two dicta-
tors secretly agreed to divide Poland and the Baltic states — Latvia, Estonia, and
Lithuania — at some future date. The Nazi-Soviet Pact ensured that, should war
come, the democracies would be fighting a Germany that feared no attack on its
eastern borders. The pact also allowed Sta-
lin extra time to reconstitute his officer
corps, which had been wiped out by the REVIEW QUESTION How did the aggression
of Japan, Germany, and Italy create the condi-
purges. In the belief that Great Britain and
tions for global war?
perhaps even France would continue not
to resist, the Nazis now targeted Poland.
World War II, 1939–1945

World War II opened when Hitler launched an all-out attack on Poland on Septem-
ber 1, 1939. In contrast to 1914, no jubilation in Berlin accompanied the invasion;
when Britain and France declared war two days later, the mood in those nations was
similarly grim. Although Japan, Italy, and the United States did not join the battle
immediately, their eventual participation spread the fighting and mobilized civilians
around the world. By the time World War II ended in 1945, millions were starving;
countries lay in ruins; and unparalleled atrocities, including genocide, had killed six
million Jews and six million Slavs, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and other civilian
targets of fascism.
The German Onslaught

German forces quickly defeated the ill-equipped Polish troops by launching a Blitz-
krieg (“lightning war”), in which they concentrated airplanes, tanks, and motorized
infantry with overpowering force and speed. Blitzkrieg suggested to Germans at
home that the costs of gaining Lebensraum would be low. On September 17, 1939,
the Soviets invaded Poland from the east. By the end of the month, the victors had
divided the country according to the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Nazi propagandists frightened
Germans into supporting the conflict because of the “warlike menace” of world
Jewry that supposedly threatened the nation’s very existence.
In April 1940, Blitzkrieg crushed Denmark and Norway; the battles of Belgium,
the Netherlands, and France followed in May and June. On June 5, Mussolini, eyeing
future gains for Italy, invaded France from the southeast. The French defense and
[ 1929–1945
]
its British allies could not withstand the German onslaught. Trapped on the beaches
of Dunkirk in northern France, 370,000 French and British soldiers were rescued by
an improvised fleet of naval ships, fishing boats, and pleasure craft. The French
government surrendered on June 22, 1940, leaving Germany to rule the northern
half of the country, including Paris. In the south,
0 100 200 miles Dunkirk named Vichy France after the spa town where the
R hi
BELGIUM
0 100 200 kilometers government sat, the aged World War I hero Henri
ne
R.
Sei
ne
R.
Paris
LUX. Philippe Pétain was allowed to govern because of
Lorraine
Loire
R . his and his administration’s pro-Nazi values. Stalin
ce
sa
Al
used the diversion in western Europe to annex the

Bay of FRANCE SWITZ.
Biscay
Vichy
Baltic states.
Lyon
VICHY ITALY Britain now stood alone, installing as prime
Ga
Rhône R.
ne FRANCE
ro
minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965), an early

n
R.
Marseille
campaigner for resistance to Hitler. As Hitler
SPAIN
ordered the bombardment of Britain in the sum-
German-occupied territory
mer of 1940, Churchill rallied the nation by radio
Annexed by Germany, 1940
Italian invasion, 1940
to protect the ideals of liberty with “blood, toil,
tears, and sweat.” In the battle of Britain — or Blitz,
as the British called it — the German Luftwaffe
The Division of France, 1940
(“air force”) bombed monuments, public buildings,
weapons depots, and industry. In response, Britain poured resources into its highly
successful code-breaking group called Ultra, further development of radar, and air
weaponry, outproducing the Germans by 50 percent.
By the fall of 1940, German air losses compelled Hitler to abandon his plan for
a naval invasion of Britain. Forcing Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria to join the Axis
powers, Germany gained access to more food, oil, and other resources. He then made
his fatal decision to break the Nazi-Soviet Pact and attack the Soviet Union — the
“center of judeobolshevism,” he called it. In June 1941, three million German and
other troops penetrated Soviet lines along a two-thousand-mile front; by July, they had
rolled to within two hundred miles of Moscow. Using a strategy of rapid encirclement,
German troops killed, captured, or wounded more than half the 4.5 million Soviet
soldiers.
Amid success, Hitler blundered. Considering himself a military genius and the
Slavic people inferior, he proposed attacking Leningrad, the Baltic states, and Ukraine
simultaneously, even though his generals wanted to concentrate on Moscow. Driven
by Stalin and local party members, the Soviet people fought back. The onset of
winter turned Nazi soldiers into frostbitten wretches because Hitler had feared that
equipping his army for Russian conditions would suggest to civilians that a long
campaign lay ahead. Convinced of a quick victory in the USSR, he switched German
production from making tanks and artillery to making battleships and airplanes for
war beyond the Soviet Union. Consequently, Germany’s poorly supplied armies fell
victim not only to the weather but also to a shortage of equipment. As the war
became worldwide, Germany still had an inflated view of its own power.
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 883
War Expands: The Pacific and Beyond

The militarist Japanese government decided to settle matters once and for all with the
United States, which was blocking Japan’s access to technology and resources in an
attempt to stop its expansionism. On December 7, 1941, it launched an all-out attack
on the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and then decimated a fleet of airplanes
in the Philippines. Roosevelt immediately summoned the U.S. Congress to declare
war on Japan. By the spring of 1942, the Japanese had conquered Guam, the Philip-
pines, Malaya, Burma, Indonesia, Singapore, and much of the southwestern Pacific.
Like Hitler’s early conquests, the Japanese victories strengthened the military’s con-
fidence: “The era of democracy is finished,” the foreign minister announced, market-
ing Emperor Hirohito as the monarch who would liberate Asians everywhere.
Germany quickly declared war on the United States; Mussolini followed suit. The
United States was not prepared for a prolonged struggle at the time, partly because
isolationist sentiment remained strong. Its armed forces numbered only 1.6 million,
and no plan existed for producing the necessary guns, tanks, and airplanes. In addi-
tion, the United States and the Soviet Union mistrusted each other. Yet despite these
obstacles to cooperation, Hitler’s four enemies came together in the Grand Alliance
of Great Britain, the Free French (an exile government in London led by General
Charles de Gaulle), the Soviet Union, and the United States along with twenty other
countries — known collectively as the Allies. Against the Axis powers — Germany,
Italy, and Japan — the Allies had advantages: greater manpower and resources, access
to goods from global empires, and Britain’s traditional naval strength and its experi-
ence in combat on many continents. Allied leaders worked hard to wage effective
war against the Axis powers, whose rulers were fanatically committed to global con-
quest at any price.
The War against Civilians

Far more civilians than soldiers died in World War II. The Axis powers and Allies
alike bombed cities to destroy civilian will to resist: the Allied firebombings of Dres-
den and Tokyo killed tens of thousands of civilians, though Axis attacks were more
widespread. The British people, not British soldiers, were the target of the battle of
Britain, and in Poland and Ukraine, the Nazi SS murdered hundreds of thousands
of Polish citizens. Confiscated Polish land and homes were given to “racially pure”
Aryans from Germany and other central European countries. In the name of col-
lectivization, Soviet forces perpetuated the same violence in the same area of eastern
Europe, which has been called the “Bloodlands” for the millions who died in the
battle for land and food.
Nazi and Soviet leaders saw literate people in the conquered areas as leading
members of the civil society that they wanted to destroy. A ploy of the Nazis was to
test captured people’s reading skills, suggesting that those who could read would be
given clerical jobs while those who could not would be relegated to hard labor. Those
who could read, however, were lined up and shot. Because many in the German
[ 1929–1945
]
army initially rebelled at this inhuman mission, special Gestapo forces took up the
charge of herding their victims into woods, to ravines, or even against town walls
where they would be shot en masse. The Japanese did the same in China, in South-
east Asia, and on the islands in the Pacific. The number of casualties in China alone
has been estimated at thirty million, with untold millions murdered elsewhere.
On the eve of war in 1939, Hitler had predicted “the destruction of the Jewish
race in Europe.” The Nazis’ initial plan for reducing the Jewish population included
driving Jews into urban ghettos and making them live on minimal rations until they
died of starvation or disease. There was also direct murder. Around Soviet towns,
the Nazis killed ten thousand or more at a time, often with the help of local anti-
Semitic volunteers. In Jedwabne, Poland, some eight hundred citizens on their own
initiative beat and burned their Jewish neighbors to death and took their property —
evidence that the Holocaust was not simply a Nazi initiative. However, the “Final
Solution” — the Nazis’ plan to murder all of Europe’s Jews systematically — was not
yet fully under way.
An organized, technological system for transporting Jews to extermination sites
had taken shape by the fall of 1941 and was formalized at a meeting in Wannsee,
Germany, in January 1942. Although Hitler did not attend the meeting at Wannsee,
his responsibility for the Holocaust is clear: he discussed the Final Solution’s prog-
ress, issued oral directives for it, and had made violent anti-Semitism a basis for
Nazism from the beginning. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, government workers, and
Nazi officials took initiative in making the Holocaust work. Six camps in Poland
were developed specifically for the purposes of mass murder (Map 26.3). Using tech-
0 100 200 miles N

DENMARK
LITHUANIA
East W E
17 Prussia
Hamburg
NETH.
13 14 S
3 15
Warsaw
Berlin 19 POLAND USSR
11 GERMANY 5
4 16
BELGIUM
8 9 MAP 26.3 Concentration Camps
18 2 Babi Yar
Prague 1 Cracow
(Kiev) and Extermination Sites in Europe
CZ
EC H Ukraine This map shows the major exter-
LUX. 12 OSL OVAKIA
6 10 mination sites and concentration
Munich
SWITZ. AUSTRIA
Budapest camps in Europe, but the entire
HUNGARY
continent was dotted with thou-
ROMANIA
sands of lesser camps to which
ITALY
the victims of Nazism were trans-
YUGOSLAVIA
Under Axis control,
ported. Some of these lesser
1 Auschwitz-Birkenau 11 Mittelbau
1942 2 Belzec 12 Natzweiler camps were merely way stations on
Axis allies 3 Bergen-Belsen 13 Neuengamme the path to ultimate extermination.
4 Buchenwald 14 Ravensbrück
Neutral 5 Chelmno 15 Sachsenhausen In focusing on the major camps,
Mass murder site 6 Dachau 16 Sobibor historians often lose sight of the
7 Flossenbürg 17 Stutthof
Principal German 8 Gross Rosen 18 Theresienstadt ways in which evidence of deporta-
concentration and 9 Majdanek 19 Treblinka
extermination camp 10 Mauthausen tion and extermination blanketed
Europe.
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 885
Children in Concentration Camps, c. 1945

When Germany undertook the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing, children of outcast groups were
generally automatic victims, unless they seemed useful for medical experiments. Great numbers
of children died of starvation in occupied and besieged areas or were killed when the Germans
exacted reprisals for acts of resistance. Teenagers were used as slave laborers; the children in
this picture may be older than they look because of starvation. (© Fratelli Alinari Museum Collections-
Favrod Collection, Florence, Italy / The Image Works.)
niques developed in the T4 project, which killed disabled and elderly people, the
camp at Chelmno initially gassed Christian Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. Spe-
cially designed crematoria for the mass burning of corpses started functioning in
1943. By then, Auschwitz had the capacity to burn 1.7 million bodies per year. About
60 percent of new arrivals — particularly children, women, and old people — were
selected for immediate murder in the gas chambers; the other 40 percent labored
until, utterly used up, they too were gassed.
Victims from all over Europe were sent to extermination camps. In the ghettos
of European cities, councils of Jewish leaders, such as the one in Amsterdam where
Etty Hillesum worked, often chose those to be sent for “resettlement in the east” — a
phrase used to mask the Nazis’ true plans. For weakened, poorly armed ghetto inhab-
itants, open resistance meant certain death. When Jews bravely rose up against their
Nazi captors in Warsaw in 1943, they were mercilessly butchered. The Nazis also
took pains to cloak the purpose of the extermination camps. Bands played to greet
[ 1929–1945
]
incoming trainloads of victims, and survivors later noted that the purpose of the
camps was so unthinkable that potential victims could not begin to imagine their
fate. Those not chosen for immediate murder had their heads shaved and were dis-
infected. So began life in “a living hell,” as one survivor wrote.
The camps were scenes of struggle for life in the face of torture and death.
Overworked inmates usually received less than five hundred calories per day, far
below the minimum needed to keep an adult in good health. As diseases swept
through the camps, doctors performed unbelievably cruel medical experiments with
no anesthesia on pregnant women, twins, and other innocent people in the name of
advancing “racial science.” Despite the harsh conditions, however, some people main-
tained their spirit: prisoners forged new friendships, and women in particular
observed religious holidays and celebrated birthdays. Thanks to those sharing a
bread ration, wrote the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, “I managed not to forget that
I myself was a man.” In the end, six million Jews, the vast majority from eastern
Europe — along with an estimated five to six million Slavs, Sinti and Roma (often
called Gypsies), homosexuals, and countless others — were deliberately murdered in
the Nazi genocidal fury. This vast crime perpetrated by apparently civilized people
still shocks and outrages the world.
Societies at War
Even more than World War I, World War II depended on industrial productivity.
The Axis countries remained at a disadvantage throughout the war despite their
initial conquests, for the Allies consistently outproduced them. For example, in 1942,
Great Britain and Russia produced collectively nearly 50,000 aircraft while Germany
produced around 15,000. Even as Germany occupied the Soviet industrial heartland
and besieged many of its cities, the USSR increased its production of weapons. Both
Japan and Germany made the most of their lower output, especially in the use of
Blitzkrieg. The use of vast quantities of stolen resources and of millions of slave
laborers also helped, but both Japan’s and Germany’s belief in their racial superiority
prevented them from accurately assessing the capabilities of an enemy they held in
contempt.
Allied governments were overwhelmingly successful in mobilizing civilians,
especially women. In Germany and Italy, where government policy particularly
exalted motherhood and kept women from good jobs, officials began to realize that
women were desperately needed in the workforce. Nazis changed their propaganda
to emphasize the need for everyone to take a job, but their messages were not effec-
tive enough to convince women to take the low-paid work offered them. In contrast,
Soviet women constituted more than half their nation’s workforce by war’s end, and
800,000 volunteered for the military, even serving as pilots. As the Germans invaded,
Soviet citizens moved entire factories eastward. In a dramatic about-face, the govern-
ment encouraged devotion to the Russian Orthodox church as a way of boosting
patriotism.
[
1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 887
Even more than in World War I, civilians faced propaganda, censorship, and
government regulation. People were glued to their radios for war news, but much
of it was tightly controlled. The totalitarian powers often withheld news of military
defeats and large casualty numbers in order to keep civilian support. Wartime films
focused on aviation heroes and infantrymen as well as on the self-sacrificing work-
ingwomen and wives on the home front. In most countries, it was simply taken for
granted that civilians would not receive what they needed to survive in good health.
Soviet children and old people were at the greatest risk, a high proportion of them
among the one million residents who starved to death during the siege of Leningrad.
Government specialists regulated the production and distribution of food, clothing,
and household products, all of which were rationed and generally of lower quality
than before the war. With governments standardizing such items as food, clothing,
and entertainment, World War II furthered the development of mass society.
On both sides, propaganda and government policies promoted racial thinking.
Since the early 1930s, the German government had published ugly caricatures of
Jews and Slavs. Similarly, Allied propaganda during the war depicted Germans as
perverts and the “Japs” as insectlike fanatics. The U.S. government forced citizens of
Japanese origin into internment camps, while Muslims and minority ethnic groups
in the Soviet Union were uprooted and relocated away from the front lines as poten-
tial Nazi collaborators. As in World War I, both sides drew colonized peoples into
the war through forced labor and conscription into the armies. Some two million
Indian men served the Allied cause, as did several hundred thousand Africans. As
the Japanese swept through the Pacific and parts of East Asia, they, too, conscripted
local men into their army.
From Resistance to Allied Victory

Resistance to fascism began early in the war. Having escaped from France to Lon-
don in 1940, General Charles de Gaulle directed from a distance the Free French
government and its forces — a mixed organization of troops of colonized Asians and
Africans, soldiers who had escaped via Dunkirk, and volunteers from other occupied
countries. Less well-known than the Free French, resisters in occupied Europe fought
in Communist-dominated groups, some of which gathered information to aid the
Allied invasion of the continent. Rural groups called partisans not only planned
assassinations of traitors and German officers but also bombed bridges, rail lines,
and military facilities. Although the Catholic church supported Mussolini in Italy
and endorsed the Croatian puppet government’s slaughter of a million Serbs, Catho-
lic and Protestant clergy and their parishioners were among those who set up resis-
tance networks, often hiding Jews and fugitives. The Polish resistance attacked
imported German settlers; individuals such as Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg
saved thousands of Jews.
People also fought back through everyday activities. Homemakers circulated
newsletters urging demonstrations at prisons where civilians were detained. In central
[ 1929–1945
]
Europe, hikers smuggled Jews and others over dangerous mountain passes. Danish
villagers created vast escape networks, and countless thousands across Europe vol-
unteered to be part of escape routes. Women resisters used stereotypes to good
advantage, often carrying weapons to assassination sites in the correct belief that
Nazis would rarely suspect or search them. “Naturally the Germans didn’t think that
a woman could have carried a bomb,” explained one Italian resister. Resistance kept
alive the liberal ideal of individual action in the face of tyranny.
Both subtle and dramatically visible resistance took place in the fascist countries.
Couples in Germany and Italy limited family size in defiance of pro-birth policies.
In July 1944, a group of German military officers, fearing their country’s military
humiliation, tried but failed to assassinate Hitler — one of several such attempts.
Wounded and shaken, Hitler mercilessly tortured and killed hundreds of conspira-
tors, innocent friends, and family members. Some ask whether the assassination
attempt came too late in the war to count as resistance. However, some five million
Germans alone, and millions more of other nationalities, lost their lives in the last
nine months of the war. Had Hitler died even as late as the summer of 1944, the
relief to humanity would have been considerable.
Amid civilian resistance, Allied forces turned the frontline war against the Axis
powers beginning with the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943 (Map 26.4). The Ger-
man army sought Soviet oil through capturing this city. Months of ferocious house-
to-house fighting ended when the Soviet army captured the ninety thousand German
survivors in February 1943. Meanwhile, the British army in North Africa held against
German troops under Erwin Rommel, a skilled practitioner of the new kind of
mobile warfare. He aimed to capture the Suez Canal and thus gain access to Middle
Eastern oil, but the Allies’ code-breaking capacity ultimately helped them block the
capture of Egypt and take Morocco and Algeria in the fall of 1942. After driving
Rommel out of Africa, the Allies landed in Sicily in July 1943, provoking a German
invasion. The slow, bitter fight for the Italian peninsula lasted until April 1945, when
Allied forces finally triumphed. After Italy’s liberation, partisans shot Mussolini and
his mistress and hung their dead bodies for public display.
The victory at Stalingrad marked the beginning of the Soviet drive westward,
during which the Soviets bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine. From the air,
Britain and the United States bombed German cities, but it was an invasion from
the west that Stalin wanted from his allies. Finally, on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day,
the combined Allied forces, under the command of U.S. general Dwight Eisenhower,
attacked the heavily fortified French beaches of Normandy and then fought their
way through the German-held territory of western France. In late July, Allied forces
broke through German defenses and a month later helped liberate Paris. The Soviets
meanwhile recaptured the Baltic states and entered Poland, pausing for desperately
needed supplies. The Germans took advantage of the pause to put down an uprising
of the Polish resistance in August 1944, which gave the Soviets a freer hand in eastern
Europe after the war. Facing more than twice as many troops as on the western front,
the Soviet army took Bulgaria and Romania at the end of August, then Hungary in
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 889
0 200 400 miles

Axis powers and their allies
Axis-held, early November 1942
Allied powers and their allies
Neutral nations FINLAND N
NORWAY
Greater Germany, 1942
E
Axis offensives Leningrad W
SWEDEN Besieged U S S R
Allied offensives S
ESTONIA Sept. 1941–Jan. 1944
April
V ol
Major battle
ea
g a R.
cS
1940
N. LATVIA 4
North 94 Moscow
lti
IRELAND t. 1
Se p
Ba
GREAT Sea DENMARK LITHUANIA
Germans repulsed
Dec. 1941
IRELAND
BRITAIN Danzig
East 41
Surrendered 19
Battle of Britain, May 8, 1945 Prussia ne
1940
NETH. Elb Ju 43 Besieged
0 eR . 19 Aug. 21, 1942–Jan. 31, 1943
94 . Berlin
July 1944 Aug
y 1 Potsdam
Normandy invasion, Do
Kursk n R.
London Ma Warsaw
D-Day June 6, 1944 Stalingrad
POLAND
Od
4 5 er July 1943
Dunkirk BELG. il 19 R
June 1941
Rh
Battle of the Bulge

AprGERMANY
.
Dec. 16, 1944– Mar. 1944
ine
Jan. 31, 1945 Paris

LUX.
R
Slovakia
.
ATLANTIC Ukraine
Liberated BukovinaBessarabia
OCEAN 44
Ca
Aug. 25, 1944
FRANCE HUNGARY
944
19
SWITZ.
sp
D
Aug.
ia
ec
g. 1
Ap
nS
0 .
VICHY 94 Yalta
ril
e1
Au
ROMANIA
ea
19
FRANCE un
19
e R.
44
J
nub
4
Black Sea
1
Da
Ad
YUGOSLAVIA
AL
ria
ITALY
BULGARIA
UG
tic
April 1941
Corsica Se
SPAIN Rome a
RT
ALBANIA Teheran
PO
Monte (It.)
Sardinia Cassino Salerno TURKEY Meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin,
Nov.–Dec. 1943
May 1944 Sept. 1943
No Liberated GREECE
v. 1
942 June 4, 1944 IRAN
M
SP. MOROCCO Sicily

SYRIA
ay
Tunis
Rhodes
1
Cyprus (Fr.)
94
July 1943 1
Crete (It.) (Br.) IRAQ
Kasserine Pass (Gr.) LEBANON
MOROCCO Feb. 1943
(Fr.) TUNISIA Mediterranean Sea
(Fr.) PALESTINE
(Br.) TRANS-
ALGERIA El Alamein
Alexandria
JORDAN
(Fr.) Oct.–Nov. 1942
Nov. 1942 (Br.)
FRENCH NORTH AFRICA SAUDI
Under Vichy government 1940–42
Joined Allies Nov. 1942 LIBYA EGYPT ARABIA
(It.) (Br.)
MAP 26.4 World War II in Europe and Africa

World War II inflicted massive loss of life and destruction of property on civilians, armies, and
all the infrastructure — including factories, equipment, and agriculture — needed to wage total
war. Thus, the war swept the European continent as well as areas in Africa colonized by or allied
with the major powers. Ultimately the Allies crushed the Axis powers by moving from east, west,
and south to inflict a total defeat.
1945. British, Canadian, U.S., and other Allied forces simultaneously fought their
way eastward to join the Soviets in squeezing the Third Reich to its final defeat.
As the Allies advanced, Hitler decided that Germans deserved to perish. He thus
refused all negotiations that might have spared them further death and destruction.
As the Soviet army took Berlin, Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide.
Although many soldiers remained loyal to the Third Reich, Germany finally sur-
rendered on May 8, 1945.
The Allies had followed a “Europe first” strategy in conducting the war. In 1940
and 1941, Japan had ousted the Europeans from many colonial holdings in Asia, but
the Allies turned the tide in 1942 by destroying some of Japan’s formidable navy in
battles at Midway Island and Guadalcanal (Map 26.5). Allied forces stormed one
[ 1929–1945
]
Alaska
(U.S.)
Beri ng S ea
U S S R
Kamchatka
.)
Kiska I. U .S
IS. (
Attu I. ALEUTIAN
Sakhalin I.
3
May 194
45
19
IS
.
L
M ONGOL I A MANCHURIA RI N
Au
g (MANCHUKUO) KU
W
.1
E
45
94
19
5
S
Hiroshima JAPAN
KOREA Aug. 6, 1945
Tokyo
PACIFIC OCEAN
C H I N A
Nanjing
Nagasaki 194
TIBET Aug. 9, 1945 Okinawa
5
Midway I.
Apr. 1–
194
INDIA June 21, 1945

Iwo Jima
June 3–6, 1942
(Br.) Midway I.
5
Formosa Feb. 19–Mar. 16, 1945 (U.S.)

BURMA A Wake I. HAWAIIAN IS.
Hong (Taiwan) pr MARIANA (U.S.)
(Br.) Kong .1 (U.S.)
94 IS. 3
(Br.)
PHILIPPINE IS. 5 . 194
Nov
THAILAND Pearl Harbor
1945
Saipan Dec. 7, 1941

FRENCH Leyte Gulf 944 1944 94
3
Oct. 23–26, 1944 1 Eniwetok .1
INDOCHINA Guam
Feb. 17, 1944 ov
(Vichy) July 21– N
Aug. 10, 1944 MARSHALL
CAROLINE IS. IS.
MALAYA
94 Tarawa
1
4 GILBERT IS.
Su
Singapore Nov. 29, 1943

m
Borneo Apr. 1942 (Br.)

at
Celebes
ra
Rabaul
NE T HE R L ANDS EAST INDIES New SOLOMON IS.
Lae ELLICE IS.
Java Guinea (Br.)
Coral Sea Guadalcanal

May 7–8, 1942 Aug. 7, 1942–Feb. 9, 1943
INDIAN OCEAN FIJI IS.
NEW HEBRIDES (Br.)
1943
(Fr.-Br.)
Au
g.
19
New Caledonia 42
A U S T R A L I A (Fr.)
Japanese Empire, 1936 Allied advances and bombing raids

Japanese-controlled areas, Japanese advances and bombing raids
August 1942
0 500 1,000 miles Major battles
Allied powers
0 500 1,000 kilometers Atomic bombs
MAP 26.5 World War II in the Pacific

As in Europe, the early days of World War II gave the advantage to the Axis power Japan as it
took the offensive in conquering islands in the Pacific and territories in Asia — many of them col-
onies of European states. Britain countered by mobilizing a vast Indian army, while the United
States, after the disastrous losses at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines, gradually gained the
upper hand by costly assaults, island by island. The Japanese strategy of fighting to the last
person instead of surrendering when a loss was in sight was one factor in President Truman’s
decision to drop the atomic bomb in August 1945.
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 891
Pacific island after another, gaining bases from which to cut off the importation of
supplies and to launch bombers toward Japan itself. Short of men and weapons, the
Japanese military resorted to kamikaze tactics, in which pilots deliberately crashed
their planes into Allied ships, killing themselves in the process. In response, the
Allies stepped up their bombing of major cities, killing more than 100,000 civilians
in their spring 1945 firebombing of Tokyo. The Japanese leadership still ruled out
surrender.
Meanwhile a U.S.-based international team of more than 100,000 workers,
including scientists and technicians, had been working on the Manhattan Project,
the code name for a secret project to develop an atomic bomb. The Japanese practice
Hiroshima, 1945
This photo captures what little remained of the city of Hiroshima after the United States dropped
an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Without the bomb, the U.S. military foresaw a long and
costly struggle to defeat Japan, given that country’s overall strategy of fighting to the last per-
son and in the process inflicting the maximum number of enemy casualties. Some claim that
the United States dropped the bomb to menace the Soviet Union, its opponent in the cold war
that was just beginning. Others point to the fact that no such bomb was ever dropped on a
Caucasian population. (The Everett Collection, Inc.)
[ 1929–1945
]
of dying almost to the man rather than surrendering caused Allied military leaders
to calculate that defeating Japan might cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Allied soldiers (and even more Japanese). On August 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S. govern-
ment therefore unleashed the new atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
killing 140,000 people instantly; tens of thousands later died from burns, wounds,
and other afflictions. Hardliners in the Japanese military wanted to continue the war,
but on August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered.
An Uneasy Postwar Settlement

Unlike World War I, this war saw neither a celebrated peace conference nor a formal
agreement among all the Allies about the final terms for peace. Instead, wartime
agreements among members of the Grand Alliance about the future reflected their
differences while aiming to guide the postwar years. In 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill
crafted the Atlantic Charter, which condemned aggression, endorsed collective secu-
rity, and supported the right of all people to choose their governments. Not only
did the Allies back these ideals, but so did colonized peoples to whom, Churchill
said, the charter was not meant to apply. In October 1944, Churchill and Stalin
agreed on the postwar distribution of territories. The Soviet Union would control
Romania and Bulgaria, Britain would control Greece, and they would jointly oversee
Hungary and Yugoslavia. These agreements went against Roosevelt’s faith in collec-
tive security, self-determination, and open doors in trade. In February 1945, the
“Big Three” — Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin — met in the Crimean town of Yalta.
Roosevelt advocated for the formation of the United Nations to replace the League
of Nations as a global peace mechanism, and he supported future Soviet influence
in Korea, Manchuria, and the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands. The last meeting of the
Allied leaders, with President Harry S. Truman replacing Roosevelt, who had died
in April, took place at Potsdam, Germany, in the summer of 1945. At Potsdam, the
leaders agreed to give the Soviets control of eastern Poland, to transfer a large stretch
of eastern Germany to Poland, and to finalize a temporary four-way occupation of
Germany that would include France as one of the supervising powers.
These agreements could hardly undo the war’s grim legacy. The Great Depres-
sion had inflicted global suffering, while the Second World War left up to 100 million
dead, more than 50 million refugees without homes, and one of the most abomi-
nable moral legacies in human history. Conscripted into armies or into labor camps
for war production, colonial peoples in Vietnam, Algeria, India, and elsewhere were
in full rebellion or close to it. The war weakened and even destroyed standards of
decency and truth. Democratic Europe had succumbed to continuous wartime val-
ues, and it was this Europe that George Orwell captured in his novel 1984 (1949).
Orwell had worked for the wartime Ministry of Information (called the Ministry of
Truth in the novel) and made up phony war news and threats for civilian audiences.
Truth hardly mattered, and words changed meaning during the war to sound better:
battle fatigue substituted for insanity, and liberating a country could mean invading
[1929–1945
] Conclusion 893
Alberto Giacometti, The Square II (1948–1949)

Swiss Artist Alberto Giacometti began making sculptures featuring thin, elongated figures in
the 1940s. They appear to be moving forward, striving and active, but at the same time their
spareness evokes the skeletal shape of concentration camp survivors. What kind of statement
do you see Giacometti making about the times? (bpk, Berlin / Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, Staat-
liche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Art Resource, NY / Art © Alberto Giacometti Estate / Licensed by VAGA and ARS,
New York.)
it and slaughtering its civilians. Hungry, careworn people walking in ragged cloth-
ing along grimy streets characterized both wartime London and Orwell’s fictional
state of Oceania. Millions cheered the demise of Nazi evil in 1945, but for Orwell,
bureaucratic domination depended on
continuing conflict. Indeed, as Allied pow- REVIEW QUESTION How and where was
ers competed for territory at the war’s end, World War II fought, and what were its major
a new struggle called the cold war was consequences?
beginning.
Conclusion
The Great Depression, which brought fear, hunger, and joblessness to millions, cre-
ated a setting in which dictators thrived because they promised to restore economic
prosperity by destroying democracy and representative government. Desperate
people believed the promises of these dynamic new leaders — Mussolini, Stalin, and
Hitler — and often embraced the brutality of their regimes. In the USSR, Stalin’s
program of rapid industrialization cost the lives of millions as he inspired Commu-
nist believers to purge enemies — real and imagined. With the democracies preoc-
cupied with economic recovery while preserving the rule of law and still haunted by
memories of World War I, Hitler, Mussolini, and their millions of supporters went
on to menace Europe unchallenged. At the same time, Japan embarked on a program
of conquest aimed at ending Western domination in Asia and taking more of Asia
[ 1929–1945
]
for itself. The coalition of Allies that finally formed to stop the Axis powers of Ger-
many, Italy, and Japan was an uneasy alliance among Britain, Free France, the Soviet
Union, and the United States. World War II ended European dominance. Europe’s
economies were shattered, its colonies were on the verge of independence, and its
peoples were starving and homeless.
The costs of a bloody war — one waged against civilians as much as armies —
taught the victorious powers different lessons. The United States, Britain, and France
were convinced that a minimum of citizen well-being was necessary to prevent a
recurrence of fascism. The devastation of the USSR’s population and resources made
Stalin increasingly obsessed with national security and compensation for the damage
inflicted by the Nazis. Britain and France faced the end of their imperial might,
underscoring Orwell’s insight that the war had utterly transformed society. The mili-
tarization of society and the deliberate murder of millions of innocent citizens like
Etty Hillesum were tragedies that permanently injured the West’s claims to being an
advanced civilization. Nonetheless, backed by vast supplies of sophisticated weap-
onry, the United States and the Soviet Union used their opposing views on a postwar
settlement to justify threatening one another — and the world — with another hor-
rific war.
[ 1929–1945
] Conclusion 895
Percent of population killed

Over 10% Military dead
5–10% Civilian dead (does not include
12 million death camp victims)
1–5% FINLAND
City substantially damaged 79,047
Under 1%
N NORWAY
4,780 Leningrad
W
SWEDEN
E
ESTONIA
S
ea
c S
LATVIA
GREAT North
ti
Sea DENMARK
al
IRELAND BRITAIN 4,339 B LITHUANIA
271,311 Königsberg
60,595
Coventry
NETH. Hamburg
USSR
13,700
Bremen 14,500,000
236,300
London Rotterdam Hanover Berlin Warsaw Over 7,000,000
Düsseldorf Dortmund
POLAND
GERMANY
BELG.Cologne 850,000
9,561 2,850,000 Dresden (169,822 as Allies) Kiev
Caen 75,000 5,778,000
2,300,000
Frankfurt
C
Würzburg ZEC
HO
SL OVAKIA
6,683
Munich 310,000
FRANCE AUSTRIA
380,000
210,671 SWITZ. 145,000 HUNGARY
173,260 750,000
ROMANIA
Milan 519,822
465,000 Ploesti
Genoa
Bologna
YUGOSLAVIA Black Sea
1,700,000
SPAIN ITALY BULGARIA

279,820 18,500
4,500 (For Axis)
7,500 (For Allies) Corsica 17,400 (as Allies) 1,500
10,000
(in concentration camps)
Sardinia
0 200 400 miles GREECE
16,357
0 200 400 kilometers 155,300
MAPPING THE WEST Europe at War’s End, 1945

The damage of World War II left scars that would last for decades. Major German cities were
bombed to bits, while the Soviet Union suffered an unimaginable toll of perhaps as many as
forty-five million deaths due to the war alone. In addition to the vast civilian and military losses
shown on this map, historians estimate that no less than twelve million people were murdered
in the Nazi death camps. Everything from politics to family life needed rebuilding, adding to the
chaos. (From The Hammond Atlas of the Twentieth Century [London: Times Books, 1996], 102.)
Chapter 26 Review
civil disobedience (p. 863) pump priming (p. 869) Francisco Franco (p. 877)
Joseph Stalin (p. 865) Nuremberg Laws (p. 870) appeasement (p. 879)
five-year plans (p. 865) family allowance (p. 872) Nazi-Soviet Pact (p. 881)
purges (p. 866) Popular Front (p. 873) Blitzkrieg (p. 881)
Adolf Hitler (p. 867) Charlie Chaplin (p. 874)
Enabling Act (p. 868) Lebensraum (p. 876)
Review Questions
1. How did the Great Depression affect society and politics?
2. What role did violence play in the Soviet and Nazi regimes?
3. How did the democracies’ responses to the twin challenges of economic depression and
the rise of fascism differ from those of totalitarian regimes?
4. How did the aggression of Japan, Germany, and Italy create the conditions for global war?
5. How and where was World War II fought, and what were its major consequences?
Making Connections
1. Compare fascist ideas of the individual with the idea of individual rights that inspired the
American and French Revolutions.
2. What connections can you make between the Great Depression and the coming of World
War II?
3. What were the major differences between World War I and World War II?
4. What explains the bleak view of writers like George Orwell after the Allied victory over the
Axis powers?
This grim period in human history has yielded an ever-growing crop of excellent books, some of
them coldly examining the worst aspects of the Great Depression and World War II and others
looking at resistance, survival, and intellectual breakthroughs.
Alvarez, Luis. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II. 2008.
Clavin, Patricia. The Great Depression in Europe, 1929–1939. 2000.
Collingham, Lizzie. The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. 2011.
Confino, Alon. A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. 2014.
Hellbeck, Jochen. Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin. 2006.
Hoffman, David L. Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and State Socialism. 2012.
Imlay, Talbot C. Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics, and Economics in Britain and
France 1938–1940. 2003.
Maas, Ad, and Hans Hooijijers, eds. Scientific Research in World War II: What Scientists Did in the
War. 2009.
Miner, Steven Merritt. Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945.
2003.
Naimark, Norman M. Stalin’s Genocides. 2010.
Roberts, Mary Louise. D-Day through French Eyes: Normandy 1944. 2014.
896
[1929–1945
Important Events
1929 U.S. stock market crashes; global depression begins; Soviet leadership
initiates “liquidation of the kulaks”; Stalin’s first five-year plan officially
begins
1931 Japan invades Manchuria; Spanish republicans overthrow monarchy
1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany
1935 German government enacts Nuremberg Laws; Italy invades Ethiopia
1936 Purges and show trials begin in USSR; Hitler remilitarizes Rhineland;
Spanish Civil War begins
1937 Japan attacks China
1938 Germany annexes Austria; European leaders meet in Munich to negotiate
with Hitler; Kristallnacht in Germany
1939 Germany invades Czechoslovakia; Spanish Civil War ends; Nazi-Soviet
Pact; Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war on
Germany; World War II begins
1940 France falls to German army
1940–1941 British air force fends off German attacks in the battle of Britain
1941 Germany invades Soviet Union; Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; United States
enters war
1941–1945 The Holocaust
1942–1943 Siege of Stalingrad
1944 Allied forces land at Normandy, France
1945 Berlin falls; United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki; World War II ends
Consider three events: Global depression begins (1929), Stalin’s first five-year plan
officially begins (1929), and Hitler comes to power in Germany (1933). How did the
global depression contribute to the initial success of Hitler and Stalin?
Seidman, Michael. The Victorious Counterrevolution: The Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War.
2011.
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. 2010.
Stangneth, Bettina. Eichman before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. 2014.
Stoltzfus, Nathan, et al., eds. Courageous Resistance: The Power of Ordinary People. 2007.
Tierney, Robert T. Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame.
2010.
Viola, Lynn, ed. Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s.
2003.
Weinberg, Gerhard. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. 2005.
The Cold War and the
27
Remaking of Europe
1945–1960s
L
ate in 1945, with the USSR still reeling from the devastation of World War II,
Soviet poet Boris Pasternak began a new project — Doctor Zhivago, a novel
about a thoughtful medical man caught up in the whirlwind of the Russian
Revolution. Like others in the USSR, Pasternak expected the postwar era to usher
in, as he put it, “a great renewal of Russian life.” So he struggled on with his complex
epic even as the cold war tensions between the United States and the USSR unfolded.
In 1953, Joseph Stalin’s sudden death raised Pasternak’s hopes for his masterpiece to
receive a warm reception; those hopes were
dashed, however, when the Soviets forbade
Doctor Zhivago Poster the book’s publication.
As soon as Boris Pasternak’s for-
A determined Pasternak bypassed the
bidden novel Doctor Zhivago was
published in Italy in 1957, Holly- Soviet authorities and secretly arranged for
wood’s MGM studio went after the Doctor Zhivago to be published first in 1957
rights for the film. Finally completed in Italy — now an anti-Soviet ally of the United
in 1965, the movie was a cold war States in the cold war. The book became a
blockbuster — an epic of life and love best seller, showing its readers that the Rus-
in postrevolutionary Russia. The open-
ing scene, invented for the movie, was
sian Revolution was far from perfect and so
a grim Soviet factory, while the story angering the Soviet leadership that Stalin’s
itself was more or less symbolized in successor, Nikita Khrushchev, forced Paster-
this advertising poster highlighting nak to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature
two incredibly attractive people who awarded him in 1958. The cold war, however,
fall in love and are torn apart by the
allowed Doctor Zhivago to live on when the
crushing Bolshevik system. (MGM /
The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY.) famed Hollywood studio MGM turned it into
a blockbuster film (1965), seen by tens of
millions. By that time, Pasternak had died —
a broken victim of cold war persecutions that haunted the world long after the
calamitous years of war and genocide had ended.
Following World War II, people in Europe, Japan, and much of East and South-
east Asia were starving and homeless. Evidence of genocide and other inhumanity
was everywhere, and nuclear annihilation menaced the world. The old international
899
900 Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe
[ 1945–1960s
]
order was gone, replaced by the rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union
for control of Europe, whose political, social, and economic order was shattered. The
nuclear arsenals of these two superpowers — a term coined in 1947 — grew massively
in the 1950s, but the enemies did not fight outright. Thus, their terrifying rivalry
was called the cold war. The cold war divided the West and led to political persecu-
tion in many areas, even in the wealthy and secure United States.
At the same time, the defeat of Nazism inspired cautious optimism and a revival
of thoughtful reflection like Pasternak’s. Heroic effort had defeated fascism, and that
defeat raised hopes that a new age would begin. Atomic science promised advances
in medicine, and nuclear energy was seen as a replacement for coal and oil. The
creation of the United Nations in 1945 heralded an era of international cooperation.
Around the globe, colonial peoples won independence from European masters, while
in the United States the civil rights movement grew in strength. The welfare state
expanded, and by the end of the 1950s, economic rebirth had made much of Europe
more prosperous than ever before. An “economic miracle” had occurred, bringing
many Europeans and Americans the highest standard of living they had ever known,
including quantities of new consumer goods and simple pleasures such as seeing
technicolor films like Doctor Zhivago.
The postwar period became one of open redefinition as the experience of total
war transformed both society and the international order. New terms arose in the
1950s, dividing the globe into the first world (the West, or capitalist, bloc of coun-
tries); the second world (the East, or socialist, bloc); and the third world (countries
emerging from imperial domination). This last term, third world, was meant as a
favorable comparison of emerging nations to the Third Estate — that is, the rising
citizens of the French Revolution — but is now considered an insulting term.
As the world’s people redefined themselves, the superpowers took the world
to the brink of nuclear disaster. From the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the cold war shape 1945 to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962,
the politics, economy, social life, culture, and fear and personal anguish like that suf-
international concerns of post–World War II
fered by Pasternak gripped much of the
Europe?
world, even in the midst of prosperity and
Europe’s rebirth.
World Politics Transformed

World War II ended Europe’s global leadership. Many countries lay in ruins in the
summer of 1945, and conditions would deteriorate before they improved. Though
victorious, bombed and bankrupt Britain could not feed its people, and continuing
turmoil destroyed the lives of millions in central and eastern Europe. In contrast, the
United States, whose territory was virtually untouched in the war, emerged as the
[1945–1960s
] World Politics Transformed 901
world’s sole economic giant, while the Soviet Union, despite suffering immense dev-
astation, retained formidable military might. Occupying Europe as part of the vic-
torious alliance against Nazism and fascism, the two superpowers used Germany —
at the heart of the continent and its politics — to divide Europe in two. By the late
1940s, the USSR had imposed Communist rule throughout most of eastern Europe
as it gained control of the territory that the Nazis had desired for German settlement.
Western Europeans found themselves at least partially controlled by the very U.S.
economic power that helped them rebuild, especially because the United States main-
tained air bases and nuclear weapons sites on their soil. The new age of bipolar world
politics made Europe its testing ground.
Chaos in Europe
In contrast to the often stationary trench warfare of World War I, armies in World
War II had fought a war of movement on the ground and in the air. Massive bomb-
ing had leveled thousands of square miles of territory, and whole cities were clogged
with rubble. On the Rhine River, almost no bridge remained standing; in the Soviet
Union, seventy thousand villages and more than a thousand cities lay in shambles.
Everywhere people were suffering. In the Netherlands, the severity of Nazi occupa-
tion left the Dutch population close to death, relieved only by a U.S. airlift of food.
To control scarce supplies, Italian bakers sold bread by the slice. Allied troops in
Germany were almost the sole source of food: “To see the children fighting for food,”
remarked one British soldier handing out supplies, “was like watching animals being
fed in a zoo.” There were no mass uprisings as after World War I; until the late 1940s,
people were too absorbed by the struggle for bare survival.
The tens of millions of refugees suffered the most, as they wandered a continent
where the dangers of assault, robbery, and ethnic violence were great. An estimated
thirty million Europeans, many of German ethnicity, were forcibly expelled from
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary (Map 27.1). The USSR lobbied hard for the
return of several million Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers, and the Allies
transported millions of Soviet refugees home. The Allies slowed the process when
they discovered that Soviet leaders had ordered the execution of many of the return-
ees for being “contaminated” by Western ideas.
Survivors of the concentration camps discovered that their suffering had not ended
with Germany’s defeat. Many returned home diseased and disoriented, while others had
no home to return to because their property had been confiscated. Anti-Semitism —
official policy under the Nazis — lingered in popular attitudes, and people used it to
justify their claim to Jewish property and to jobs vacated by Jews. In the summer of
1946, a vicious crowd in Kielce, Poland, assaulted some 250 Jewish survivors, killing
at least 40. Survivors fled to the port cities of Italy and other Mediterranean countries,
eventually leaving Europe for Palestine, where Zionists had been settling for half a
century.
[ 1945–1960s
]
0 200 400 miles Lost by Germany to Poland, 1945
From Finland,
0 200 400 kilometers 1940–56 Territory gained by Soviet Union
FINLAND Allied occupation of
N Germany and Austria, 1945–55
W NORWAY 410,000 Lost by Italy to Yugoslavia, 1945
E
SWEDEN Lost by Romania to Bulgaria, 1940–47
S 40,000
Estonia Zones of occupation
00 To USSR, 1940
60,0 United States
a
British
Se
Latvia 100,000 French
To USSR, 1940
North
90 c
00
ti
Soviet
DENMARK
,0
UNITED Sea 00Lithuania
80,000
al
B 0,0 To USSR, 1940
IRELAND KINGDOM 1,950,000
5 Jointly occupied cities
Refugee movements and

1,900,000 2,300,000 repatriated armed forces
NETH. Germans
Berlin
1,850,000 Warsaw Finns
EAST3,2 POLAND From Poland,
BELG. 1940–47
Baltic peoples
Rhi
50,00 3,000,000
GERMANY 0
ne R
Brussels Kielce Russians

1,000,000 1,500,000
.
WEST2,900,000 5,500,000 Poles

Paris
LUX. GERMANY C ZECH
1,950,000
From Czechoslovakia,
OSLOVAK 1940–47 Ukraine Czechs
U S S R
IA People settled by the
Vienna
Be
International Refugee Organization
ATLANTIC FRANCE
20
ssa
0,0 Budapest
SWITZ. AUSTRIA 00 From Romania, Odessa
rab
OCEAN HUNGARY
5
1940–47
0,
ia
2
00
ROMANIA
5
0
0
Yalta
,0
0
0
Black Sea
Ad YUGOSLAVIA
ria
ITALY tic BULGARIA
Se
SPAIN Rome a
Istanbul
ALBANIA
TURKEY
GREECE
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Sicily
MAP 27.1 The Impact of World War II on Europe

European governments, many of them struggling to provide food and other necessities for their
populations, found themselves responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new
refugees. Simultaneously, millions of prisoners of war, ser vicemen, and slave laborers were
returned to the Soviet Union, many of them by force. This situation unfolded amid political insta-
bility and even violence. What does the movement of peoples shown on the map suggest about
social conditions in post–World War II Europe?
New Superpowers: The United States and the Soviet Union

Only two countries were still powerful in 1945: the United States and the Soviet
Union. The United States was now the richest nation in the world. Its industrial
output had increased by a remarkable 15 percent annually between 1940 and 1944.
By 1947, the United States controlled almost two-thirds of the world’s gold bullion
and launched more than half of the world’s commercial shipping. Continued spend-
ing on industrial and military research added to postwar prosperity. In contrast to
[1945–1960s
the post–World War I policy of isolationism, Americans embraced global leadership.

Many had learned about the world while tracking the war’s progress. Despite wide-
spread fear of nuclear annihilation, a wave of suburban housing development and
consumer spending kept the economy buoyant. A baby boom exploded from the late
1940s through the early 1960s in response to prosperity.
The Soviets also emerged from the war with a well-justified sense of accomplish-
ment. Despite horrendous losses — now estimated to be as many as forty-five million
lives lost in the war itself — they had resisted the most massive onslaught ever launched
against a nation. Indeed many Europeans and Americans gratefully acknowledged
the Soviet contribution to Hitler’s defeat. Ordinary Soviet citizens believed that the
victory would lead to improvement in everyday conditions. Rumors spread among
the peasants that the collective farms would be divided and returned to them as
individual property. “Life will become pleasant,” one writer prophesied. “There will
be much coming and going, and a lot of contacts with the West.” The Stalinist goals
of industrialization and defense against Nazism had been won, and thus many Sovi-
ets, among them Boris Pasternak, anticipated an end to decades of hardship and
repression.
Stalin took a different view and moved ruthlessly to reassert control. In 1946,
his new five-year plan set increased production goals and mandated more stringent
collectivization of agriculture. For him, rapid recovery meant more work, not less,
and more order, not greater freedom. Stalin also turned his attention to the low
birthrate, a result of wartime male casualties and women’s long, arduous working
days. He introduced an intense propaganda campaign emphasizing that women
should hold down jobs and also fulfill their “true nature” by producing many chil-
dren. A new round of purges began in which people were told that enemies among
them were threatening the state. Jews were especially targeted, and in 1953 the gov-
ernment announced that doctors — most of them Jews — had long been assassinating
Soviet leaders, murdering newborns and patients in hospitals, and plotting to poison
water supplies. Hysteria gripped the nation, and people feared for their lives. “I am
a simple worker and not an anti-Semite,” one Moscow resident wrote, “but I say . . .
it’s time to clean these people out.” With this rebirth of Stalinism, an atmosphere of
fear returned to feed the cold war.
Origins of the Cold War

The cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, which began in 1945,
would afflict the world for more than four decades. No peace treaty officially ended
World War II to document what went wrong, as in the Peace of Paris of 1919–1920.
Therefore, the origins of the cold war remain a matter of debate, with historians
faulting both sides for starting the dangerous rivalry. Some point to consistent U.S.,
British, and French hostility to the Soviets because of Communists’ abolition of
private property and Russia’s withdrawal from World War I. Others stress Stalin’s
aggressive policies, notably the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact and Soviet expansionism.
[ 1945–1960s
]
The Cold War Suspicion ran deep among the
Allied leadership during the war: Stalin
1945–1949 USSR establishes satellite states in believed that Churchill and Roosevelt
eastern Europe
were deliberately letting the USSR bear
1947 Truman Doctrine announces American
commitment to contain communism;
the brunt of Hitler’s rampage across the
Marshall Plan provides massive aid continent as part of their anti-Communist
to rebuild Europe policy. He rightly viewed Churchill in
1948–1949 Soviet troops blockade Berlin; United particular as interested primarily in pre-
States airlifts provisions to Berliners serving Britain’s imperial power, no mat-
1949 West Germany and East Germany ter what the cost in Soviet lives. At the
are formed; Western nations form
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
time, some Americans believed that
(NATO); Soviet bloc establishes dropping the atomic bomb on Japan
Council for Mutual Economic would also frighten the Soviets and dis-
Assistance (COMECON); USSR
courage them from making any more
tests its first nuclear weapon
land grabs. In addition, the new U.S.
1950–1953 Korean War
president, Harry Truman, cut off aid to
1950–1954 U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy leads
hunt for American Communists
the USSR almost the instant the last gun
was fired, fueling Stalin’s suspicions and
1953 Stalin dies
leading to the takeover of eastern Europe
1955 USSR and eastern-bloc countries
form military alliance, the Warsaw as a permanent “buffer zone” of depen-
Pact dent European states. Across the Atlantic,
1956 Khrushchev denounces Stalin in members of the U.S. State Department
“secret speech” to Communist fueled U.S. fears by depicting Stalin as
Party Congress; Hungarians revolt
another in a long line of neurotic Asian
unsuccessfully against Soviet
domination tyrants thirsting for world domination.
1959 Fidel Castro comes to power in Cuba The cold war thus became a series of
1961 Berlin Wall is erected
moves and countermoves in the shared
occupation of a rich European heartland
1962 Cuban missile crisis
that had fallen into chaos. In line with
the view of its political needs, the USSR
repressed democratic coalition governments of liberals, socialists, Communists, and
peasant parties in central and eastern Europe between 1945 and 1949. It imposed
Communist rule almost immediately in Bulgaria and Romania. In Romania, Stalin
cited citizen violence in 1945 as the excuse to demand an ouster of all non-
Communists from the civil service and cabinet. In Poland, the Communists fixed the
election results of 1945 and 1946 to create the illusion of approval for communism.
The United States worried that Communist power would spread to western
Europe. The Communists’ promises of better conditions appealed to hungry workers
in Europe, while memories of Communist leadership in the resistance to fascism
gave it powerful appeal. In March 1947, Truman reacted by announcing the Truman
Doctrine — the use of economic and military aid to block communism. The presi-
dent requested $400 million in military aid for Greece and Turkey, where the Com-
munists were also exerting pressure. Fearing that Americans would balk at backing
[1945–1960s
Marshall Plan Poster

The Marshall Plan was a major factor in
both western European recovery and the
cold war. This poster, in French, adver-
tises the aim of the plan as “to rebuild
Europe.” Other posters showed the aid
as coming from America including “grain,
coal, food, and medical supplies.” Given
this advertising, what would you judge
the poster’s effect to be? (‘Reconstruire
l’europe’, poster advertising the European Recov-
ery Program [Marshall Plan], France, 1950, [colour
litho], Wyss, Alban [1927–2006] / Deutsches
Historisches Museum, Berlin, Germany / © DHM /
Bridgeman Images.)
an undemocratic Greece, the U.S.

Congress said it would agree to the
program only if, as one congressman
put it, Truman would “scare the hell
out of the country.” Truman thus
publicized the expensive aid pro-
gram as a necessary first step to pre-
vent Soviet conquest of the world.
The show of American support
made the Communists back off.
In 1947, the United States also devised the Marshall Plan — a program of mas-
sive economic aid to Europe — to relieve the daily hardships that were making com-
munism attractive to Europeans. “The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by
misery and want,” Truman warned. Named after Secretary of State George C. Mar-
shall, who proposed the plan, the program’s direct aid would immediately improve
everyday life, while its loans and financial credits would restart international trade.
The government claimed that the Marshall Plan was not directed “against any coun-
try or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” By the early
1950s, the United States had sent Europe more than $12 billion in food, equipment,
and services, reducing communism’s appeal in the countries of western Europe that
received the aid.
Stalin saw the Marshall Plan as a U.S. political trick because the devastated
USSR had little aid to offer client countries in eastern and central Europe. He thus
clamped down still harder on eastern European governments, preventing them from
responding to the U.S. offer of assistance and eliminating the last scraps of democ-
racy in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The populace accepted the change so
passively that Communist leaders said the takeover was “like cutting butter with a
knife.”
The only exception to the Soviet sweep in eastern Europe came in Yugoslavia,
under the Communist ruler known as Tito (Josip Broz, 1892–1980). During the war,
[ 1945–1960s
]
AUSTRIA HUNGARY
Tito had led the powerful anti-Nazi Yugoslav “par-
Slovenia ROMANIA
tisans.” After the war, he drew on support from
Croatia Vojvodina Serbs, Croats, and Muslims to mount a Commu-
Bosnia and Belgrade nist revolution, but one explicitly meant to avoid
Herzegovina
Serbia Soviet influence. Eager for Yugoslavia to develop
Montenegro industrially rather than simply serve Soviet needs,
Kosovo BULG.
Tito remarked, “We study and take as an example
ITALY Macedonia
the Soviet system, but we are developing socialism
ALBANIA
Yugoslavia GREECE in our country in somewhat different forms.” Sta-
lin was furious; in his eyes, commitment to com-
Yugoslavia after the Revolution munism meant obedience to him. Nonetheless,
Yugoslavia emerged from its Communist revolu-
tion as a culturally diverse federation of six republics and two independent provinces
within Serbia that held together until Tito’s death in 1980.
The Division of Germany

The superpower struggle for control of Germany took the cold war to a menacing
level. The agreements reached at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945 pro-
vided for Germany’s division into four zones, each of which was controlled by one
of the four principal victors in World War II — the United States, the Soviet Union,
Britain, and France. However, the superpowers disagreed on how to treat Germany.
The U.S. occupation forces undertook to reprogram German attitudes by controlling
the press and censoring all media in the U.S. zone to ensure that they did not express
fascist values. In contrast, believing that Nazism was an extreme form of capitalism,
Stalin confiscated the estates of wealthy Germans and redistributed them to ordinary
people and supporters.
A second disagreement, concerning the economy, led to Germany’s partition.
According to the American plan for coordinating the various segments of the Ger-
man economy, surplus crops from the Soviet-occupied areas would feed urban popu-
lations in the western zones; in turn, industrial goods would be sent to the USSR.
The Soviets upset this plan. Following the Allied agreement that the USSR would
receive reparations from German resources, the Soviets seized German equipment,
shipping it all to the Soviet Union. They transported skilled German workers, engi-
neers, and scientists to the USSR to work as forced laborers. The Soviets also manip-
ulated the currency in their zone, enabling the USSR to buy German goods at
unfairly low prices. In response, the western Allies agreed to merge their zones into
a West German state, and the United States began an economic buildup of the west-
ern zone under the Marshall Plan. Notions of a permanently weakened Germany
ended as the United States enlisted many former Nazi officials as spies and bureau-
crats to jump-start the economy and pursue the cold war.
On July 24, 1948, Stalin retaliated by using Soviet troops to blockade Germany’s
capital, Berlin. Like Germany as a whole, the city — located more than one hundred
[1945–1960s
MAP 27.2 Divided Germany and N

West Germany
the Berlin Airlift, 1946–1949
W East Germany
Berlin — controlled by the United E
Air corridor
States, Great Britain, France, and S
Hamburg 0 50 100 miles
the Soviet Union — was deep in the
Soviet zone of occupation and 0 50 100 kilometers
became a major point of conten- NETH. Hanover

tion among the former allies. When Berlin
British zone
the USSR blockaded the western POLAND
half of the city, the United States Soviet zone
BELG.
responded with a massive airlift.
To stop movement between the two
French Frankfurt
zones, the USSR built the Berlin zone
LUX. CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Wall in 1961 and used troops to American zone
patrol it. FRANCE
French
British Soviet
BERLIN
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA American
miles deep into the Soviet zone and thus cut off from western territory — had been
divided into four occupation zones. The Soviets also refused to allow western
vehicles to travel through the Soviet zone to reach Berlin. The United States
responded decisively with the Berlin airlift — Operation Vittles, as U.S. pilots called
it — flying in millions of tons of provisions to some two million isolated citizens
(Map 27.2). Given the limited number of available transport planes, pilots kept the
plane engines on to achieve a rapid turnaround that would ensure adequate delivery.
The Soviets ended their blockade in May 1949, but the cold war rhetoric of good
versus evil made the divided capital of Berlin an enduring symbol of the capitalist-
communist divide.
The creation of competing military alliances added to cold war tensions (Map
27.3). A few months after the establishment of the West German state in 1948, the
USSR formed an East German state. In 1949, the United States, Canada, and their
allies in western Europe and Scandinavia formed the North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
nization (NATO), which provided a unified military force for its member countries.
In 1955, after the United States forced France and Britain to invite West Germany
to join NATO, the Soviet Union retaliated by establishing with its satellite countries
the military organization commonly called the Warsaw Pact. By that time, both the
United States and the USSR had accelerated arms buildups: the Soviets had exploded
their own atomic bomb in 1949, and both
nations then tested increasingly powerful
nuclear weapons, outstripping the indi- REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
events in the development of the cold war?
vidual might of the formerly dominant
European powers.
[ 1945–1960s
]
N
MAP 27.3 European NATO
NATO
W Members and the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact E in the 1950s
0 250 500 miles S The two superpowers intensified
0 250 500 kilometers FINLAND their rivalry by creating large military
NORWAY alliances: NATO, formed in 1949,
SWEDEN included the United States and Can-
a
North ada as well as European states; the
Se
DENMARK
c
IRELAND Sea
lti
UNITED Ba Warsaw Pact was formed in 1955
KINGDOM USSR
NETH. EAST after NATO invited West German
GERMANYPOLAND
ATLANTIC BELG. membership. International politics
OCEAN WEST CZ
LUX. GERMANY ECHOSL revolved around these two alliances,
OVAK
IA
FRANCE SWITZ. AUSTRIA which faced off in the heart of Europe.
HUNGARY
ROMANIA War games for the two sides often
L
GA
YUGOSLAVIA Black
ITALY Sea assumed a massive war concen-
U
SPAIN BULGARIA
RT
(joined NATO 1975)

ALBANIA trated in central Europe over control
PO
(until 1961)
GREECE TURKEY
of Germany.
Political and Economic Recovery in Europe

The clash between the United States and the Soviet Union served as a background
to the remarkable recovery that took place in Europe. The first two items on the
political agenda were the eradication of the Nazi past and the establishment of stable
governments. While western Europe revived its democratic political structures and
productivity, eastern Europe was far less prosperous and far more repressive. Even
to the east, however, the conditions of everyday life improved as peasant societies
were forced to modernize and some consumer goods were restored. By 1960, people
across the continent were enjoying a higher standard of living than ever before.
Dealing with Nazism

In May 1945, the goals of feeding civilians, dealing with millions of refugees, purging
Nazis, and setting up peacetime governments all needed attention. Governments-
in-exile returned to reclaim power, but they often ran up against occupying armies
that were a law unto themselves. The Soviets were especially feared for inflicting rape
and robbery on Germans — abuses they justified by pointing to the tens of millions
of worse atrocities committed by the Nazis. Adding to the sense of disorder was the
lively trade in sex for food among starving civilians and well-supplied soldiers in all
armies. Employing swift vigilante justice, civilians released pent-up rage and punished
collaborators for their participation in genocide and occupation crimes. In France,
villagers often shaved the heads of women suspected of associating with Germans and
made some of them parade naked through the local streets. Members of the resistance
executed tens of thousands of Nazi officers and collaborators without trial.
[1945–1960s
] Political and Economic Recovery in Europe 909
Polish Refugees
These refugees, a handful among millions, are waiting for a train that might carry them to a
safer destination. The refugee situation was appalling, as ethnic Poles, Germans, Hungarians,
Croats, Czechs, and others were driven from areas where in some cases their families had lived
for centuries. The goal of many postwar governments was to “ethnically cleanse” regions along
the line of thought that grew up with Wilson’s Fourteen Points: that national ethnicities should
determine the kind of society and government they would have. (Photo by Fred Ramage / Keystone /
Getty Images.)
Allied representatives undertook what they claimed to be a systematic “denazi-

fication” that ranged from forcing German civilians to view the death camps to
bringing to trial suspected local collaborators. The trials conducted at Nuremberg,
Germany, by the victorious Allies in the fall of 1945 used the Nazis’ own documents
to reveal a horrifying panorama of crimes by Nazi leaders. Although international
law lacked any definition of genocide as a crime, the judges at Nuremberg found suf-
ficient cause to impose death sentences on half of the twenty-four defendants, among
them Hitler’s closest associates, and to give prison terms to the remainder. The Nurem-
berg trials introduced today’s notion of prosecution for crimes against humanity.
Allied prosecution of the Axis leadership was hardly thorough. Some of those
most responsible for war crimes were not pursued, leaving many Germans skeptical
about Allied intentions. As women in Germany faced violence at the hands of occu-
pying troops, endured starvation, and were forced to do the rough manual labor of
clearing rubble (see the image on page 911), Germans came to believe that they
themselves were the main victims of the war. Distrust mounted when Allied officials,
eager to restore government services and make western Europe more efficient than
[ 1945–1960s
]
Soviet-controlled eastern Europe, began to hire former high-ranking Fascists and
Nazis. Soon the new West German government proclaimed that the war’s real casual-
ties were the German prisoners of war still held in Soviet camps.
Rebirth of the West

Following the immediate postwar chaos, the first civilian governments in western
Europe reflected the broad coalitions of the resistance movements and other opposi-
tion to the Axis powers. These reform-minded governments conspicuously empha-
sized democratic values to show their rejection of the totalitarian regimes that had
earlier attracted so many Europeans. In France, the leader of the Free French, Gen-
eral Charles de Gaulle, governed briefly as chief of state, and the French approved a
constitution in 1946 that established the Fourth Republic and finally granted the vote
to French women. De Gaulle wanted a political system with a strong executive and,
failing to achieve that, soon resigned in favor of centrist and left-wing parties. Mean-
while, Italy replaced its constitutional monarchy with a republic that also allowed
women the vote for the first time. As in France, a resistance-based government was
soon replaced by a coalition headed by the conservative Christian Democrats,
descended from the traditional Catholic centrist parties of the prewar period. Other
countries likewise saw the growing influence of Christian politicians because of their
resistance to fascism.
Other voters in western Europe favored communist and labor parties. Symbol of
the common citizen, the Soviet soldier was a hero to many western Europeans outside
occupied Germany. People also remembered the hardships of the depression of the
1930s. Therefore, in Britain, despite the wartime successes of Winston Churchill’s Con-
servative Party leadership, the government of Labour Party leader Clement Attlee —
though not Communist — appeared most likely to fulfill promises to share prosperity
better among the classes. The extreme difficulties of the immediate postwar years
provided further support for governments that would represent the millions of ordi-
nary citizens who had suffered, fought, and worked incredibly hard during the war.
In West Germany, however, with the Communist takeovers occurring directly
to the east and with memories of the millions of German soldiers who had died at
the hands of the Red Army, communism and the left in general had little appeal.
In 1949, centrist politicians came to power in the new state, officially named the
German Federal Republic, whose constitution aimed to prevent the emergence of a
dictator and to guarantee individual rights. West Germany’s first chancellor was the
seventy-three-year-old Catholic anti-Communist Konrad Adenauer, who allied him-
self with the economist Ludwig Erhard. Erhard stabilized the postwar German cur-
rency so that people would have enough confidence in its soundness to resume
normal trade and manufacturing, while Adenauer restored the representative gov-
ernment that Hitler had overthrown.
Paradoxically, given its leadership in the fight against fascism, the United States
was a country in which individual freedom and democracy were imperiled after the
[1945–1960s
Women Clearing Berlin

The amount of destruction caused by World War II was staggering, requiring the mobilization of
the civilian population in Berlin, where women were conscripted to sort the rubble and clear it
away. Scenes like this were ultimately used as propaganda in the cold war to make it seem as
if the Germans were the victims rather than the perpetrators of the war. That German soldiers
held in Soviet camps were only slowly repatriated added to the image of Soviet rather than Ger-
man aggression in World War II. (akg-images.)
war. Two events in 1949 — the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic bomb and
the Communist revolution in China — brought to the fore Joseph McCarthy, a U.S.
senator fearing a reelection defeat. To win the election, McCarthy warned of a great
conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. As during the Soviet purges, people
of all occupations — including government workers, film stars, and union leaders —
were called before U.S. congressional panels to confess, testify against friends, and
say whether they had ever had Communist sympathies. The atmosphere was electric
with confusion, for only five years before, the mass media had run glowing stories
about Stalin and the Soviet system. By 1952, however, millions of Americans had
been investigated, imprisoned, or fired from their jobs. McCarthy personally oversaw
book burnings, and although the Senate finally voted to censure him in the winter
of 1954, fearfulness and anticommunism had come to dominate political life.
Given the wartime destruction, the economic rebirth of western Europe was even
more surprising than the revival of democracy. In the first weeks and months after
the war, the job of rebuilding often involved menial physical labor that mobilized
[ 1945–1960s
]
entire populations for such jobs as clearing the massive urban rubble by hand. Ini-
tially, governments diverted labor and capital into rebuilding transportation, com-
munications, and industrial capacity instead of producing consumer goods. How-
ever, the scarcity of household goods sparked unrest. In the midst of this growing
discontent, the Marshall Plan suddenly boosted recovery with American dollars;
food and consumer goods became more plentiful; and demand for automobiles,
washing machines, and vacuum cleaners accelerated economic growth.
The postwar recovery was helped by the continuation of military spending for
the cold war and the adaptation of wartime technology to meet consumer needs.
Civilian travel expanded as nations organized their own airlines based on improved
airplane technology. Developed to relieve wartime shortages, synthetic goods such
as nylon and a vast assortment of plastic products, ranging from pipes to rainwear,
enriched civilian life. Governments also ordered bombs, fighter planes, tanks, and
missiles and sponsored military research. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950
(see page 919) increased U.S. orders for manufactured goods to wage that war, further
sustaining economic growth in Europe. Ultimately, the cold war prevented a repeat
of the 1920s, when reduced military spending threw people out of jobs and fed the
growth of fascism.
Large and small European states alike developed and redeveloped modern econ-
omies in short order. In the twelve principal countries of western Europe, the annual
rate of economic growth had been 1.3 percent per inhabitant between 1870 and
1913. Those countries almost tripled that rate between 1950 and 1973, attaining an
annual per capita growth rate of 3.8 percent. Among the larger powers, West Ger-
many surprisingly became the economic leader, achieving by the 1960s a stunning
revival called the “economic miracle.” The smaller Scandinavian countries also
achieved a notable recovery: Sweden succeeded in the development of automobile,
truck, and shipbuilding industries. Finland modernized its industry and agriculture,
which in turn forced the surplus farm population to seek factory work. Scandinavian
women joined the workforce in record numbers, which also boosted economic
growth and expanded prosperity. The thirty years after World War II were a golden
age of European economic revival.
The creation of the Common Market, which evolved over time to become the
European Union, was the final ingredient in the postwar recovery. In 1951, Italy,
France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands took a major
step toward cooperation when they formed the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) — an organization to manage the joint production of basic resources. Accord-
ing to the ECSC’s principal architect, Robert Schuman, ties created by joint produc-
tivity and trade would keep France and Germany from another cataclysmic war.
Then in 1957, the six ECSC members signed the Treaty of Rome, which provided
for a more general trading partnership called the European Economic Community
(EEC), known popularly as the Common Market. The EEC reduced tariffs among
the six partners, developed common trade policies, and brought under one coopera-
tive economic umbrella more than two hundred million consumers. According to
[
1945–1960s
one of its founders, the EEC aimed to “prevent the race of nationalism, which is the
true curse of the modern world.” Increased cooperation produced great economic
rewards for the six members, whose rates of economic growth soared.
Britain pointedly refused to join the partnership at first. Membership would have
required it to surrender certain imperial trading rights among its Commonwealth
partners such as Australia and Canada and, as one British politician put it, make
Britain “just another European country.” Even without Britain, the rising prosperity
of a new western Europe joined in the Common Market was striking.
Economic planning and coordination by specialists (as developed during war-
time) shaped the Common Market. Called technocrats, specialists working for the
Common Market were to base decisions on expertise rather than on personal interest
and on the goals of the organization as a whole rather than on the demands of any
one nation. The aim was to reduce the potential for irrationality and violence in
politics, both domestic and international. Administered by a commission of techno-
crats based in Brussels, Belgium, the Common Market transcended the borders of
the nation-state and thus exceeded the power of many elected politicians.
The Welfare State: Common Ground East and West

On both sides of the cold war divide, governments channeled new resources into
state-financed programs such as pensions, disability insurance, and national health
care. These social programs taken as a whole became known as the welfare state,
indicating that states were no longer interested solely in maintaining order and aug-
menting their power. Veterans’ pensions and programs were primary, but the welfare
state extended beyond those who had sacrificed in wartime. Because the European
population had declined during the war, almost all countries now desperately wanted
to boost the birthrate and thus gave couples direct financial aid for having children.
Imitating the social security programs initiated under Bismarck in Germany in the
1870s and the more sweeping Swedish programs of the 1930s, nations expanded or
created family allowances, health care and medical benefits, and programs for preg-
nant women and new mothers.
Some welfare-state policies had a strong gender bias against women. Britain’s
maternity benefits and child allowances favored women who did not work outside
the home by providing little coverage for workingwomen. The West German govern-
ment passed strict legislation that forced employers to give women maternity leave,
thus discouraging them from hiring women. It also cut back or eliminated pensions
and benefits to married women. In fact, West Germans bragged about removing
women from the workforce, claiming that doing so distinguished democratic prac-
tices from Communist ones. The refusal to build day-care centers or to allow stores
to remain open in the evening so that workingwomen could buy food for their
families led West Germany to have among the lowest rates of female employment of
any industrial country. Another result of West Germany’s discriminatory policies was
a high rate of female poverty in old age.
[ 1945–1960s
]
The Welfare State in Action, 1947
The Danish creche, or day-care center,
here shows the welfare state in
action. Government programs to
maintain the well-being of citizens
became almost universally available
in Europe, Canada, and (to a lesser
extent) the United States. Children
were seen as particularly important,
given the loss of life in the war, so
governments encouraged couples to
reproduce through up-to-date health
care systems, day-care centers, and
generous family allowances to sup-
port family growth. (Hulton Archive /
Getty Images.)
By contrast, in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, where wartime loss of life
had been enormous, women worked nearly full-time and usually outnumbered men
in the workforce. As in many western European countries, however, child-care pro-
grams, family allowances, and maternity benefits were designed to encourage preg-
nancies by workingwomen. The scarcity of consumer goods and the lack of house-
hold conveniences discouraged workingwomen in Communist countries from having
large families no matter what the government wanted. Because women bore the sole
burden of domestic duties under such conditions on top of their paying jobs, birth-
rates in the eastern bloc stagnated.
Across Europe, welfare-state programs aimed to improve people’s well-being. State-
funded health care systems covered medical needs in most industrial nations except the
United States. The combination of better material conditions and state provision of
health care dramatically extended life expectancy and lowered rates of infant mortality.
Contributing to the overall progress, vaccines greatly reduced the death toll from such
diseases as tuberculosis, diphtheria, measles, and polio. In England, schoolchildren
stood an inch taller, on average, than children the same age had a decade earlier.
State initiatives in other areas played a role in raising the standard of living. A
growing network of government-built atomic power plants brought more thorough
electrification of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Governments legislated more
leisure time for workers; for example, Italian workers received twenty-eight paid
[
1945–1960s
holidays annually. To rebuild, postwar governments sponsored new suburbs around

the edges of major urban areas in both eastern and western Europe. Many buildings
went up slapdash, but they dramatically improved living conditions for postwar refu-
gees, workers, and immigrants.
Recovery in the East

To create a Soviet bloc according to Stalin’s vision, Communists revived the harsh
methods that had transformed peasant economies earlier in the century. In eastern
Europe, Stalin not only continued to collectivize agriculture but also brought about
badly needed industrialization through the nationalization of private property. The
process was brutal, and people later looked back on the 1950s as dreadful. But some
workers in the countryside felt that ultimately their lives and their children’s lives
had improved. “Before we peasants were dirty and poor, we worked like dogs. . . .
Was that a good life? No sir, it wasn’t. . . . I was a miserable sharecropper and my
son is an engineer,” said one Romanian peasant. Despite modernization, government
investment in agriculture was never high enough to produce the bumper crops of
western Europe, and even the USSR depended on produce from the small plots that
enterprising farmers cultivated on the side.
Stalin admired American industrial know-how and prodded the Communist
economies to match U.S. productivity. The Soviet Union formed regional organiza-
tions like those in the West, instituting the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(COMECON) in 1949 to coordinate economic relations among the satellite countries
of the USSR and Moscow. The terms of the COMECON relationship worked against
the satellite states, however, for the USSR was allowed to buy goods from its clients
at bargain prices and sell goods to them at exorbitant ones. Nonetheless, these for-
merly peasant states became oriented toward technology and industrial economies
directed by bureaucrats, who touted the virtues of steel plants and modern transport.
The Roman Catholic church often protested the imposition of communism, but the
government crushed it as much as possible or used agents to infiltrate it.
Culture, along with technology, was a building block of Stalinism in both the
USSR and its satellite countries. State-instituted programs aimed to build loyalty to
the modernizing regime; thus, citizens were obliged to attend adult education classes,
women’s groups, and public ceremonies. An intense program of de-Christianization
and Russification forced non-Russian students in eastern Europe to read histories of
the war that ignored their own country’s resistance and gave the Red Army sole
credit for fighting the Nazis. Rigid censorship resulted in what even one Communist
writer in the USSR characterized as “a dreary torrent of colorless, mediocre litera-
ture.” Stalin also purged prominent wartime leaders to ensure obedience and con-
formity. Marshal Zhukov, a popular leader of the Soviet armed forces, was shipped
to a distant command, while Anna Akhmatova, a widely admired poet who cham-
pioned wartime resistance to the Nazis, was confined to a crowded hospital room
because she refused to glorify Stalin in her postwar poetry.
[ 1945–1960s
]
Propaganda for
Collective Farming
Dramatic changes were in store
for people in eastern Europe who
fell under Communist control after
World War II. Most objectionable
was the policy of collective farm-
ing, which stripped farmers of
their lands and forced them to
farm state property as a group.
The poster aims to show Czechs
that farming will bring huge ben-
efits, including personal satisfac-
tion. How do you interpret this
poster, and why does a woman
figure so prominently? (German
Poster Museum, Essen / Marc Charmet /
The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
In March 1953, amid growing repression, Stalin died, and it soon became clear
that the old ways would not hold. Political prisoners in the labor camps rebelled,
leading to the release of more than a million people from the Gulag. In June 1953,
workers in East German cities, many of them socialists and antifascist activists from
before the war, protested the rise of privileged Communists in a series of strikes that
spread like wildfire. At the other end of the social order, Soviet officials, despite
enjoying luxury goods and plentiful food, had come to distrust Stalinism and now
favored change. To calm protests across the Soviet bloc, governments stepped up the
production of consumer goods — a policy called goulash communism (after the Hun-
garian stew) because it resulted in more food for ordinary people.
In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), an illiterate coal miner before the
Bolshevik Revolution, outmaneuvered other rivals to become the undisputed leader
of the Soviet Union — but he did so without the Stalinist practice of executing his
opponents. Khrushchev then made the surprising move of attacking Stalin. At a
party congress in 1956, he denounced the “cult of personality” Stalin had built about
himself and announced that Stalinism did not equal communism. Khrushchev thus
cleverly attributed problems with communism to a single individual. The “secret
[1945–1960s
] Decolonization in a Cold War Climate 917
speech” was a bombshell. Debates broke out in public, and books appeared champi-
oning the ordinary worker against the party bureaucracy. The climate of relative
tolerance for free expression after Stalin’s death was called the thaw.
In early summer 1956, discontented Polish railroad workers struck for better
wages, and angry Hungarians rebelled against forced collectivization in October
1956. As in Poland, economic issues (especially announcements of reduced wages)
and reports of Stalin’s crimes contributed to the outbreak of violence in Hungary.
Soon targeting the entire Communist system, tens of thousands of protesters filled
the streets of Budapest and returned a popular hero, Imre Nagy, to power. When
Nagy announced that Hungary might leave the Warsaw Pact, however, Soviet troops
moved in, killing tens of thousands and causing hundreds of thousands more to flee
to the West. Nagy was hanged. Despite a rhetoric of democracy, the United States
refused to intervene in Hungary, choosing not to risk World War III by challenging
the Soviet sphere of influence.
The failure of eastern European uprisings overshadowed the significant changes
that had taken place since Stalin’s death. While defeating his rivals, Khrushchev
ended the Stalinist purges, reformed the courts, and curbed the secret police. “It has
become more interesting to visit and see people,” Boris Pasternak said of the changes.
“It has become easier to work.” In 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the first
artificial earth satellite, Sputnik, and in 1961 they put the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin,
in orbit around the earth. The Soviets’ edge in space technology shocked the western
bloc and motivated the creation of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration (NASA). For Soviet citizens, such successes indicated that the USSR had
achieved Stalin’s goal of modernization and might inch further toward freedom.
Khrushchev, however, was inconsistent, showing himself open to changes in
Soviet culture at one moment and then bullying honest writers at another. After
assaulting Pasternak because of his novel Doctor Zhivago, in 1961 he allowed the
publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. This
chilling account of life in the Gulag was useful, however, in underscoring Stalin’s
crimes and excesses. Under the thaw, Khrushchev made several trips to the West
and took steps to expand communism’s
appeal in the new nations of Asia, Africa,
REVIEW QUESTION What factors drove
and Latin America. Despite the USSR’s recovery in western Europe and in eastern
more relaxed posture, however, the super- Europe?
powers moved closer to the nuclear brink.
Decolonization in a Cold War Climate

After World War II, activists in colonized regions in Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East used the postwar chaos and the cold war to achieve their long-held goal of
liberation. At war’s end, the colonial powers attempted to reimpose their control as
if they were still dominant around the world. Yet colonized peoples had been on the
front lines defending the West; and as in World War I, they had witnessed the full
[ 1945–1960s
]
barbarism of Western warfare. Like African American soldiers in the U.S. army, they
experienced discrimination even while saving the West and, returning home, did not
receive the rights of citizenship promised them. Moreover, successive wars had
allowed local industries in the colonies to develop, while industry in the imperial
homelands fell into decline.
The path to independence — a process called decolonization — was paved with
difficulties. In India, Hindus and Muslims battled one another even though they
shared the goal of eliminating the British. In the Middle East and North Africa,
pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movements — that is, those wanting to bring together all
Arabs or all Muslims as the basis for decolonization — might seem to have been
unifying forces. Yet many Muslims were not Arab, not all Arabs were Muslim, and
Islam itself encompassed a range of beliefs. Differences among religious beliefs, eth-
nic groups, and cultural practices — many of them invented or promoted by the colo-
nizers to divide and rule — worked against political unity. Despite these complica-
tions, various peoples in what was coming to be called the third world succeeded in
overthrowing imperialism, while the United States and the Soviet Union rushed in
to co-opt them for the cold war.
The End of Empire in Asia

At the end of World War II, leaders in Asia succeeded in mobilizing mass discon-
tent to drive out foreign rulers. Declining from an imperial power to a small island
nation, Britain was the biggest loser. In 1947, it parted with India, whose indepen-
dence it had promised in the 1930s. Indian business leaders bought out British entre-
preneurs short of cash, and armed with an effective military, Indians began to face
off with the British in strikes and other protests. Britain quickly faced reality and
decreed that two independent countries should emerge from the old colony. The
partition of 1947 created India for Hindus and Pakistan (itself later divided into two
parts) for Muslims, but political tensions exploded among opposing members of the
two religions. Hundreds of thousands of people overall were massacred in the great
shift of populations between India and Pakistan. In 1948, a radical Hindu assassi-
nated Gandhi, who though a Hindu himself had continued to champion religious
reconciliation. Elsewhere, as some half a billion Asians gained their independence,
Britain’s sole remaining Asian colony of note was Hong Kong.
In 1949, after prolonged fighting, a Communist takeover in China brought in a
government led by Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Chinese communism in the new People’s
Republic of China emphasized above all that the country was no longer the plaything
of the colonial powers as Mao instituted reforms such as civil equality for women and
imposed Soviet-style collectivization and brutal repression of the privileged classes.
The United States and the Soviet Union were deeply interested in East Asia — the
United States because of the region’s economic importance, and the USSR because
of its shared borders. The victory of the Chinese Communists spurred both to
[1945–1960s
increase their involvement in Asian politics. The

C HI NA superpowers faced off first in Korea, which had
been split at the thirty-eighth parallel after World
War II. In 1950, the North Koreans, with the sup-
R.
alu port of the Soviet Union, invaded U.S.-backed
Y
Line of UN
advance
Nov. 1950
South Korea, whose agents had themselves been
NORTH stirring up tensions with raids across the border.
KOREA The United States maneuvered the Security Coun-
Armistice line,
Pyongyang
June 1953
cil of the United Nations into approving a “police
38th Parallel
action” against the North. After two and a half
Communist Seoul
North Koreans years of a horribly destructive stalemate, the
invade, 1950
SOUTH
opposing sides finally agreed to a settlement in
KOREA 1953: Korea would remain split at the thirty-eighth
parallel. As a result of the Korean War, the United
States increased its military spending from almost
$11 billion in 1948 to almost $60 billion in 1953.
0 75 150 miles An Asian counterpart to NATO, the U.S.-backed
0 75 150 kilometers JAPAN Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), was
established in 1954. Another effect of the Korean
The Korean War, 1950–1953 War was the rapid reindustrialization of Japan to
provide the United States with supplies.
The cold war then spread to Indochina (now
modern Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), where the
CHINA
European-educated Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) NORTH
had built a powerful organization, the Viet Minh, VIETNAM
Dien Bien Phu Hanoi
to fight colonial rule. He advocated the redistribu- 1954
Gulf of
tion of land held by big landowners, who pos- LAOS
Tonkin
sessed more than 60 percent of the land. In 1954, Division at the

17th Parallel
Viet Minh peasant guerrillas ultimately defeated
the technologically superior French army, which
was receiving aid from the United States. Later that THAILAND
year, the Geneva Conference carved out an inde-
pendent Laos and divided Vietnam along the sev-
enteenth parallel into North and South, each free CAMBODIA
from French control. The Communist-backed Viet SOUTH
Minh, under Ho Chi Minh as president, ruled in VIETNAM
the north, while the United States supported the Saigon
landowner-backed regime in the south. Continued

superpower intervention undermined the peace 0 150 300 miles
agreement as the superpowers fought the cold war 0 150 300 kilometers
in small foreign nations — conflicts now referred
to as proxy wars. Indochina, 1954
[ 1945–1960s
]
The Struggle for Identity in the Middle East
Independence struggles in the Middle East highlighted the world’s growing need for
oil and often showed the ability of small countries to maneuver between the super-
powers. As in other regions dominated by the West, Middle Eastern peoples resisted
attempts to reimpose imperial control after 1945. Weakened by the war, British oil
companies wanted to tighten their grip on profits. By playing the Western countries
against one another, however, Middle Eastern leaders gained their independence and
simultaneously renegotiated higher payments for drilling rights.
The legacy of the Holocaust complicated the Middle Eastern political scene.
Since early in the century Western backing for a Jewish settlement in the Middle
East had stirred up Arabs’ determination not to be pushed out of their ancient home-
land. When World War II broke out, 600,000 Jewish settlers and twice as many Arabs
lived, tensely, in British-controlled Palestine. In 1947, an exhausted Britain ceded
Palestine to the newly created United Nations, which voted to partition Palestine
into an Arab region and a Jewish one (Map 27.4). Hostility turned to open war,
which Jewish military forces won, and on May 14, 1948, the state of Israel came into
being. “The dream had come true,” Golda Meir, the future prime minister of Israel,
remembered, but “too late to save those who had perished in the Holocaust.” Israel
opened its gates to immigrants, pitting its expansionist ambitions against its Arab
neighbors.
One of those neighbors, Egypt, gained its independence from Britain at the end
of the war. Britain, however, still dominated shipping to Asia through its control of the
UN Partition Plan, 1947 LEBANON

Proposed Jewish state
Proposed Arab state Acre SYRIA
Haifa Sea of
Israel after the War Galilee
of Independence, 1948
Jordan R.
Tulkarm
N Nablus
Mediterranean Tel Aviv MAP 27.4 The Partition of
W E
Sea Jaffa Jericho
Palestine and the Creation
Jerusalem
of Israel, 1947–1948
S Gaza Hebron Dead
The creation of the Jewish state of
Port Said Sea
Israel in 1948 against a backdrop
Beersheba
of ongoing wars among Jews and
ISRAEL
Suez Canal
indigenous Arab peoples turned the

JORDAN Middle East into a powder keg, a situ-
NEGEV ation that has lasted until the present
EGYPT day. The struggle for resources and
for securing the borders of viable
SINAI PENINSULA nation-states was at the heart of
0 25 50 miles these bitter contests, threatening
to pull the superpowers into a third
0 25 50 kilometers
world war.
[1945–1960s
Emerging Nations
in the Cold War
Emerging nations could be the play-
things of the superpowers during
the cold war, but they could also
benefit from the rivalry. When Egyp-
tian president Gamal Abdel Nasser
refused U.S. military aid in the
1950s because of the supervision
the United States demanded,
Nasser turned to the Soviets and
received not only military support
but also a low-interest loan for the
Aswan Dam — the kind of develop-
ment project undertaken by
emerging nations to provide power
and water for both agriculture and
industry. In 1964, Nasser (right),
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
and Algerian president Ahmed Ben
Bella inaugurated the opening of
the dam. (Rue des Archives / The Granger
Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
Suez Canal. In 1952, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) became Egypt’s pres-
ident on a platform of economic modernization and true national independence —
meaning Egyptian control of the canal. In July 1956, Nasser nationalized the canal:
“I am speaking in the name of every Egyptian Arab,” he remarked in his speech
explaining the takeover, “and in the name of all free countries and of all those who
believe in liberty.” Nasser became a heroic figure to Arabs in the region, especially
when Britain, supported by Israel and France, attacked Egypt while the Hungarian
Revolution (see page 917) was in full swing. The British branded Nasser another
Hitler, but the United States, fearing that Egypt would turn to the USSR, made the
British back down. Nasser’s triumph inspired confidence that colonized peoples
around the world could gain true independence.
New Nations in Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, nationalist leaders roused their people to challenge Europe’s
increasing demands for resources and labor — demands that resulted in poverty for
African peoples. “The European Merchant is my shepherd, and I am in want,” went
one African version of the Twenty-third Psalm. At the war’s end, veterans returned
home and protest mounted. Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), for example, led the
inhabitants of the British-controlled West African Gold Coast in Gandhi-inspired
civil disobedience, finally driving the British out and bringing the state of Ghana
[ 1945–1960s
]
N
TUNISIA
1957 Mediterranean Sea W E
MOROCCO
1956
S
ALGERIA
WESTERN 1962 LIBYA EGYPT
SAHARA 1951 1922
1975
MAURITANIA
1960 MALI
1960 NIGER
SENEGAL 1960 CHAD
1960 GAMBIA BURKINA 1960 DJIBOUTI
SUDAN
1965 FASO 1956 1977
GUINEA 1960
DAHOMEY
1958 ETHIOPIA
IVORYGHANA1960 NIGERIA
GUINEA COAST 1957 1960 CENTRAL AFRICAN 1941
BISSAU 1960 CAMEROON REPUBLIC
1974 1960 1960
SIERRA TOGO SOMALIA
LEONE LIBERIA 1960 UGANDA 1960
1961 1820s EQUATORIAL CONGO 1962
GUINEA GABON (ZAIRE) KENYA
1968 1960 1960 1963
ATLANTIC BURUNDI
OCEAN CONGO RWANDA
1962
INDIAN
1960 1962
TANZANIA OCEAN
1960 Date of independence 1964
Former Ruler ANGOLA MALAWI 1964
0
Great 500
Britain 1,000 miles
1975 ZAMBIA 5
0 500 1,000 kilometers 1964 97
France 1
UE
MALAGASY
BIQ
Italy ZIMBABWE
1980 REPUBLIC
MOZAM
NAMIBIA 1960
Belgium 1990 BOTSWANA
Portugal From 1966
South Africa
Spain
SWAZILAND
Independent before 1968
World War II SOUTH
AFRICA LESOTHO
Areas of colonial conflict (Republic 1961) 1966
0 500 1,000 miles
Areas of postcolonial conflict
MAP 27.5 The Decolonization of Africa, 1951–1990

The liberation of Africa from European rule was an uneven process, sometimes occurring peace-
fully and at other times demanding armed struggle to drive out European settlers, governments,
and armies. The difficult — and costly — process of nation building following liberation involved
setting up state institutions, including educational and other ser vices. Creating national unity
out of many ethnicities also took work, except where the struggle against colonialism had
already brought people together.
into being in 1957. Nigeria, the most populous African region, achieved indepen-
dence in 1960, and many other African states also became free (Map 27.5).
In mixed-race territory with large settler populations, Europeans resisted giving
up their control. In British East Africa, where white settlers ruled in splendor and
where blacks lacked both land and economic opportunity, fighting erupted in the
1950s. African men formed rebel groups named Mau Mau but called by some the
Land and Freedom Army. With women serving as provisioners, messengers, and
weapon stealers, Mau Mau bands, composed mostly of war veterans from the Kikuyu
[1945–1960s
ethnic group, tried to recover land from whites. In 1964, Mau Mau resistance helped
Kenya gain formal independence, but only after the British had put hundreds of
thousands of Kikuyus in concentration camps — called a “living hell” and a “British
gulag” by those tortured there. The British slaughtered tens of thousands more.
France followed the British pattern of granting independence with relatively little
bloodshed to territories such as Tunisia, Morocco, and West Africa, where there were
few white settlers. In Algeria, however, which had one million settlers of European
descent, the French fought bitterly to keep control. In the final days of World War II,
the French army massacred tens of thousands of Algerian nationalists seeking inde-
pendence; however, the liberation movement resurfaced with new intensity in 1954
as the Front for National Liberation (FNL). The French dug in and savagely tortured
Algerian Arabs; Algerian women, shielded from suspicion by gender stereotypes,
planted bombs in European cafés and carried weapons to assassination sites. “The loss
of Algeria,” warned one statesman, defending French savagery, “would be an unprec-
edented national disaster,” while the FNL, far less powerful and smaller in number,
took its case to the court of world opinion. Reports of the French army’s barbarous
practices against Algeria’s Muslim population prompted protests in Paris and around
the globe, bringing wartime leader Charles de Gaulle to power in 1958. By 1962, de
Gaulle had negotiated independence with the Algerian nationalists, and hundreds of
thousands of Europeans in Algeria as well as their Arab supporters fled to France.
Violent resistance to the reimposition of colonial rule also ended the empires of
the Dutch and Belgians. As newly independent nations emerged in Asia, Africa, and
the Middle East, structures arose to promote international security and worldwide
deliberations, including representation from the new states. Foremost among these
organizations was the United Nations (UN), convened for the first time in 1945.
One notable change ensured the UN a greater chance of success than the League of
Nations: both the United States and the Soviet Union were active members from the
outset. The UN’s charter outlined a collective global authority that would resolve
conflicts and provide military protection if any members were threatened by aggres-
sion. In 1955, the Indonesian president Sukarno, who had succeeded in wrenching
Indonesian independence from the Dutch, sponsored the Bandung Convention of
nonaligned nations to set a common policy for achieving modernization and facing
the superpowers. Newly independent countries viewed the future with hope but still
had to contend with the high costs of nation building and problems left over from
decades of colonial exploitation.
Newcomers Arrive in Europe

Amid the uncertainties of wars of independence, people from the former colonies
began migrating to Europe — a reversal of the nineteenth-century trend of migration
out of Europe. The first non-Europeans came from Britain’s Caribbean territories right
after the war. Next, labor shortages in Germany, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere
drove governments to negotiate with southern European countries for temporary
[ 1945–1960s
]
workers. The German situation was particularly dire; in 1950, the working-age popu-
lation (people between the ages of fifteen and sixty-four) was composed of 15.5
million men and 18 million women. In an ideological climate that wanted women
out of the workforce, the government desperately needed immigrants. Germany and
France next turned to North African and then to sub-Saharan countries in the 1960s.
Immigrants from around the world flocked to Scandinavia because of reportedly
greater opportunity and social programs to integrate newcomers. By the 1980s, some
8 percent of the European population was foreign-born, compared with 6 percent in
the United States.
According to negotiated agreements, immigrant workers would have only tem-
porary resident status, with a regular process of return to their homeland. Turks and
Algerians would arrive in Germany or France, for example, to work for a set period
of time, return home temporarily to see their families, then head back to Europe for
another period as guest workers. They were welcomed because they took few social
Newcomers to Europe
World War II disrupted everyday life and patterns of trade not only in Europe but also around
the globe. Some of the first people to immigrate to Europe in search of postwar opportunity
were from the Caribbean (like these men photographed in London in 1956) and South Asia.
An expanding welfare state hired some of them to do menial work in hospitals, clinics, and con-
struction, no matter what their qualifications. Governments and businesses in western Europe
needed these new laborers to rebuild after World War II, and though some objected, many of
these workers — and their wives and children — became not only citizens but political, eco-
nomic, and cultural leaders as well. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis.)
[1945–1960s
] Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War 925
ser vices, not even needing education because they came as adults. For business-
people, temporary workers made good economic sense; often their menial work was
off the books. “As they are young,” one French business publication added, “the
immigrants often pay more in taxes than they receive in allowances.” Most immi-
grants did jobs that people in the West avoided: they collected garbage, built roads,
and cleaned homes. Although men predominated among migrant workers, women
performed similar chores for even less pay.
Immigrants came to see Europe as a land of relatively good government, wealth,
and opportunity. Living conditions, too, seemed decent to many. The advantages of
living in Europe, especially the higher wages, made many decide to stay and soon
attracted clandestine workers to countries like Italy that had formerly exported labor.
As empires collapsed, European populations became more diverse in terms of race,
religion, ethnicity, and social life. Across Europe and North America, many new-
comers eventually became citizens and
their children achieved good positions in REVIEW QUESTION What were the results
government, business, education, and the of decolonization?
professions.
Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War

Both World War II and the cold war shaped postwar culture. People across Europe
engaged in heated debates over who was responsible for Nazism and how to achieve
ethnic and racial justice. Europeans also discussed the Americanization that seemed
to accompany the influx of U.S. dollars, consumer goods, and cultural media. As
Europeans examined their war-filled past and their newfound prosperity, the cold
war menaced hopes for peace and stability. In 1961, the USSR demanded the con-
struction of a massive wall that physically divided the city of Berlin in half. In Octo-
ber 1962, the world held its breath while the leaders of the Soviet Union and the
United States nearly provoked nuclear conflagration over the issue of missiles on the
island of Cuba. In hindsight, the existence of extreme nuclear threat in an age of
unprecedented prosperity seems utterly bewildering, but for those who lived with
the threat of global annihilation, the dangers were all too real.
Restoring “Western” Values

After the depravity of Nazism and fascism, cultural currents in Europe and the United
States reemphasized universal values. Responding to what he saw as a crisis in faith
caused by affluence and secularism, Pope John XXIII (r. 1958–1963) in 1962 con-
vened the Second Vatican Council. Known as Vatican II, this council modernized
the liturgy, democratized many church procedures, and at the last session in 1965
renounced church doctrine that condemned the Jewish people as guilty of killing
Jesus. Vatican II promoted ecumenism — that is, mutual cooperation among the
world’s faiths — and outreach to the world without imperial designs.
[ 1945–1960s
]
In the early postwar years, people in the U.S. bloc emphasized the triumph of a
Western heritage, a Western civilization, and Western values as they encountered
“barbaric” forces, a concept that came to include nomadic tribes, Nazi armies, Com-
munist agents, or national liberation movements in Asia and Africa. Many white
Europeans looked back nostalgically on their imperial history and produced exotic
films and novels about conquest and its pageantry.
Readers around the world snapped up memoirs of the death camps and tales of
the resistance. Rescued from the Third Reich in 1940, Nelly Sachs won the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1966 for her poetry about the Holocaust. Anne Frank’s Diary
of a Young Girl (1947), the moving record of a Jewish teenager hidden with her
family in the back of an Amsterdam house, showed the survival of Western values
in the face of Nazi persecution. Amid the menacing evils of Nazism, Frank, who
died near the end of the war in the Bergen-Belsen camp, wrote that she never stopped
believing that “people are really good at heart.” Governments erected permanent
plaques at spots where resisters had been killed, and organizations of resisters pub-
licly commemorated their role in winning the war, hiding the fact of widespread
collaboration. Many a politician with a Nazi past returned easily to the new cultural
mainstream even as the stories of resistance took on mythical qualities.
At the end of the 1940s, existentialism became the rage among the cultural elites
and students in universities. This philosophy explored the meaning of human exis-
tence in a world where evil flourished. Two of existentialism’s leaders, Albert Camus
and Jean-Paul Sartre, confronted the question of “being,” given what they perceived
as the absence of God and the tragic breakdown of morality. Their answer was that
being, or existing, was not the automatic process either of God’s creation or of birth
into the natural world. One was not born with spiritual goodness in the image of a
creator, but instead one created an “authentic” existence through action and choice.
Sartre’s writings emphasized political activism and resistance under totalitarianism.
Even though they had never confronted the enormous problems of making choices
while living under fascism, young people in the 1950s found existentialism compel-
ling and made it the most fashionable philosophy of the day.
In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre’s lifetime companion, published the twen-
tieth century’s most important work on the condition of women, The Second Sex.
Beauvoir believed that most women had failed to take the kind of action necessary
to lead authentic lives. Instead, they lived in the world of biological necessity, devot-
ing themselves exclusively to having children. Failing to create an authentic self
through action and accomplishment, they had become its opposite — an object, or
“Other.” Moreover, instead of struggling to define themselves and assert their free-
dom, women passively accepted their lives as defined by men. Beauvoir’s now classic
book was a smash hit, and people wrote her thousands of letters asking for advice.
Both Sartre and Beauvoir became celebrities, for the media spread the new commit-
ment to humane values just as it had previously spread support for Nazism or for
other political ideas.
[
1945–1960s
People of color in Africa and Asia contributed new theories of humanity by

exploring the topics of liberation and racial difference. During the 1950s, Frantz
Fanon, a black psychiatrist from the French colony of Martinique, began analyzing
liberation movements, gaining his insights from his participation in the Algerian war
of liberation and other struggles at the time. He wrote that the mental functioning of
the colonized person was “traumatized” by the brutal imposition of an outside cul-
ture. Ruled by guns, the colonized person knew only violence and would thus natu-
rally decolonize by means of violence. Translated into many languages, Fanon’s Black
Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961) posed the question
of how to decolonize one’s culture and mind.
Simultaneously, the commitment to the cause of civil rights intensified in the
1950s. African Americans had fought in World War II to defeat the Nazi idea of
white racial superiority; as civilians, they now hoped to advance that ideal in the
United States. With its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the U.S. Supreme
Court declared that segregated education violated the U.S. Constitution. In Decem-
ber 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and part-time secretary
for the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), boarded a city bus and took the first available seat in the “colored”
section. When a white man found himself without a seat, the driver screamed at
Parks, “Nigger, move back.” She refused to move, and her studied use of civil dis-
obedience led to widespread nonviolent disobedience among African Americans
throughout the South. Talented leaders emerged, foremost among them the great
orator Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), a Baptist pastor from Georgia who advo-
cated “soulforce” — Gandhi’s satyagraha (“holding to truth”) — to counter aggression.
The postwar culture of nonviolence shaped the early years of the U.S. civil rights
movement until the influence of Fanon and other third world activists turned some
toward more violent activism.
Cold War Consumerism and Shifting Gender Norms

Government spending on Europe’s reconstruction and welfare after World War II
helped prevent the kind of upheaval that had followed World War I. Meanwhile, the
rising birthrate and bustling youth culture led to an upsurge in consumer spending
that created jobs for veterans. Nonetheless, the war had affected men’s roles and sense
of themselves. Young men who had missed World War II adopted the rough, violent
style of soldiers, and roaming gangs posed as tough military types. While Soviet
youth admired aviator aces, elsewhere groups such as the “teddy boys” in England
(named after their Edwardian style of dressing) and the gamberros (“hooligans”) in
Spain took their cues from pop culture in rock-and-roll music and film.
The leader of rock-and-roll style was the American singer Elvis Presley. Sporting
slicked-back hair and an aviator-style jacket, Presley bucked his hips and sang sexual
lyrics to screaming and devoted fans. Rock-and-roll concerts and movies galvanized
[ 1945–1960s
]
Rock and Roll

Rock and roll, born in the 1950s, swept cities around the world with unprecedented energy and
speed. Teen women wore the voluminous skirts that the “new look” had made fashionable in
the late 1940s, and young men sported hairdos like that of Elvis Presley. East and west, teens
thronged and even rioted to attend rock concerts and would continue to do so despite public
criticism and even police action against the movement. (ullstein bild / The Granger Collection, NYC —
youth across Europe, including the Soviet bloc, where teens demanded the produc-
tion of blue jeans and leather jackets. In a German nightclub late in the 1950s, mem-
bers of a British rock group of Elvis fans called the Quarrymen performed, yelling
at and fighting with one another as part of their show. They would soon become
known as the Beatles. Rebellious young American film stars like James Dean in Rebel
Without a Cause (1955) created the beginnings of a postwar youth culture in which
the ideal was to be a bad boy. The rebellious and rough masculine style appeared
also in literature, for example in James Watson’s autobiography, The Double Helix
(1968), in which he described how he and Francis Crick had discovered the structure
of the DNA molecule by stealing other people’s findings. American “beat” poets and
writers vehemently rejected the traditional ideals of the upright male breadwinner,
family man, and responsible achiever. The 1953 inaugural issue of the American
magazine Playboy, and the hundreds of magazines that imitated it across Europe,
presented the modern man as sexually aggressive and independent of dull domestic
[
1945–1960s
life — just as he had been in the war. The definition of men’s citizenship had come
to include not just political and economic rights but also sexual freedom outside the
restrictions of marriage.
In contrast, Western society promoted a postwar model for women that differed
from their wartime roles, adopting instead the fascist notion of women’s inferiority.
Rather than being essential workers and heads of families in the absence of their
men, postwar women were to symbolize the return to normalcy by leading a domes-
tic and submissive life at home. Late in the 1940s, the fashion house of Christian
Dior launched a clothing style called the “new look.” It featured pinched waists,
tightly fitting bodices, and voluminous skirts. This restoration of the nineteenth-
century female silhouette invited a renewal of clearly defined gender roles. Women’s
magazines publicized the new look and urged women to give up ambitions for them-
selves. Even in the hard-pressed Soviet Union, domesticity flourished; recipes for
homemade face creams, for example, passed from woman to woman, and beauty
parlors did a brisk business. In the West, household products such as refrigerators
and washing machines raised standards for housekeeping by giving women the
means to be “perfect” housewives.
However, new-look propaganda did not necessarily mesh with reality or even
with all social norms. Dressmaking fabric was still being rationed in the late 1940s;
even in the next decade, women could not always get enough of it to make volumi-
nous skirts. In Europe, where people had barely enough to eat, the underwear needed
for new-look contours simply did not exist — although for many, unfortunately, the
semistarved look was not achieved by choice. Moreover, European women continued
to work outside the home after the war; indeed, mature women and mothers were
working more than ever before — especially in the Soviet bloc. Across the Soviet
sphere consumer goods were always in short supply, but opinion makers stressed to
these women the importance of a tasteful and up-to-date domestic interior. East and
West, the female workforce was going through a profound revolution as it gradually
became populated by wives and mothers who would hold jobs all their lives despite
being bombarded with images of nineteenth-century femininity.
The advertising business presided over the creation of these cultural messages
as part of both the return of consumerism and the cold war. Guided by marketing
experts, western Europeans imitated Americans by drinking Coca-Cola; using Amer-
ican detergents, toothpaste, and soap; and driving some forty million motorized
vehicles, including motorbikes, cars, buses, and trucks. While many Europeans
embraced American business practices, the cold war was ever present: the Communist
Party in France led a successful campaign to ban Coca-Cola for a time in the 1950s,
and tastemakers in the Soviet sphere initiated competing products and styles.
Radio remained the most influential medium in the 1950s, carrying much of the
postwar consumer advertising and making the connection between cold war and con-
sumerism. Even as the number of radios in homes grew steadily, television loomed
on the horizon. In the United States, two-thirds of the population had TV sets in
the early 1950s, while in Britain only one-fifth did. Only in the 1960s did television
[ 1945–1960s
]
become an important consumer item for most Europeans. In radio and television,
though, both East and West tried to exceed the other in advertising their values.
Russian programs stressed a uniform Communist culture, often emphasizing the
importance of family values and practical, if aesthetically pleasing, household tips
for women. The United States, by contrast, promoted debate about current affairs
and filled the airwaves with advertising for consumer goods. The cold war was thus
a consumer as well as a military phenomenon.
The Culture of Cold War

Films, books, and other cultural productions also promoted the cold war even when
they conveyed an antiwar message. Books like George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) were
claimed by both sides in the cold war as supporting their position. Ray Bradbury’s
popular Fahrenheit 451 (1953), whose title refers to the temperature at which books
would burn, condemned restrictions on intellectual freedom on both sides of the
cold war divide. In the USSR, official writers churned out spy stories, and espionage
novels topped best-seller lists in the West. Casino Royale (1953), by the British author
Ian Fleming, introduced the fictional British intelligence agent James Bond, who
tested his wit and physical prowess against Communist and other political villains.
So popular were such programs that Soviet pilots would not take off for flights when
the work of Yulian Simyonov, the Russian counterpart of Ian Fleming, was playing
on radio or television. Reports, fictional and real, of Soviet- and U.S.-bloc characters
facing one another down became part of everyday life.
High culture also operated in a cold war climate. Europe’s major cities rebuilt
their war-ravaged opera houses and museums, and both sides tried to win the cold
war by pouring vast sums of money into high culture. As leadership of the art world
passed to the United States, art became part of the cold war. Abstract expressionists
such as American artist Jackson Pollock produced nonrepresentational works by
dripping and spattering paint; they also spoke of the importance of the artist’s self-
discovery in the process of painting. “If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself
and wonder where my fingers are, that is all the space I need as a painter,” com-
mented Dutch-born artist Willem de Kooning on his relationship with his canvas.
Said to exemplify Western freedom, such painters were awarded commissions at the
secret direction of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The USSR more openly promoted an official Communist culture. When a show
of abstract art like Pollock’s opened in the Soviet Union, Khrushchev yelled that it
was “dog shit.” Pro-Soviet critics in western Europe saw U.S.-style abstract art as “an
infantile sickness” and supported socialist realist art with “human content,” show-
ing the condition of the workers and the oppressed races in the United States. The
Italian filmmakers Roberto Rossellini, in Open City (1945), and Vittorio De Sica, in
The Bicycle Thief (1948), developed the neorealist technique that challenged lush
Hollywood-style sets and costumes by using ordinary characters living in devastated,
impoverished cities. By depicting stark conditions, neorealist directors conveyed
[
1945–1960s
their distance both from middle-class prosperity and from fascist bombast. “We are
in rags? Let’s show everyone our rags,” said one Italian director. Many of these left-
leaning directors associated support for the suffering masses with the Communist
cause, while on the pro-American side, the film Doctor Zhivago became a hit celebrat-
ing individualism and condemning the Communist way of life. Overtly or covertly,
the cold war affected virtually all aspects of cultural life.
The Atomic Brink

The 1950s were a time of emotional terror for people at the center of the cold war.
Radio bombarded the public with messages about the threat of nuclear annihilation
at the hands of the villainous superpower enemy (meaning the United States or the
USSR, depending). During the late 1940s and 1950s, the Voice of America, with its
main studio in Washington, D.C., broadcast in thirty-eight languages from one hun-
dred transmitters and provided an alternative source of news as well as menacing
messages for people in eastern Europe. Its Soviet counterpart broadcast in Russian
around the clock but initially spent much of its wattage jamming U.S. programming.
The public also heard reports of nuclear buildups and tests of emergency power
facilities that sent them scurrying for cover. Children rehearsed at school for nuclear
war, while at home families built bomb shelters in their backyards. Fear gripped
people’s emotions in these decades.
In this upsetting climate of cold war, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963)
became U.S. president in 1960. Kennedy represented American affluence and youth;
he also confirmed the power of television. A war hero and an early fan of the fic-
tional cold war spy James Bond, Kennedy participated in the escalating cold war
over the nearby island of Cuba, where in 1959 Fidel Castro (1926–) had come to
power. After being rebuffed by the United States, Castro aligned his new government
with the Soviet Union. In the spring of 1961, Kennedy, assured by the CIA of success,
launched an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro. The invasion
failed miserably and humiliated the United States.
Cold war tensions increased. In the summer of 1961, the East German govern-
ment directed workers to stack bales of barbed wire across miles of the city’s east–
west border. This was the beginning of the Berlin Wall, built to block the escape
route by which some three million people had fled to the West. In October 1962,
tensions came to a head in the Cuban missile crisis, when the CIA reported the
installation of silos to house Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba. Kennedy acted
forcefully, ordering a naval blockade of ships headed for Cuba and demanding
removal of the installations. For several days, the world stood on the brink of
nuclear war. Then, between October 25 and 27, Khrushchev and Kennedy negoti-
ated an end to the crisis. Kennedy spent the remainder of his short life working to
improve nuclear diplomacy; Khrushchev did the same. In the summer of 1963, less
than a year after the shock of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and the
Soviet Union signed a test-ban treaty outlawing the explosion of nuclear weapons in
[ 1945–1960s
]
the atmosphere and in the seas. The treaty
REVIEW QUESTION How were everyday cul- held out hope that the cold war and its
ture and social life part of the cold war? culture would give way to something
better.
Conclusion
Nikita Khrushchev was ousted in 1964 for his erratic policies and for the Cuban
missile crisis. In his forced retirement, he expressed regret at his brutal treatment of
Boris Pasternak: “We shouldn’t have banned [Doctor Zhivago]. There’s nothing anti-
Soviet in it.” But the postwar decades were grim times. Two superpowers — the Soviet
Union and the United States — each controlling atomic arsenals, overshadowed Euro-
pean leadership and engaged in a menacing cold war, complete with the threat of
nuclear annihilation. The cold war saturated everyday life, giving birth to bomb
shelters, spies, purges, and witch hunts — all of them creating a culture of anxiety
that kept people in constant fear of war. Cold war diplomacy divided Europe into
an eastern bloc dominated by the Soviets and a freer western bloc mostly allied with
the United States. In this bleak atmosphere, starving, homeless, and refugee people
joined the task of rebuilding a devastated Europe.
Despite the chaos at the end of 1945, both halves of Europe recovered almost
miraculously in little more than a decade. Eastern Europe, where wartime devasta-
tion and ongoing violence were greatest, experienced less prosperity. In the West,
wartime technology served as the basis for new consumer goods and welfare-state
planning improved health. Spurred on by aid from the United States, western Europe
formed the successful Common Market, which became the foundation for greater
European unity in the future. As a result of World War II and the cold war, Germany
recovered as two countries, not one. The war so weakened the European powers that
they lost their colonies to thriving independence movements. Newly independent
nations emerged in Asia and Africa, but they were often caught in the cold war and
faced the additional problems of creating stable political structures and a sound
economic future. As the West as a whole grew in prosperity, its cultural life focused
paradoxically on reviving Western values while enjoying the new phenomenon of
mass consumerism. Above all, the West — and the rest of the world — had to survive
the atomic rivalry of the superpowers.
[ 1945–1960s
] Conclusion 933
ARCTIC OCEAN N
W E
NORWAY S
ICELAND
E. U S S R
CANADA DEN. GER.
U.K.
W. POL. CZECH.
HUN.
LUX. GER.
FRANCE ROM. MONGOLIA
BULG.
UNITED STATES SPAIN ITALY GR. TURKEY N. KOREA
1948 JAPAN
1 CYP. 1960 CHINA
MOROCCO JOR. 1946
1956 ALGERIA PAKISTAN S. KOREA
ATLANTIC LIBYA KUWAIT IRAN 1947 LAOS
1962 1951 EGYPT 1961 1953 1948
OCEAN SAUDI INDIA PACIFIC
MEXICO MAURITANIA MALI ARABIA 1947 BURMA VIETNAM
2 1960 1960 NIGER 1948 1954
OCEAN
1960 CHAD
3 7 SUDAN CAMBODIA
NIGERIA1960 1956 1953
VENEZUELA 4 1960 SOMALIA
13 1960 MALAYSIA
COLOMBIA 5 11 SRI LANKA
9 10 14 1948 1963
6 8 12 CONGO
(ZAIRE) 15 INDONESIA
CONGO 1960 16 INDIAN 1949
BRAZIL 1960
PACIFIC PERU OCEAN
ANGOLA
OCEAN BOLIVIA
MALAGASY
REPUBLIC
1960 AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
CHILE AFRICA
ARGENTINA
Decolonized (with date), 1945–1962

NEW
1 Tunisia 9 Togo ZEALAND
2 Senegal 10 Dahomey
3 Gambia 11 Cameroon
4 Guinea 12 Gabon
5 Sierra Leone 13 Central African Republic
6 Ivory Coast 14 Uganda
7 Burkina Faso 15 Rwanda
8 Ghana 16 Burundi
Warsaw Pact members
0 1,000 2,000 miles
NATO members
MAPPING THE WEST The Cold War World, c. 1960

Superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the division of
much of the industrial world into cold war alliances. Simultaneously, the superpowers vied for
the allegiance of the newly decolonized countries of Asia and Africa by providing military, eco-
nomic, and technological assistance. Wars such as those in Vietnam and Korea were also prod-
ucts of the cold war. How might this map be said to convey the idea that a first world, a second
world, and a third world existed? How does this map differ from the map on page 778?
Chapter 27 Review
cold war (p. 900) Christian Democrats (p. 910) United Nations (UN) (p. 923)
Truman Doctrine (p. 904) European Economic Vatican II (p. 925)
Marshall Plan (p. 905) Community (EEC or existentialism (p. 926)
North Atlantic Treaty Common Market) (p. 912) Simone de Beauvoir (p. 926)
Organization (NATO) welfare state (p. 913) John Fitzgerald Kennedy
(p. 907) Nikita Khrushchev (p. 916) (p. 931)
Warsaw Pact (p. 907) decolonization (p. 918) Cuban missile crisis (p. 931)
Review Questions
1. What were the major events in the development of the cold war?
2. What factors drove recovery in western Europe and in eastern Europe?
3. What were the results of decolonization?
4. How were everyday culture and social life part of the cold war?
Making Connections
1. What was the political climate after World War II, and how did it differ from the political
climate after World War I?
2. What were the relative strengths of the two European blocs in the cold war?
3. What were the main developments of postwar cultural life?
4. Why did decolonization follow World War II so immediately?
New nationhood and the postwar era are charted in exciting new books that study veterans,
youth, and daily life in the aftermath of Nazism and an age of cold war. Historians are also
focusing on the complexities of decolonization.
Anslover, Nicole L. Harry Truman: The Coming of the Cold War. 2014.
Bailkin, Jordanna. The Afterlife of Empire. 2012.
Burleigh, Michael. Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern
World, 1945–1965. 2013.
Chin, Rita, et al., eds. After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and
Europe. 2009
Demshuk, Andrew. The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory 1945–1970.
2012.
Edele, Mark. Soviet Veterans of World War II: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society,
1941–1991. 2008.
Finn, Peter, and Petra Couvée. The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a
Forbidden Book. 2014.
Frommer, Benjamin. National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslo-
vakia. 2005.
Gaddis, John. George Kennan: An American Life. 2011.
934
[1945–1960s
Important Events
1945 Cold war begins

1947 India and Pakistan win independence from Britain
1948 State of Israel is established
1949 Mao Zedong leads Communist revolution in China; Simone de Beauvoir
publishes The Second Sex
1950 Korean War begins
1953 Stalin dies; Korean War ends
1954 Brown v. Board of Education prohibits segregated schools in the United States;
Vietnamese forces defeat French at Dien Bien Phu
1956 General Abdel Nasser nationalizes Suez Canal; uprising in Hungary against
USSR
1957 Boris Pasternak publishes Doctor Zhivago; USSR launches Sputnik; Treaty of
Rome establishes European Economic Community (Common Market)
1958 Fifth Republic begins in France
1962 United States and USSR face off in the Cuban missile crisis
Consider three events: India and Pakistan win independence from Britain (1947),
Simone de Beauvoir publishes The Second Sex (1949), and Brown v. Board of Education
prohibits segregated schools in the United States (1954). How did colonized peoples,
women, and African Americans use the experience of war to seek liberation and civil
rights?
Jobs, Richard I. Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after World War II.
2007.
Meng, Michael. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland.
2011.
Nord, Philip. France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era. 2010.
Pence, Katherine, and Paul Betts, eds. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and
Politics. 2008.
Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France.
2006.
Shipway, Martin. Decolonization and Its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial
Empires. 2008.
Smith, Mark B. Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev.
2010.
Postindustrial Society
28
and the End of the
Cold War Order
1960s–1989
I
n January 1969, Jan Palach, a twenty-one-year-old philosophy student, drove
to a main square in Prague, doused his body with gasoline, and set himself ablaze.
Before that, he had put aside his coat with a message in it demanding an end to
Communist repression in Czechoslovakia. It promised more such suicides unless the
government lifted state censorship. The mani-
Shrine to Jan Palach
festo was signed “Torch No. 1.” Jan Palach’s
Jan Palach was a martyr to the suicide stunned his nation. Black flags hung
cause of an independent Czechoslo- from windows, and close to a million people
vakia. His self-immolation on behalf flocked to his funeral. In the next months, more
of that cause roused the nation. As Czech youth followed Palach’s grim example
makeshift shrines sprang up and
and became torches for freedom.
multiplied throughout the 1970s
and 1980s, they served as common Before his self-immolation, Jan Palach was
rallying points that ultimately contrib- an ordinary, well-educated citizen of an increas-
uted to the overthrow of Communist ingly technological society. Having recovered
rule. Václav Havel, the future presi- from World War II, the West shifted from a
dent of a liberated Czechoslovakia, manufacturing economy based on heavy indus-
was arrested early in the momentous
year of 1989 for commemorating
try to a ser vice economy that depended on
Palach’s sacrifice at a shrine. In light technical knowledge in such fields as engineer-
of so many other deaths in the ing, health care, and finance. This new service
Soviet bloc, why did Jan Palach’s economy has been labeled “postindustrial.” To
death become so powerful a force? staff it, institutions of higher education sprang
(© Marc Garanger / Corbis.)
up at a dizzying rate and attracted more stu-
dents than ever before. Young men like Jan
Palach — along with women, minorities, and many other activists in the 1960s and
1970s — far from being satisfied with their rising status, struck out against war and
cold war, inequality and repression, and even against technology itself. From Czecho-
slovakia to the United States and around the world, protesters warned that post-
industrial nations in general and the superpowers in particular were becoming
937
938 Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order
[ 1960s–1989
]
technological and political monsters. Before long, countries in both the Soviet and
U.S. blocs were on the verge of political revolution.
The challenges posed by young reformers came at a bad time for the superpow-
ers and other leading European states. An agonizing war in Vietnam weakened the
United States, and China confronted the Soviet Union on its borders. In a dramatic
turn of events, the oil-producing states of the Middle East reduced the export of oil
to the leading Western nations in the 1970s, bringing on a recession. Despite their
wealth and military might, the superpowers could not guarantee that they would
emerge victorious in this age of increasingly global competition. As the USSR expe-
rienced decay in a climate of postindustrial innovation across the West, a reform-
minded leader — Mikhail Gorbachev —
initiated new policies of economic and
CHAPTER FOCUS How did technological, political freedom. It was too late: in 1989,
economic, and social change contribute to the Soviet bloc collapsed, an event brought
increased activism, and what were the political about in part by countless acts of protest,
results of that activism?
not least of them the individual heroism of
Jan Palach and his fellow human torches.
The Revolution in Technology

The protests of the 1960s began in the midst of astonishing technological advances
in all areas of life. These advances steadily boosted prosperity and changed daily life
in the West, where people awoke to instantaneous radio and television news, worked
with computers, and used new forms of contraceptives to control reproduction. Sat-
ellites orbiting the earth relayed telephone signals and collected military intelligence,
while around the world nuclear energy powered economies. Smaller gadgets —
electric popcorn poppers, portable radios and tape players, automatic garage door
openers — made life more pleasant. The increased use of machines led one philoso-
pher to insist that people were no longer self-sufficient individuals, but rather
cyborgs — that is, humans who needed machines to sustain ordinary life processes.
The Information Age: Television and Computers

Information technology powered change in the postindustrial period that began in
the 1960s, just as innovations in textile making and the spread of railroads had in
the nineteenth century. This technology’s ability to transmit knowledge, culture, and
political information globally competed with mass journalism, film, and radio via
television, computers, and telecommunications. Once-remote villages were linked to
urban capitals on the other side of the world thanks to videocassettes, satellite televi-
sion, and telecommunications. Because of technology, protests became media events
worldwide.
Americans embraced television in the 1950s; between the mid-1950s and the
mid-1970s, Europeans rapidly adopted television as a major entertainment and com-
[
1960s–1989
] The Revolution in Technology 939
munications medium. In 1954, just 1 percent of French households had television;

by 1974, almost 80 percent did. With the average viewer tuning in about four and a
half hours a day, the audience for newspapers and theater declined. “We devote
more . . . hours per year to television than [to] any other single artifact,” one soci-
ologist commented in 1969. As with radio, European governments funded televi-
sion broadcasting with tax dollars and controlled TV programming to avoid what
they perceived as the substandard fare offered by American commercial TV; instead
they featured drama, ballet, concerts, variety shows, and news. The welfare state, in
Europe at least, thereby gained more power to shape daily life.
The emergence of communications satellites and video recorders in the 1960s
brought competition to state-sponsored television. Worldwide audiences enjoyed
broadcasts from throughout the West as satellite technology allowed for the global
transmission of sports broadcasts and other programming. Soap operas, game shows,
and situation comedies (sitcoms) from the United States arrived dubbed in native
languages. Feature films on videotape first became readily available to television sta-
tions; then, in 1969, competition increased when the Sony Corporation introduced
the first affordable color videocassette recorder to the consumer market.
East and west, television exercised a powerful political and cultural influence.
Even in a rural area of the Soviet Union, more than 70 percent of the inhabitants
watched television regularly in the late 1970s. Educational programming united the
far-flung population of the USSR by broadcasting shows designed to advance Soviet
culture. At the same time, with travel impossible or forbidden to many in the Soviet
world, shows about foreign lands were among the most popular. Heads of state could
usually bump regular programming. In the 1960s, French president Charles de
Gaulle appeared frequently on television, using the grandiose gestures of an imperial
ruler to stir patriotism. Increasingly, politicians needed media experts as much as
they did policy experts.
Just as revolutionary as television, the computer reshaped work in science,
defense, and ultimately industry. Computers had evolved dramatically since the first
electronic ones, like the Colossus used by the British in 1943 to decode Nazi military
and diplomatic messages. From the 1940s to the 1980s, computing machines shrank
from the size of a gymnasium to that of an attaché case. They also became both far
less expensive and fantastically more powerful, thanks to the development of increas-
ingly sophisticated digital electronic circuitry implanted on tiny silicon chips, which
replaced clumsy radio tubes. Within a few decades, the computer could perform
hundreds of millions of operations per second and the price of the integrated circuit
at the heart of computer technology would fall to less than a dollar.
Computers changed the pace and patterns of work not only by speeding up tasks
but also by performing many operations that workers had once done themselves.
Soon, like other outworkers, people could work for large industries at home, con-
nected to a central mainframe. In 1981, the French phone company launched a public
computer network, the Minitel (a forerunner of the World Wide Web), through
which individuals could make travel reservations, perform stock transactions, and
[ 1960s–1989
]
obtain information. Many observers believed that computers would profoundly
expand mental capacity, providing, in the words of one scientist, “boundless oppor-
tunities . . . to resolve the puzzles of cosmology, of life, and of the society of man.”
Others countered that computers programmed people, reducing human initiative
and the ability to solve problems. Regardless of observers’ opinions, positive or nega-
tive, the information revolution was under way.
The Space Age

The “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union, also made possible
by computers, began when the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957. The
competition led to increasingly complex space flights that tested humans’ ability to
survive the process of space exploration, including weightlessness. Astronauts walked
in space, endured weeks (and later months) in orbit, docked with other craft, fixed
satellites, and carried out experiments for the military and private industry. In addi-
tion, a series of unmanned rockets launched weather, television, intelligence, and
other communications satellites into orbit around the earth. In July 1969, a worldwide
television audience watched as U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz”
Aldrin walked on the moon’s surface — the climactic moment in the space race.
The space race also influenced Western culture. Astronauts and cosmonauts
were perhaps the era’s most admired heroes: Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn, and Valentina
Tereshkova — the first woman in space — topped the list. A whole new fantasy
world developed. Children’s toys
and games revolved increasingly
around space. Films such as 2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968) portrayed
Valentina Tereshkova,
Russian Cosmonaut
People sent into space became heroes,
representing modern values of courage,
strength, and well-honed skills. Insofar
as the space age was part of the cold
war race for superpower superiority,
the USSR held the lead during the
first decade. The Soviets trained both
women and men, and the 1963 flight of
Valentina Tereshkova — the first woman
in space — supported Soviet claims of
gender equality in contrast to the all-
male superstar image of the early U.S.
space program. (Central Press / Getty
Images.)
[1960s–1989
] The Revolution in Technology 941
space explorers answering questions about life that were formerly the domain of
church leaders. Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s popular novel Solaris (1961), later made
into a film, described space-age individuals engaged in personal quests that drew
readers and ultimately viewers into a futuristic fantasy.
The space age grew out of cold war concerns, and advances in rocket technology
not only launched vehicles into space but also powered destructive missiles. At the
same time, the space age promoted and even depended on global cooperation. From
the 1960s on, U.S. spaceflights often involved the participation of other countries. In
1965, an international consortium headed by the United States launched the first
commercial communications satellite, Intelsat I — a feat envisioned since early in the
postwar period. By the 1970s, some 150 countries were working together at more
than four hundred stations worldwide to maintain global satellite communications.
Although some 50 percent of satellites were for spying purposes, the rest promoted
international communication and transnational collaboration.
Pure science flourished amid the space race. Astronomers used mineral samples
from the moon to calculate the age of the solar system with unprecedented precision.
Unmanned spacecraft provided data on cosmic radiation, magnetic fields, and infra-
red sources. Although the media depicted the space age as one of warrior astronauts
conquering space, breakthroughs depended on the products of technology, including
the radio telescope, which depicted space by receiving, measuring, and calculating
nonvisible rays. These findings reinforced the so-called big bang theory of the origin
of the universe, first outlined in the 1930s by American astronomer Edwin Hubble
and given crucial support in the 1950s by the discovery of low-level radiation perme-
ating the universe in all directions. The big bang theory proposes that the universe
originated from the explosion of superdense, superhot matter some ten to twenty
billion years ago.
The Nuclear Age

Scientists, government officials, and engineers put the force of the atom to economic
use, especially in the form of nuclear power, and the dramatic boost in available energy
helped continue postwar economic expansion into the 1960s and beyond. The USSR
built the world’s first civilian nuclear power station, in the town of Obninsk, in 1954;
Britain and the United States soon followed suit. During the 1960s and 1970s, nuclear
power for industrial and household use multiplied a hundredfold — a growth that
did not include nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, which also mul-
tiplied during this period.
Because of the vast costs and complex procedures involved in building, supply-
ing, running, and safeguarding nuclear reactors, governments provided substantial
aid and even financed nuclear power plants almost entirely. “A state does not count,”
announced French president Charles de Gaulle, “if it does not . . . contribute to the
technological progress of the world.” The watchword for all governments building
nuclear reactors was technological development — a new function for the modern
[ 1960s–1989
]
state. The USSR sponsored plants throughout the Soviet bloc as part of the drive to
modernize, but it was not alone — Western nations, too, funded nuclear power. In
2006, France produced some 80 percent of its energy, and the United States 20 per-
cent, via nuclear power plants. More than thirty countries had substantial nuclear
installations in the twenty-first century, with new ones under construction.
Revolutions in Biology and Reproductive Technology

A revolution in the life sciences brought about dramatic health benefits and ultimately
changed reproduction itself. In 1952, scientists Francis Crick, an Englishman, and
James Watson, an American, discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA),
the material in a cell’s chromosomes that carries hereditary information. Simultane-
ously, other scientists were working on “the pill” — an oral contraceptive for women
that capped more than a century of scientific work in the field of birth control. Still
other breakthroughs in biology lay ahead, including ones that revolutionized concep-
tion and made possible the scientific duplication of species (cloning).
Crick and Watson solved the mystery of biological inheritance when they dem-
onstrated the structure of DNA. They showed how the double helix of the DNA
molecule splits in cellular reproduction to form the basis of each new cell. This genetic
material, biologists concluded, provides a chemical pattern for an individual organ-
ism’s life. Beginning in the 1960s, genetics and the new field of molecular biology
not only increased knowledge about viruses and bacteria but also effectively ended
in the West such diseases as polio, mumps, measles, and tetanus through the devel-
opment of new vaccines.
Other scientists used their understanding of DNA to alter the makeup of plants
(for instance, to control agricultural pests) and to bypass natural animal reproduc-
tion in a process called cloning — obtaining the cells of an organism and dividing or
reproducing them in an exact copy in a laboratory. In 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard
of South Africa performed the first successful heart transplant. Other researchers
later developed both immunosuppressants (to prevent rejection of the transplant)
and an artificial heart. As major advances like these occurred, commentators began
to ask whether the enormous cost of new medical technology to save a few people
would be better spent on helping the many who lacked even basic medical care.
Technology also influenced the most intimate areas of human relations —
sexuality and procreation. Matching family size to agricultural productivity no longer
shaped sexual behavior in the industrialized and urbanized West. With reliable birth-
control devices more readily available, young people began sexual relations earlier,
with less risk of pregnancy. These trends accelerated in the 1960s when the birth-
control pill, the result of research around the world, was first marketed in the United
States. The pill was initially tested on American medical students in Puerto Rico and
then on a larger scale among Puerto Rican nurses, many of whom were eager for
reliable contraception. By 1970, the pill’s use was spreading around the world. New
[1960s–1989
] Postindustrial Society and Culture 943
The First Test-Tube Baby

The birth in Britain in 1978
of Louise Brown, the first baby
conceived by in vitro fertilization,
caused a sensation worldwide.
The new procedure was just
one of the many medical break-
throughs of the late twentieth
century and gave hope to would-
be parents around the world
that science might make infer-
tility a thing of the past.
(Keystone / Getty Images.)
techniques brought abortion, traditionally performed by amateurs, into the hands of

medical professionals, making it a safe procedure for the first time.
Conception and childbirth were similarly transformed. Whereas only a small
minority of Western births took place in hospitals in 1920, more than 90 percent
did by 1970. Obstetricians now performed much of the work midwives had once
done. As pregnancy and birth became medicalized, the number of medical interven-
tions such as cesarean births rose. In 1978, the first “test-tube baby,” Louise Brown,
was born to an English couple. She had been conceived when her mother’s eggs were
fertilized with her father’s sperm in a laboratory dish and then implanted in her
mother’s uterus — a complex process called
in vitro fertilization. In reproductive tech-
REVIEW QUESTION What were the techno-
nology, as in other areas, the revolution in
logical and scientific advances of the 1960s
biology was dramatically changing human and 1970s, and how did they change human
life, improving health, and even making life and society?
new life possible.
Postindustrial Society and Culture

Soaring investments in science and the spread of technology put Western countries
on what has been labeled a postindustrial course. Instead of being centered on manu-
facturing and heavy industry, a postindustrial economy emphasized the distribution
of services such as health care and education. This meant that intellectual work, as
well as industrial work, was central to creating jobs and profits. Moreover, all parts
of society and industry interlocked, forming a system constantly in need of complex
analysis, as in the nuclear industry. These characteristics of postindustrial society
and culture would carry over into the twenty-first century.
[ 1960s–1989
]
Multinational Corporations
A major development of the postindustrial era was the growth of the multinational
corporation. Multinationals produced goods and services for a global market and
conducted business worldwide, but unlike older kinds of international firms, they
established major factories and managerial centers in countries other than their home
base. For example, of the five hundred largest businesses in the United States in 1970,
more than one hundred did over a quarter of their business abroad, with business
machine manufacturer IBM operating in more than one hundred countries. Although
U.S.-based corporations led the way, European and Japanese multinationals like
Volkswagen, Shell, Nestlé, and Sony also had a broad global reach.
Some multinational corporations burst the bounds of the nation-state as they set
up shop in whatever part of the world offered cheap labor. In the first years after
World War II, multinationals preferred European employees, who constituted a highly
educated labor pool and had well-developed consumer habits. Then, beginning in
the 1960s, multinationals moved more of their operations to the emerging economies
of formerly colonized states to reduce labor costs and avoid taxes. Although multi-
national corporations provided jobs in developing areas, profits usually went out of
those areas to enrich foreign stockholders. Multinational corporations lacked the
interest in the well-being of localities or nations that earlier industrialists had often
shown. Thus, this system of business looked to some like imperialism in a new form.
Managers believed that their firms could stay competitive only by expanding,
merging with other companies, or partnering with governments. They also increased
their companies’ investment in research and used international cooperation to pro-
duce major new products. Beginning with its first commercial flight in 1976, the
British-French Concorde supersonic aircraft flew from London to New York in less
than four hours. Another venture was the Airbus, a more practical series of pas-
senger jets inaugurated in 1972 by a consortium of European firms. Both projects
grew from the strong relationships among government, business, and science as well
as from the international cooperation in manufacturing among members of the
Common Market. Such relationships allowed European businesses to compete suc-
cessfully with U.S.-based and other multinational giants.
The New Worker

In the early years of industry, workers often labored to exhaustion and lived in poor
conditions. This situation changed fundamentally in postwar Europe with the reduc-
tion of the blue-collar workforce and increased automation of industrial work. Man-
ufacturing was simply cleaner and less dangerous than ever before. Meanwhile, a
new working class of white-collar service personnel emerged. Its rise undermined
economic distinctions based on the way a person worked, for those who performed
service work or had managerial titles were not necessarily better paid than blue-
collar laborers. The ranks of ser vice workers swelled with researchers, planners,
[1960s–1989
health care and medical staff, and government functionaries. As emphasis on service
grew, entire categories of employees such as flight attendants devoted much of their
skill to the psychological well-being of customers. By 1969, the percentage of service-
sector employees had surpassed that of manufacturing workers in several industrial
countries: 61.1 percent versus 33.7 percent in the United States, and 48.8 percent
versus 41.1 percent in Sweden.
Postindustrial work life differed somewhat in the Soviet bloc. There, the percent-
age of farmers remained higher than in western Europe. A huge difference between
professional occupations and those involving physical work also remained in socialist
countries because of declining investment in advanced machinery and cleaner work
processes. Men in both the U.S. and Soviet blocs generally earned higher pay and
had better jobs than women. Uniquely in the Soviet bloc, however, women’s badly
paying jobs included street cleaning, garbage collection, heavy labor on farms, gen-
eral medicine, and dentistry. Somewhere between 80 and 95 percent of women in
socialist countries worked, mostly under difficult conditions.
Farming changed as well, consolidating and becoming more scientific. Small land-
owners sold family plots to corporations engaged in agribusiness — that is, vast acre-
age devoted to commercial rather than peasant farming. Governments, farmers’ coop-
eratives, and planning agencies shaped the decision making of the individual farmer,
while genetic research that yielded pest-resistant seeds and the skyrocketing use of
pesticides, fertilizers, and machinery contributed to economic growth. For example,
in the 1970s, a woman named Fernande Pelletier ran a hundred-acre farm in south-
western France, using the advice of a government expert to produce whatever foods
might sell competitively in the Common Market and joining with other farmers in
her region to buy heavy machinery. Agricultural prosperity required as much mana-
gerial and technical know-how as did success in other parts of the economy.
The Boom in Education and Research

Education and research were key to running postindustrial society and had now
become the means by which nations maintained their economic and military might.
In the West, common sense, hard work, and creative intuition had launched the
earliest successes of the Industrial Revolution. By the late twentieth century, a wide
variety of expertise and ever-growing staffs of researchers fueled military and indus-
trial leadership. The United States funneled more than 20 percent of its gross national
product (a measure of the total value of goods and services a nation produced in a
year) into research in the 1960s, attracting many of Europe’s leading intellectuals and
technicians to move to the United States in a so-called brain drain. Scientists and
bureaucrats frequently made more crucial decisions than did elected politicians in
the realm of space programs, weapons development, and economic policy. Here East–
West differences became important: Soviet-bloc nations proved less adept at linking
their considerable achievements in science to real-life applications because of bureau-
cratic red tape. In the 1960s, some 40 percent of scientific findings in the Soviet bloc
[ 1960s–1989
]
became obsolete before the government approved them for application to technology.
An invisible backsliding from superpower effectiveness and leadership had begun in
the USSR — much of it due to the lack of systems coordination and cooperation.
The centrality of sophisticated knowledge to success in postindustrial society led
to unprecedented growth in education, especially in universities and scientific insti-
tutes. The number of university students in Sweden rose by about 580 percent and
in West Germany by 250 percent between 1950 and 1969. Great Britain established
a network of technical universities to encourage the practical research that traditional
elite universities often scorned. France set up schools to train future high-level experts
in administration. The scientific establishment in the Soviet Union grew rapidly, and
some institutions of higher learning added courses in business management, infor-
mation technology, and systems analysis designed for the new pool of postindustrial
workers.
Changing Family Life and the Generation Gap

Just as education changed to meet the needs of postindustrial society, family struc-
tures and parent–child relationships shifted from what they had been a century earlier.
Households became more varied: cohabiting couples, single-parent families, blended
families, families headed by same-sex partners, and childless marriages all became
more common. At the end of the 1970s, the marriage rate in the West had fallen by
30 percent from its 1960s level, and after almost two decades of baby boom, the
birthrate dropped significantly. Belgian women, for example, bore 2.6 children on
average in 1960 but only 1.8 by the end of the 1970s. In the Soviet bloc, the birthrate
was even lower.
Daily life within the family also changed. Technological consumer items filled
the home, with radio and television often forming the basis of the household’s com-
mon social life. Appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines, and clothes dryers
became more widespread, especially in the western bloc. More women worked outside
the home during these years to pay for the prolonged economic dependence of chil-
dren, and, in contrast with the past, the modern family seemed to have a primarily
psychological mission, providing emotional nurturance for children who acquired
their intellectual skills in school. Parents turned to psychologists, social workers, other
experts, and the media for models of how to deal with life in postindustrial society.
Postindustrial society changed teenagers’ lives most dramatically, creating strong
differences between adolescents and adults. A century earlier, teens had been full-
time wage earners like their parents; now, in the new knowledge-based society, most
were students and some were financially dependent on their parents into their twen-
ties. Despite teenagers’ longer financial childhood, sexual activity began at an ever
younger age, prompting the idea of a “sexual revolution.” Youth simultaneously gained
new roles as consumers, wooed with items associated with rock music — records,
portable radios, and stereos. Rock music celebrated youthful rebellion against adult
[ 1960s–1989
culture in scornful, critical, and often explicitly sexual lyrics. Sex roles for the young
did not change, however: promoters focused on groups of male musicians, whom
they depicted as heroic, surrounded by worshipping female “groupies.” New models
for youth such as the Beatles were themselves the products of advanced technology,
marketing for mass consumption, and a unique youth culture separating the young
from their parents — the so-called generation gap.
Art, Ideas, and Religion in a Technocratic Society

Cultural trends developed alongside the march of consumer society and techno-
logical breakthroughs. A new style in the visual arts was called pop art. It featured
images from everyday life and employed the glossy techniques and products of what
these artists called admass, or mass advertising. Like advertising itself, art leadership
passed from Europe to the United States. U.S. pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, for
example, made collages from comic strips, magazine clippings, and fabric to fulfill
his vision that “a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real
world.” Maverick American artists such as Andy Warhol made pop art a financial
success with their parodies of modern commercialism. Through images of actress
Marilyn Monroe and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Warhol showed, for
example, how depictions of women were used to sell everything mass culture had to
offer in the 1960s and 1970s. He portrayed Campbell’s soup cans as they appeared
in advertisements and sold these works as elite artistic creations.
Swedish-born artist Claes Oldenburg portrayed the grotesque aspects of ordi-
nary consumer products in Floor Burger (1962) and Lipstick Ascending on Caterpillar
Tractor (1967). Capturing this mocking world of art, German artist Sigmar Polke did
cartoon-like drawings of products and of those who craved them. The Swiss sculptor
Jean Tinguely used rusted parts of old machines — the junk of industrial society — to
Pop Art
Claes Oldenburg excelled in highlighting
objects of everyday life, such as this ham-
burger (Floor Burger, 1962). He also modeled
vacuum cleaners, shuttlecocks, telephones,
and many other much-used things — a feature
of pop art, which often contained humor in
addition. Can you spot the humor in this cre-
ation? (Claes Oldenburg, Floor Burger, 1962 Canvas
filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, painted
with latex and Liquitex, 4 ft. 4 in. [1.32 m] high; 7 ft.
[2.13 m] diameter. Collection Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto, Canada, Purchase 1967. Photo courtesy the
Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio. Copyright © 1962 Claes
Oldenburg. Photo provided by The Bridgeman Art Library
International.)
[ 1960s–1989
]
make fountains that could move. His partner Niki de Saint Phalle then decorated
them with huge, gaudy figures — many of them inspired by the folk traditions of the
Caribbean and Africa. Their colorful, mobile fountains adorned main squares in
Stockholm, Paris, and other cities.
The American composer John Cage worked in a similar vein when he added to
his musical scores sounds produced by such everyday items as combs, pieces of
wood, and radio noise. Buddhist influence led Cage to incorporate silence in music
and to compose by randomly tossing coins and then choosing notes by the corre-
sponding numbers in the ancient Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes). These tech-
niques continued the trend away from classical melody that had begun with modern-
ism. Other composers, called minimalists, simplified music by featuring repetition
and sustained notes instead of producing the lush melodies of nineteenth-century
symphonies and piano music. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt wrote minimalist pieces
in the 1970s using only three or four notes in total; he called this style “starvation”
music to emphasize the lack of both freedom and goods in the Soviet bloc. Improved
recording technology and mass marketing brought music of all varieties to a wider
home audience than ever before.
The social sciences reached the peak of their prestige in the postindustrial era,
often because of the increasing use of statistical models made possible by advanced
electronic computations. Anthropology was among the most exciting of the social
sciences, for it brought young university students information about societies that
seemed untouched by modern technology and industry. Colorful ethnographic films
revealed different lifestyles and seemingly exotic practices. While studying people
who came to be called “the other,” students had their sense of freedom reinforced
by the vision of going back to nature. Whatever their discipline, social scientists
announced that, like technicians and engineers, their specialized methods and fac-
tual knowledge were key to managing the complexities of postindustrial society and
setting policy for developing nations.
At the same time, the social sciences undermined Enlightenment beliefs that
individuals had true freedom. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–
2009) developed a theory called structuralism, which insisted that all societies func-
tion within controlling structures — kinship, for example. While challenging existen-
tialism’s claim that humans could create a free existence, structuralism also attacked
the social sciences’ faith in rationality. Lévi-Strauss’s book The Savage Mind (1966)
demonstrated that people outside the West, even though they did not use scientific
methods, had their own effective systems of problem solving. In the 1960s and 1970s,
the findings of some social scientists additionally echoed concerns that technology
and highly managed bureaucratic systems were creating a society in which people
lacked individuality and freedom.
Religious leaders and parishioners responded to the changing times in a variety
of ways. Pope Paul VI (r. 1963–1978) opposed artificial birth control as it became
more prevalent, while also becoming the first pontiff to carry out the global vision
[1960s–1989
] Protesting Cold War Conditions 949
of Vatican II by visiting Africa, Asia, and South America. In some places, grassroots
religious fervor surged in the face of advancing science. Growing numbers of U.S.
Protestants, for example, joined sects that denied the validity of scientific discoveries
such as the age of the universe and the evolution of the species. In western Europe,
however, Christian churchgoing remained at a low ebb. In the 1970s, for example,
only 10 percent of the British population went to religious services — about the same
number that attended live soccer matches. Most striking was the changing composi-
tion of the Western religious public, with immigration of people from former colo-
nies and other parts of the world. Mosques,
Buddhist temples, and shrines to other REVIEW QUESTION How did Western society
creeds appeared in a greater number of cit- and culture change in the postindustrial age?
ies and towns.
Protesting Cold War Conditions

The United States and the Soviet Union reached new heights in the 1960s, but
trouble was brewing for the superpowers. By 1965, the six-nation Common Market
had temporarily replaced the United States as the leader in worldwide trade, and its
members often acted in their own self-interest, not in the interests of the superpow-
ers. In 1973, Britain’s membership in the Common Market, followed by Ireland’s and
Denmark’s, boosted the market’s exports to almost three times those of the United
States. The USSR faced challenges, too. Communist China, along with countries in
eastern Europe, contested Soviet leadership, and by the mid-1960s, the United States
was waging a devastating war in Vietnam to block the Communist independence
movement there. Rising citizen discontent, sometimes expressed in dramatic acts of
protest like that of Jan Palach, presented another serious challenge to the cold war
order. From the 1960s until 1989, people rose up against technology-driven de-
humanization, lack of fundamental rights, and the potential for nuclear holocaust.
Cracks in the Cold War Order

Across the social and political spectrum came calls to reduce cold war tensions in
this age of unprecedented technological advance. In the Soviet Union, the new
middle class of bureaucrats and managers demanded a better standard of living and
a reduction in the cold war hostility that made everyday life so menacing. In Ger-
many, Social Democratic politicians had enough influence to shift money from cold
war defense spending to domestic programs. Willy Brandt (1913–1992), the Socialist
mayor of West Berlin, became foreign minister in 1966 and worked to improve frigid
relations with Communist East Germany to open up trade. This anti–cold war policy,
known as Ostpolitik, gave West German business leaders what they wanted: “the
depoliticization of Germany’s foreign trade,” as one industrialist put it, and an open-
ing of consumerism in the Soviet bloc. West German trade with eastern Europe
[ 1960s–1989
]
grew rapidly, but it left the relatively poorer countries of the Soviet bloc strapped
with mounting debt. Nonetheless, commerce began building bridges across the U.S.–
Soviet cold war divide.
To break the superpowers’ stranglehold on international politics, French presi-
dent Charles de Gaulle poured huge sums into French nuclear development, with-
drew French forces from NATO, and signed trade treaties with the Soviet bloc. How-
ever, de Gaulle protected France’s good relations with Germany to prevent further
encroachments from the Soviet bloc. At home, de Gaulle’s government sponsored
the construction of modern housing and ordered the exterior cleaning of all Parisian
buildings — a massive project taking years — to wipe away more than a century of
industrial grime and to demonstrate community, not cold war, values. With his
haughty pursuit of French grandeur, de Gaulle offered the European public an alter-
native to obeying the superpowers.
Brandt’s Ostpolitik and de Gaulle’s independence had their echoes in Soviet-bloc
reforms. After the ouster of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, the new
leadership of Leonid Brezhnev (1909–1982) and Alexei Kosygin (1904–1980) initially
continued attempts at reform, encouraging plant managers to turn a profit and using
consumer goods to alleviate the discontent of an increasingly educated and informed
citizenry. The government also allowed more cultural and scientific meetings with
Westerners, another move that relaxed the cold war atmosphere in the mid-1960s.
Like the French, the Soviets set up “technopoles” — new cities devoted to research
and technological innovation. The Soviet satellites in eastern Europe seized the eco-
nomic opportunity presented by Moscow’s relaxed posture. For example, Hungarian
leader János Kádár introduced elements of a market system into the national econ-
omy by encouraging small businesses and trade to develop outside the Communist-
controlled state network.
Soviet-bloc writers sought to break the hold of socialist realism on the arts and
reduce their praise for the Soviet past. Some dissident artists’ paintings rejected
brightly colored scenes and heroic figures of the socialist realist style and instead
depicted Soviet citizens as worn and tired in grays and other monochromatic color
schemes. East Berlin writer Christa Wolf challenged the celebratory nature of social-
ist art when she showed a couple tragically separated by the Berlin Wall in her novel
Divided Heaven (1965). Repression of artistic expression returned in the later 1960s
and 1970s, as the Soviet government took to bulldozing outdoor art shows. For their
part, writers relied on samizdat culture, a form of protest activity in which individu-
als reproduced government-suppressed publications by hand and passed them from
reader to reader, thus building a foundation for the successful resistance of the 1980s.
Other issues challenged U.S. leadership of the western bloc during the cold war.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 shocked the
nation and the world, but only momentarily did it halt the escalating demands for
civil rights for African Americans and other minorities. White segregationists mur-
dered and brutalized those attempting to integrate lunch counters, register black
[
1960s–1989
voters, or simply march on behalf of freedom. In response to the murders and

destruction, Kennedy had introduced civil rights legislation and forced the deseg-
regation of schools and universities. Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973), Kennedy’s suc-
cessor, steered the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1964. This legislation for-
bade racial segregation in public facilities and created the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to fight job discrimination based on “race, color,
national origin, religion, and sex.” Southern conservatives had tacked on the provi-
sion outlawing discrimination against women in the vain hope that it would doom
the bill. Modeling himself on his hero Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson envisioned what
he called the Great Society, in which new government programs would improve the
lot of the forty million Americans living in poverty. Johnson’s many reform programs
included Project Head Start for educating disadvantaged preschool children and the
Job Corps for training youth. Black novelist Ralph Ellison called Johnson “the great-
est American president for the poor and the Negroes.”
Still, the cold war did not go away, and the United States became increasingly
embroiled in Vietnam (Map 28.1). After the Geneva Conference of 1954, which
Re C H I N A N
d
R.
W E
NORTH S
VIETNAM
BURMA Dien Bien Phu Hanoi
Gulf of
Tonkin
LAOS
Vinh
MAP 28.1 The Vietnam
M Dong Hoi
e
Demarcation Line of 1954 War, 1954–1975
ko
ng
(17th Parallel) The local peoples of South-

.R
Hue
east Asia had long resisted
Da Nang
incursions by their neigh-
THAILAND Chu Lai
Quang Ngai bors. The Vietnamese beat
the French colonizers in the
battle of Dien Bien Phu in
Bangkok Qui Nhon
1954. The Americans soon
SOUTH became involved, trying to
CAMBODIA VIETNAM stem what they saw as the
Gulf of Phnom tide of Communist influence
Penh
Thailand behind the Vietnamese
My Lai Saigon
South liberation movement. The
Communist nations
Mekong China ensuing war in Vietnam
Nations allied with
Delta Sea in the 1960s and 1970s
United States
Neutral nations spread into neighboring
Ho Chi Minh Trail 0 150 300 miles
countries, making the
Tet offensive, 1968 0 150 300 kilometers
region the scene of vast
destruction.
[ 1960s–1989
]
divided Vietnam into North and South, the United States increased its support for
the corrupt leaders of non-Communist South Vietnam. North Vietnam, China, and
the Soviet Union backed the rebel Vietcong, or South Vietnamese Communists. By
1966, the United States had more than half a million soldiers in South Vietnam, yet
the strength of the Vietcong seemed to grow daily. Despite massive bombings by the
United States, the insurgents, who had struggled against colonialism for decades,
rejected a negotiated peace.
The Growth of Citizen Activism

In the midst of cold war conflict and technological advance, a new activism emerged.
Prosperity and the rising benefits of a postindustrial, service-oriented economy made
people ever more eager for peace and justice. The U.S. civil rights movement broad-
ened as other minorities joined African Americans in demanding fair treatment.
In 1965, César Chávez (1927–1993) led Mexican American migrant workers in the
California grape agribusiness to strike for better wages and working conditions.
Meanwhile, beginning that same year, urban riots erupted across the United States
out of African Americans’ frustration in their struggle for equal rights. Some chose
to celebrate their race under the banner “black is beautiful,” and some urged a push
for “black power” to reclaim rights forcefully instead of “begging” for them nonvio-
lently. Separatism, not integration, became the goal of others. Small cadres of mili-
tants like the Black Panthers took up arms, believing that, like decolonizing peoples
elsewhere, they needed to protect themselves against the violent whites around them.
From the 1950s on, homosexuals had also lobbied for the decriminalization of
their sexual lives and practices. Some anti-gay propaganda equated male homosexu-
ality with a lack of militaristic manliness needed to protect the nation-state on either
side of the cold war divide. In June 1969, gay men in the Stonewall area of Greenwich
Village, New York, rioted against the police and more general persecution, as had
African Americans, both to assert their civil rights and to affirm their identity. The
gay liberation movement born in that time came to span the globe and to include
not only men but gay women, too.
As a result of the new turn in black efforts for change, white American university
students who had participated in the early stages of the civil rights movement found
themselves excluded from leadership positions in favor of an exclusively black leader-
ship. Many white students soon joined the swelling protests against technological
change, consumerism, and the Vietnam War. European youth were also feverish for
reform. In 1966, Prague students, chanting “The only good Communist is a dead
one,” held carnival-like processions to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the
1956 Hungarian uprisings. The “situationists” in France used shocking graffiti and
street theater to call on students to wake up from the slumbering pace of consumer
society.
Throughout the 1960s, students criticized the traditional university curriculum
and flaunted their own countercultural values. They questioned how studying Plato
[1960s–1989
or Dante would help them after graduation. “How to Train Stuffed Geese” was
French students’ satirical version of the teaching methods inflicted on them. Long
hair, communal living, scorn for personal cleanliness, and ridicule for sexual chastity
were part of students’ rejection of middle-class values. Widespread use of the pill
and open promiscuity made the sexual revolution explicit and public. Marijuana use
became common among students, who had their own rituals, music, and gathering
places. Hated by students, big business nonetheless made billions of dollars by selling
everything from blue jeans to natural foods as well as by managing the rock stars of
the counterculture.
Women’s activism erupted, too. Working for reproductive rights, women in
France helped end the nation’s ban on birth control in 1965. Middle-class women
eagerly responded to the international best seller The Feminine Mystique (1963), by
American journalist Betty Friedan. Pointing to the stagnating talents of many house-
wives, Friedan helped organize the National Organization for Women (NOW) in
1966 “to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society
now.” NOW advocated equal pay for equal work and a variety of other legal and
Second-Wave Feminists on the March

Like turn-of-the-century feminists, women in the 1960s and 1970s took to the streets to pro-
test their condition. This march in Paris features signs showing a clock fixed at 7:30 and a list
of chores including “breakfast for husband,” “wake the children,” and “hurry.” For many citizens,
the sight of “unladylike” women demonstrating in public was a shock — which was the point for
many activists. (© Rue des Archives / AGIP / The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
[ 1960s–1989
]
economic reforms. In Sweden, women lobbied to make tasks both at home and in
the workplace less gender-segregated.
Women who engaged in the civil rights and student movements soon realized
that many protest organizations devalued women just as society at large did. Male
activists adopted the leather-jacketed machismo style of their film and rock heroes,
but women in the movements were often judged by the status of their male protester
lovers. “A woman was to ‘inspire’ her man,” African American activist Angela Davis
complained, adding that women seeking equality were accused of wanting “to rob
[male activists] of their manhood.” West German women students tossed tomatoes
at male protest leaders in defiance of male domination of the movement and of
standards set by society for ladylike behavior.
1968: Year of Crisis

Calls for reform finally boiled over in 1968. In January, on the first day of Tet, the
Vietnamese New Year, the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese attacked more than
one hundred South Vietnamese towns and American bases, inflicting heavy casual-
ties and fueling the antiwar movement around the world. On April 4, 1968, a white
racist assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Riots erupted in more
than a hundred cities in the United States as African Americans vented their anguish
and rage. Rejecting King’s policy of nonviolence, rioters rampaged through grim
inner cities, chanting “Burn, baby, burn.” On U.S. campuses, bitter clashes over the
intertwined issues of war, technology, racism, and sexism closed down classes.
Similar student unrest erupted across the globe, most dramatically in France. In
January, students at the university in Nanterre, outside of Paris, had gone on strike,
invading administration offices to protest what they saw as a second-rate education.
They called themselves a proletariat — an exploited working class — as worker activists
had done for more than a century. They did not embrace Soviet communism but rather
considered themselves part of the New Left, not the old Communist or Socialist left.
When students at the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris also took to the streets in
protest, police assaulted them. French workers joined in the protest. Some nine mil-
lion went on strike, occupying factories and calling not only for higher wages but also
for participation in everyday decision making. The combined revolt of youth and
workers looked as if it might spiral into another French revolution. President Charles
de Gaulle sent tanks into Paris, and in June he announced a raise for workers. Many
citizens, having grown tired of the street violence, the destruction of so much private
property, and the breakdown of services such as garbage collection, began to sympa-
thize with the government instead of the students. The revolutionary moment passed.
By contrast, the 1968 revolt in Prague began within the Czechoslovak Commu-
nist Party itself. At a party congress in the autumn of 1967, Alexander Dubček, head
of the Slovak branch of the party, had called for more social and political openness,
striking a chord among frustrated party officials, technocrats, and intellectuals.
Czech citizens began to dream of creating a new society — one based on “socialism
[1960s–1989
with a human face.” Reform-minded party dele-

Warsaw Pact troop
gates elevated Dubček to the top position, and he deployments, 1968
quickly changed the Communist style of govern- Mass protests
EAST
ment by ending censorship, instituting the secret GERMANY POLAND
ballot for party elections, and allowing competing
political groups to form. “Look!” one little girl in Prague
CZ
the street remarked as the new government took ECH USSR
OSLO
VAKIA
power. “Everyone’s smiling today.” The Prague
Spring had begun as people bought uncensored AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
publications, packed uncensored theater produc-
0 50 100 miles
tions, and engaged in nonstop political debate.
0 100 kilometers
Dubček faced the enormous problem of nego-
tiating policies acceptable to both the USSR and Prague Spring, 1968
reform-minded citizens. Fearing change, the Pol-
ish, East German, and Soviet regimes threatened the reform government daily. When
Dubček failed to attend a meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders, Soviet threats intensified
until finally, in August 1968, Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in a massive show of
force. Citizens tried to halt the return to Communist orthodoxy through sabotage:
Invasion Puts Down the Prague Spring

When the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members cracked down on the Prague Spring, they
met determined citizen resistance. People refused assistance of any kind to the invaders and per-
sonally talked to them about the Czech cause. Despite the repression, protests small and large
continued until the final fall of Communist rule two decades later. (Sovfoto / UIG via Getty Images.)
[ 1960s–1989
]
they removed street signs to confuse invading troops, and merchants refused to sell
food or other commodities to Soviet troops. The determined Soviet leadership grad-
ually removed reformers from power, however. Jan Palach and other university stu-
dents immolated themselves the following January, as governments around the world
worked to stamp out criticism of the cold war order.
The protests of 1968 challenged the political direction of Western societies, but
little turned out the way reformers hoped as governments adopted conservative solu-
tions. In November 1968, the Soviets announced the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated
that reform movements, as a “common problem” of all socialist countries, would
face swift repression. In the early 1970s, the hard-liner Brezhnev clamped down on
critics, shattering the morale of dissidents in the USSR. “The shock of our tanks
crushing the Prague Spring . . . convinced us that the Soviet colossus was invincible,”
explained one pessimistic liberal. In 1974, Brezhnev expelled author Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn from the USSR after the publication of the first volume of The Gulag
Archipelago (1973–1976) in the U.S.-led bloc. Solzhenitsyn documented the story of
the Gulag (the Soviet system of internment and forced-labor camps) with firsthand
reports about the deadly conditions prisoners endured. More than any other single
work, The Gulag Archipelago disillusioned loyal Communists around the world.
The USSR and other Communist countries used both persecution of ordinary
citizens and the “soft” power of the new medium of television to reestablish order.
Soviet psychologists, working with the government, certified the “mental illness” of
people who did not play by the rules; thus, dissidents wound up as virtual prisoners
in mental institutions. In a revival of tsarist Russia’s anti-Semitism, Jews faced edu-
cational restrictions (especially in university admissions) and severe job discrimina-
tion. Soviet officials commonly accused Jews of being “unreliable.” In Czechoslova-
kia, where by 1970 some 80 percent of households had TV, government writers
created a new batch of soap operas featuring heroines who taught their families to
replace activism in the public sphere with the contentment of private life. Heroes
selflessly traveled to the West for their jobs, only to return disillusioned by its faults.
Despite these efforts, the brain drain of eastern European intellectuals to the
West increased into the 1970s and beyond. The modernist composer György Ligeti
had left Hungary in 1956, after which his work was celebrated in concert halls and
in such classic films as 2001: A Space Odyssey. From exile in Paris, Czech writer
Milan Kundera enthralled audiences with The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)
and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). Kundera claimed that the Soviet
regime in Czechoslovakia depended on making people forget. The memory of fallen
leaders was ruthlessly erased from history books, for instance, and individuals tried
to block out grim reality by engaging in lots of sexual activity. Like the migrants
from fascist Germany and Italy in the 1930s, newcomers — from noted intellectuals
to skilled craftspeople and dancers — enriched the culture of those countries that
welcomed them.
In the United States, the reaction against activists was different, though restoring
order ultimately succeeded there, too. Elected in 1968, President Richard Nixon
[1960s–1989
] The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 957
(1913–1994) promised to bring peace to Southeast Asia, but in 1970 he ordered U.S.
troops to invade Cambodia, the site of North Vietnamese bases. Campuses erupted
again in protest, and on May 4 the National Guard killed four students and wounded
eleven others at a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio. Nixon called the
victims “bums,” and a growing reaction against the counterculture led many Ameri-
cans to agree with one citizen who declared that the guardsmen “should have fired
sooner and longer.” In 1975, a determined North Vietnamese offensive defeated
South Vietnam and its U.S. allies and forcibly reunified the country. A strong cur-
rent of public opinion turned against
activists, born of the sense that somehow
they — not the war, government corrup- REVIEW QUESTION What were the main
tion, or the huge war debt — had brought issues for protesters in the 1960s, and how
did governments address them?
down the United States. Both superpowers
were being tested, almost to the limits.
The Testing of Superpower Domination

and the End of the Cold War
Protesters like Jan Palach left a lasting legacy that continued to motivate those seek-
ing political change, particularly in the Soviet bloc. As order was restored, some
disillusioned reformers in the West turned to open terrorism, and like every other
political occurrence in these days, television broadcast the events. New forces also
emerged from beyond Europe and the United States to challenge superpower domi-
nance. Internal corruption, competition from the oil-producing states, and the pur-
suit of warfare beyond their borders all threw the superpowers and their allies off
balance, allowing reform-minded heads of state to come to the fore. The two most
famous innovators were Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Mikhail Gorbachev in the
USSR, both of whom introduced drastic new policies in the 1980s to keep their
economies moving forward. In the Soviet bloc, however, refining the old system
actually contributed to its collapse and thus to the end of the cold war in 1989.
A Changing Balance of World Power

Tested by protest at home, the superpowers found themselves facing a changing bal-
ance in world power. In the midst of turmoil, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of
state and a believer — like Otto von Bismarck — in Realpolitik, decided to take
advantage of the ongoing rivalry between the USSR and China. After the Communist
Revolution in 1949, Mao Zedong, China’s new leader, undertook foolish experiments
in both manufacturing and agriculture that caused famine and massive suffering. As
internal problems grew in both the Soviet Union and China, the two Communist
giants skirmished along their shared borders and in diplomatic arenas. In 1972,
President Nixon visited China, linking two very different great nations both facing
disorder at home. Within China, Nixon’s visit helped slow the brutality and excesses
[ 1960s–1989
]
of Mao’s regime. It also advanced the careers of Chinese pragmatists who were inter-
ested in technology and relations with the West and who laid the groundwork for
China’s boom later in the century.
The diplomatic success of the visit led the Soviets to make their own overtures
to the U.S.-led bloc, beginning a process known as détente (a relaxation of tensions).
In 1972, the superpowers signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I),
which set a cap on the number of antimissile defenses each country could have. In
1975, in the Helsinki accords on human rights, the western bloc officially acknowl-
edged Soviet territorial gains in World War II in exchange for the Soviet bloc’s guar-
antee of basic human rights.
Despite these successes, the war in Vietnam left the United States billions of dol-
lars in debt to other countries and the international currency system in collapse. In
the face of the resulting global economic chaos, Common Market countries united
to force the United States to relinquish its single-handed direction of Western eco-
nomic strategy. Another blow to U.S. leadership followed when it was revealed that
Nixon’s office had threatened the U.S. system of free elections by authorizing the
burglary and wiretapping of Democratic Party headquarters at Washington’s Water-
gate building during the 1972 presidential campaign. The Watergate scandal forced
Nixon to resign in disgrace in the summer of 1974 — one more weak spot in U.S.
superpower status in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Middle East’s oil-producing nations dealt Western dominance still another
major blow. Tensions between Israel and the Arab world provided the catalyst. In
1967, Israeli forces, responding to Palestinian guerrilla attacks, quickly seized Gaza
and the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West
Bank from Jordan. Israel’s stunning victory in this
Israel after action, which came to be called the Six-Day War,
independence, 1948 LEBANON
Israeli conquests, 1967
was followed in 1973 by a joint Egyptian and Syr-
ian attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the most holy
SYRIA
Golan
day in the Jewish calendar. Israel, with material
Mediterranean Heights
Sea assistance from the United States, stopped the
Tel Aviv West assault.
Bank
Gaza
Jerusalem
Having failed militarily, Arab nations in the
ISRAEL
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
Suez Canal
JORDAN (OPEC), a relatively loose consortium before the
Yom Kippur War, combined to quadruple the price
SINAI PENINSULA
of their oil and impose an embargo, cutting off all
(returned to Egypt 1981)
exports of oil to the United States and its allies
Gu
because they backed Israel. For the first time since

lf o
f
SAUDI imperialism’s heyday, the producers of raw

Su
EGYPT
ez
ARABIA
materials — not the industrial powers — controlled
0 25 50 miles
0 50 kilometers Red Sea
the flow of commodities and set prices to their
own advantage (Figure 28.1). As a result, unemploy-
Israel after the Six-Day War, 1967 ment rose by more than 50 percent in Europe and
[1960s–1989
FIGURE 28.1 Fluctuating Oil Prices,

20
1955–1985 Highest price $19.40
Colonization allowed the Western impe- 18
rial powers to obtain raw materials at
16
Price per barrel in U.S. dollars (of 1974)

advantageous prices or even without pay-
ing at all. OPEC’s oil embargo and price
14
hikes of the 1970s were signs of change,
which included the exercise of decolo- 12
nized countries’ control over their own
resources. OPEC’s action led to a decade 10
of painful economic downturn, but it also 8
encouraged some European governments
to improve public transportation, support 6
the production of fuel-efficient cars, and
make individual consumers cut back their 4
Lowest price $1.60
dependence on oil. 2
0
1955 ’60 ’65 ’70 ’75 ’80 ’85
the United States and inflation soared. By the end of 1973, the inflation rate jumped
to over 12 percent in France and 20 percent in Portugal. Eastern-bloc countries,
dependent on Soviet oil, fared little better because the West could no longer afford
their products and the Soviets boosted the price of their own oil. Skyrocketing inter-
est rates discouraged both industrial investment and consumer buying. Prices, unem-
ployment, and interest rates all rising created an unusual combination of economic
conditions called stagflation. Western Europe drastically cut back on its oil depen-
dence by undertaking conservation, enhancing public transportation, and raising the
price of gasoline to encourage the development of fuel-efficient cars.
The U.S. bloc took further blows. In the late 1970s, students, clerics, shopkeepers,
and unemployed men in Iran began an uprising that brought to power the Islamic
ayatollah (a Shi‘ite religious leader) Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989). Using the new
medium of audiocassette recordings to spread his message, Khomeini called for a
transformation of Iran into a truly Islamic society, which meant the renunciation of
the Western ways advocated by the American-backed shah, who was overthrown. In
the autumn of 1979, supporters of Khomeini took hostages at the U.S. embassy in
Teheran even as images of the captives’ stricken faces were sent around the globe via
satellites. The United States was essentially paralyzed in the face of Islamic militancy,
further OPEC price hikes, and a downwardly spiraling economy.
The Western Bloc Meets Challenges with Reform

As the 1980s opened, governments in the West had to put their economic houses in
order and confront the growing phenomenon of terrorism — a trend that had actu-
ally begun in the West. In the 1970s, terrorist bands of young people in Europe
[ 1960s–1989
]
0 50 100 miles responded to the suppression of activism and the
0 50 100 kilometers
FRANCE worsening economic conditions with kidnappings,
Bilbao
bank robberies, bombings, and assassinations. In
San Sebastián
Basque West Germany, the Red Army Faction — eager to
bring down the Social Democratic coalition that
ANDORRA had led the country through the 1970s — assassi-
SPAIN Catalonia nated prominent businessmen and public officials.
Madrid
Barcelona Practiced in random shootings of pedestrians,
Italy’s Red Brigades kidnapped and then murdered
0 25 50 miles the head of the dominant Christian Democrats in
Derry
0 25 50 kilometers
1972 1978. Advocates of independence for the Basque
Belfast
Northern 1972 nation in northern Spain assassinated Spanish
Ireland
1978 politicians and police officers.
1976
1979 In the 1970s, Catholics in Northern Ireland
protested job discrimination and a lack of civil
IRELAND
Dublin rights. With protest escalating, the British govern-
Bloody Sunday,
January 30, 1972
ment sent in troops who on January 30, 1972
Other major incidents (which became known as Bloody Sunday), fired at
demonstrators and killed thirteen, setting off a
Nationalist Movements cycle of violence that left five hundred dead in that
of the 1970s year alone. Protestants fearful of losing their domi-
nant position combated a reinvigorated Irish Repub-
lican Army (IRA), which carried out bombings and assassinations to put an end to
the oppression of Catholics.
Terrorists failed in their goal of overturning the existing democracies, and, bat-
tered as it was, parliamentary government scored a few important successes in the
1970s. Spain and Portugal, suffering under dictatorships since the 1930s, set out on
a course of political openness and greater prosperity. The death of Spain’s Francisco
Franco in 1975 ended more than three decades of dictatorial rule. Franco’s hand-
picked successor, King Juan Carlos, surprisingly steered his nation to Western-style
constitutional monarchy, facing down threatened military coups. Portugal and Greece
also ousted right-wing dictators, thus paving the way for their countries’ integration
into western Europe. Despite these democratic advances, economic crisis and politi-
cal terrorism weighed on the West.
More than anyone else, Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013), the leader of Britain’s
Conservative Party and prime minister from 1979 to 1990, reshaped the West’s politi-
cal and economic ideas to meet the crisis. Coming to power amid continuing eco-
nomic decline, revolt in Northern Ireland, and labor unrest, the combative prime
minister rejected the politics of consensus building. She believed that only business
could revive the sluggish British economy, so she lashed out at union leaders, Labour
Party politicians, and people who received welfare-state benefits, calling them ene-
mies of British prosperity. In her view, business leaders were the key members of
society. She characterized immigrants, whose low wages contributed greatly to busi-
[1960s–1989
On the World Stage: Margaret Thatcher and Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat

Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain’s conservative prime minister, and Egyptian president Mohammed
Anwar al-Sadat met in London in August 1981, just two months before Sadat was assassinated
for participating in the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord. Thatcher’s term in office was as memorable
as Sadat’s: she went on to launch a new conservatism in politics and economics that would sweep
the world in the 1980s and 1990s. (© Mary Evans Picture Library / Marx Memorial Library / The Image Works.)
ness profits, as inferior. Under Thatcher, even workers blamed labor leaders or new-
comers for Britain’s troubles.
The policies of “Thatcherism” were based on monetarist, or supply-side, eco-
nomic theory. According to monetarist theory, inflation results when government
pumps money into the economy at a rate higher than the nation’s economic growth
rate. Monetarists believe that the government should keep a tight rein on the money
supply to prevent prices from rising rapidly. Supply-side economists maintain that the
economy as a whole flourishes when businesses grow and their prosperity “trickles
down” throughout society. To implement these theories, the British government cut
income taxes on the wealthy as a way of encouraging investment and increased sales
taxes to compensate for the lost revenue. The result was a greater burden on working
people, who bore the brunt of the higher sales tax. Thatcher also refused to prop up
“outmoded” industries such as coal mining and slashed education and health pro-
grams. Her package of economic policies came to be known as neoliberalism.
In the first years of Thatcher’s government, the British economy did not respond
well to her shock treatment. The quality of universities, public transportation, high-
ways, and hospitals deteriorated, and social unity fragmented as she pitted the lower
classes against one another. In 1981, blacks and Asians rioted in major cities. Thatcher
revived her sagging popularity with a nationalist war against Argentina in 1982 over
ownership of the Falkland Islands off the Argentinian coast. Stagflation ultimately
[ 1960s–1989
]
dissipated, and Thatcher’s program became the standard for those facing the chal-
lenge of stagflation and economic decline. Britain had been one of the pioneers of
the welfare state, and now it pioneered in changing course.
In the United States, Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), who served as president
between 1981 and 1989, followed a similar road to combat the economic crisis there.
Dividing U.S. citizens into the good and the bad, Reagan vowed to promote the
values of the “moral majority,” which included commitment to Bible-based religion
and unquestioned patriotism. He blasted so-called spendthrift and immoral “liber-
als” when introducing “Reaganomics” — a program of whopping income tax cuts for
the wealthy combined with massive reductions in federal spending for student loans,
school lunch programs, and mass transit. Funding social programs, he felt, only
encouraged bad Americans to be lazy. In foreign policy, Reagan rolled back détente
and demanded huge military budgets to counter the Soviets. The combination of tax
cuts and military expansion had pushed the federal budget deficit to $200 billion by
1986. As in Britain, inflation was brought under control and business picked up.
Other western European leaders also limited welfare-state benefits in the face of
stagflation, though without Thatcher’s and Reagan’s socially divisive rhetoric. West
German leader Helmut Kohl, who took power in 1982, reduced welfare spending,
froze government wages, and cut corporate taxes. Unlike Thatcher, Kohl did not fan
the flames of class and racial hatreds. Such a strategy would have been particularly
unwise in Germany, where terrorism on the left and on the right continued to flour-
ish. Moreover, the legacy of Nazism loomed menacingly: for example, an unem-
ployed German youth said of immigrant Turkish workers, “Let’s gas ’em.”
By 1981, stagflation had put more than 1.5 million people out of work in France,
but the French took a different political path to deal with the economic crisis. They
elected a Socialist president, François Mitterrand, who nationalized banks and cer-
tain industries and increased wages and social spending to stimulate the economy —
the opposite of Thatcherism. New public buildings like museums and libraries arose
along with new subway lines and improved public transport. When conservative
Jacques Chirac succeeded Mitterrand as president in 1995, he adopted neoliberal
policies. Socially divisive politics that had unfolded during hard economic times
grew in appeal. From the 1980s on, the racist National Front Party won 10 percent
and often more of the French vote with promises to deport African and Middle
Eastern immigrants.
At the same time, smaller European states without heavy defense commitments
began to thrive, some of them by slashing welfare programs. Spain joined the Com-
mon Market in 1986 and used Common Market investment and tourist dollars to
help rebuild its sagging infrastructure, as in the southern cities of Granada and
Córdoba. In Ireland, new investment in education for high-tech jobs combined with
low wage rates attracted business to the country in the 1990s. Prosperity, along with
the rising death toll from decades of violence, led to a political rapprochement
between Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1999. Austria prospered, too, in part by
reducing government pensions and aid to business.
[
1960s–1989
Almost alone, Sweden maintained a full array of social programs. The govern-
ment offered each immigrant a choice of subsidized housing in neighborhoods
inhabited primarily by Swedes or primarily by people from the immigrant’s native
land. Such programs were expensive, and Sweden dropped from fourth to fourteenth
place among nations in per capita income by 1998. The Swedish welfare state came
to seem extreme to many citizens, and, as elsewhere, immigrants were cast as the
source of the country’s problems — past, present, and future: “How long will it be
before our Swedish children will have to turn their faces toward Mecca?” ran one
politician’s campaign speech in 1993.
Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Bloc

Beginning in 1985, reform came to the Soviet Union as well, but instead of fortifying
the economy, it helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The need for
reform was evident. In 1979, the USSR became embroiled against Islam in Afghani-
stan when it supported a coup by a Communist faction against the government:
casualties were 800,000 for the Soviets alone and 3 million for the Afghans. Further,
global communications technology showed Soviet citizens that another way of life
was possible. Citizens could see that the Soviet system of corrupt economic manage-
ment produced a deteriorating standard of living. Shortages necessitated the three-
generation household, in which grandparents took over tedious homemaking tasks
from their working children and grandchildren, including waiting in long lines for
basic commodities. “There is no special skill to this,” a seventy-three-year-old grand-
mother and former garbage collector remarked. “You just stand in line and wait.”
One cheap and readily available product — vodka — pushed alcoholism to crisis lev-
els, diminishing productivity and straining the nation’s morale.
In 1985, a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–), opened an era of change.
The son of peasants, Gorbachev had risen through Communist Party ranks as an
agricultural specialist and had traveled abroad to observe life in the West. At home,
he saw the consequences of economic stagnation: in much of the USSR, ordinary
people decided not to have children. The Soviet Union was forced to import massive
amounts of grain because 20 to 30 percent of the grain produced in the USSR rotted
before it could be harvested or shipped to market, so great was the inefficiency of
the state-directed economy. Industrial pollution had reached scandalous proportions
because state-run enterprises cared only about meeting production quotas. A mas-
sive and privileged party bureaucracy feared innovation and failed to achieve social-
ism’s professed goal of a decent standard of living for working people. To match U.S.
military growth, the Soviet Union diverted 15 to 20 percent of its gross national
product (more than double the U.S. proportion) to armaments, further crippling the
economy’s chances of raising living standards.
Gorbachev knew from experience and from his travels to western Europe that
the Soviet system was completely inadequate, and he quickly proposed several
unusual programs. A crucial economic reform, perestroika (“restructuring”), aimed
[ 1960s–1989
]
Mikhail and Raisa
Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev and
his wife, Raisa, gave a
fresh look to Soviet poli-
tics. They traveled, made
friends abroad, and were
fashionable and modern.
While the Gorbachevs
became part of Western
celebrity culture, however,
average citizens back
home in the USSR saw
the Gorbachevs’ privileged
lifestyle as simply the
continuation of the Com-
munist government’s
disregard for ordinary
people. (Sovfoto / UIG via
Getty Images.)
to reinvigorate the Soviet economy by improving productivity, increasing invest-

ment, encouraging the use of up-to-date technology, and gradually introducing such
market features as prices and profits. The complement to economic change was the
policy of glasnost (usually translated as “openness” or “publicity”), which called for
“wide, prompt, and frank information” and for allowing Soviet citizens new measures
of free speech. When officials complained that glasnost threatened their status, Gor-
bachev replaced more than a third of the Communist Party’s leadership. The pressing
need for glasnost became most evident after the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986,
when a nuclear reactor exploded and spewed radioactive dust into the atmosphere.
Bureaucratic cover-ups delayed the spread of information about the accident, with
lethal consequences for people living near the plant.
After Chernobyl, Communist Party meetings suddenly included complaints
about the highest leaders and their policies. Television shows adopted the outspoken
methods of American investigative reporting, and instead of publishing made-up
letters praising the great Soviet state, newspapers were flooded with real ones com-
plaining of shortages and abuse. One outraged “mother of two” protested that the
cost-cutting policy of reusing syringes in hospitals was a source of AIDS, the deadly
disease that had recently begun to spread worldwide. “Why should little kids have
to pay for the criminal actions of our Ministry of Health?” she asked. Debate and
[
1960s–1989
factions arose across the political spectrum. In the fall of 1987, one of Gorbachev’s
allies, Boris Yeltsin, quit the government after denouncing perestroika as insufficient
to produce real reform. Yeltsin’s political daring inspired others to organize in oppo-
sition to crumbling Communist rule. In the spring of 1989, in a remarkably free
balloting in Moscow’s local elections, not a single Communist was chosen.
Recognizing how severely the cold war arms race was draining Soviet resources,
Gorbachev began scaling back missile production. His unilateral actions gradually
won over Ronald Reagan. In 1985, the two leaders initiated a personal relationship and
began defusing the cold war. “I bet the hard-liners in both our countries are bleeding
when we shake hands,” said Reagan at the conclusion of one meeting. In early 1989,
Gorbachev withdrew the last of his country’s forces from the debilitating war in
Afghanistan, and the United States started to cut back its own vast military buildup.
As Gorbachev’s reforms in the USSR started spiraling out of his control, dissent
was rising across the Soviet bloc. In the summer of 1980, Poles had gone on strike
to protest government-increased food prices; workers at the Gdańsk shipyards, led
by electrician Lech Walesa and crane operator Anna Walentynowicz, created an
independent labor movement called Solidarity. The organization soon embraced
much of the adult population, including a million members of the Communist Party.
Both intellectuals and the Catholic church, long in the forefront of opposition to
antireligious communism, supported Solidarity workers as they occupied factories
in protest against the deteriorating conditions of everyday life. The members of Soli-
darity waved Polish flags and paraded giant portraits of the Virgin Mary and Pope
John Paul II — a Polish native.
Global media coverage encouraged Solidarity leaders. As food became scarce
and prices rose, tens of thousands of women joined in with marches, crying “We’re
hungry!” They also protested working conditions, but as both workers and the only
caretakers of home life, it was the scarcity of food that sent them into the streets.
The Communist Party teetered on the edge of collapse, until the police and the army,
with Soviet support, imposed a military government and in the winter of 1981 out-
lawed Solidarity. Using world communications networks, dissidents kept Solidarity
alive and workers kept meeting, creating a new culture outside the official Soviet arts
and newscasts. Poets read dissident verse to overflow crowds, and university profes-
sors lectured on such forbidden topics as Polish resistance in World War II. Activism
in Poland and the news about it set the stage for communism’s downfall across the
Soviet bloc.
The year 1989 saw uprisings around the world — in Chile, the Philippines, Haiti,
South Africa, and China, for example. The global Cable News Network (CNN), estab-
lished in 1980, linked many individual movements for democratic change through
its twenty-four-hour coverage of world events. The most widely covered of these was
the attack on the Communist state in China. Inspired by Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing,
in the spring of 1989 thousands of Chinese students massed in the city’s Tiananmen
Square, the world’s largest public square, to demand democracy. They used telex
machines and e-mail to rush their messages to the international community, and they
[ 1960s–1989
]
conveyed their goals through the cameras that Western television, broadcasting via
satellite, trained on them. As workers began joining the pro-democracy forces, the
government crushed the movement and executed as many as a thousand rebels.
News of the protests in Tiananmen Square was galvanizing to those in eastern
Europe who were inspired in their long-standing tradition of resistance. In June
1989, the Polish government, weakened by its own bungling of the economy and
lacking Soviet support for further repression, held free parliamentary elections. Soli-
darity candidates overwhelmingly defeated the Communists, and Walesa became
president in early 1990. Gorbachev openly reversed the Brezhnev Doctrine, refusing
to interfere in the political course of another nation. When it became clear that the
Soviet Union would not intervene in Poland, the fall of communism repeated itself
across the Soviet bloc.
Communism had collapsed in Poland; it then collapsed in Hungary, in part
because Hungarians, too, had experimented with “market socialism” since the 1960s.
Hungarian citizens were already protesting the government, lobbying, for example,
against ecologically unsound projects like the construction of a new dam. They
encouraged boycotts of Communist holidays, and on March 15, 1989, they boldly
commemorated the anniversary of the Hungarian uprising. These popular demands
for liberalization led the parliament in the fall of 1989 to dismiss the Communist
Party as the official ruling institution.
The most potent symbol of a divided Europe was the Berlin Wall, and East Ger-
mans had attempted to escape over it for decades. In the summer of 1989, crowds of
East Germans flooded the borders to escape the crumbling Soviet bloc, and hundreds
of thousands of protesters rallied throughout the fall against the regime. Satellite tele-
vision brought them visions of postindustrial prosperity and of free and open public
debate in West Germany. Crowds of demonstrators greeted Gorbachev, taken as a
hero by many, when he visited the country in October. On November 9, guards at
the Berlin Wall allowed free passage to the west, turning protest into a festive holiday.
As they strolled freely in the streets, East Berliners saw firsthand the goods available
in a successful postindustrial society. Soon thereafter, citizens — east and west —
released years of frustration by assaulting the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers.
In Czechoslovakia people also watched televised news of glasnost expectantly.
Persecuted dissidents had maintained their critique of Communist rule. In an open
letter to the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership, playwright Václav Havel
accused Marxist-Leninist rule of making people materialistic and indifferent to pub-
lic life. In 1977, Havel, along with a group of fellow intellectuals and workers, signed
Charter 77, a public protest against the regime that resulted in the arrest of the
signers. In the mid-1980s, they and the wider population heard Gorbachev on televi-
sion calling for free speech. Protesters clamored for democracy, but the government
turned the police on them, arresting activists in January 1989 for commemorating
the death of Jan Palach. The turning point came in November 1989 when, in response
to police beatings of students, Alexander Dubček, leader of the Prague Spring of 1968,
addressed the crowds in Prague’s Wenceslas Square with a call to oust the Stalinists
[1960s–1989
November 1989: East Germany Meets West Germany

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the “iron curtain” separating the Soviet from the western bloc
was a joyous occasion across Europe, but nowhere more so than in Germany. Divided from one
another into two countries after World War II, Germans would later find that reunification was a
problem, bringing unemployment and social dislocation. In November 1989, however, West Ger-
mans lined up to welcome their fellow citizens traveling from the east to see what life was like
beyond the Soviet sphere. (ullstein bild / Bildarchiv / The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
from the government. Almost immediately, the Communist leadership resigned.

Capping what became known as the “velvet revolution” for its lack of bloodshed, the
formerly Communist-dominated parliament elevated Havel to the presidency.
From the mid-1960s on, Nicolae Ceauşescu had ruled Romania as the harshest
dictator in Communist Europe since Stalin. In the name of modernization, he destroyed
whole villages; to build up the population, he outlawed contraceptives and abortions,
a restriction that led to the abandonment of tens of thousands of children. He preached
the virtues of a very slim body so that he could cut rations and use the savings for
buying private castles and building himself an enormous palace in Bucharest. To this
end, he tore down entire neighborhoods and dozens of historical buildings and
crushed opponents of the gaudy project to make it appear popular. Yet in early
December 1989, workers demonstrated against the dictatorial government, and the
army turned on Ceauşescu loyalists. On Christmas Day, viewers watched on televi-
sion as the dictator and his wife were tried
by a military court and then executed. For REVIEW QUESTION How and why did the bal-
many, the death of Ceauşescu meant that ance of world power change during the 1980s?
the very worst of communism was over.
[ 1960s–1989
]
Conclusion
The collapse of communism in the Soviet satellites surprised the world, for U.S.-bloc
analysts had reported throughout the 1980s that the Soviet empire was in danger-
ously robust health. Yet no one should have been unaware of dissent or economic
discontent. Since the 1960s, rebellious youth, ethnic and racial minorities, and women
had all been condemning conditions across the West, along with criticizing the threat
posed by the cold war. By the early 1980s, wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, protests
against scarcity in the Soviet bloc, the power of oil-producing states, and the growing
political force of Islam had cost the superpowers their resources and reputations.
Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States tried to put
their postindustrial and cold war houses in order. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of
glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union — aimed at political and economic
improvements — brought on collapse.
Glasnost and perestroika were supposed to bring about the high levels of prosper-
ity enjoyed outside the Soviet bloc. Across the West, including the USSR, an unprec-
edented set of technological developments had transformed businesses, space explora-
tion, and the functioning of government. Technological advances also had an enormous
impact on everyday life. Work changed as society reached a stage called postindus-
trial, in which the service sector predominated. New patterns of family life, new
relationships among the generations, and revised standards for sexual behavior also
characterized these years. It was only in the United States and western Europe, how-
ever, that the full consumer benefits of postindustrialization reached ordinary people.
The attainment of a thoroughgoing consumer, service, and high-tech society demanded
levels of efficiency, coordination, and cooperation unknown in the Soviet bloc.
Many complained, nonetheless, about the dramatic changes resulting from
postindustrial development. The protesters of the late 1960s addressed postindustrial
society’s concentrations of bureaucratic and industrial power (often enabled by tech-
nology), social inequality, and environmental degradation. In the Soviet sphere, pro-
tests were continuous but were little heeded until the collapse of Soviet domination
of eastern Europe in 1989. Soon communism would be overturned in the USSR itself.
However, the triumph of democracy in the former Soviet Empire opened an era of
painful adjustment for hundreds of millions of people. Amid this rapid change was
the growing awareness — via technology’s instantaneous coverage of events across the
globe — that the world’s peoples were more tightly connected than ever before.
[1960s–1989
] Conclusion 969
0 250 500 miles

0 250 500 kilometers FINLAND Collapse of
Communism
NORWAY
Site of popular
a
demonstrations
c Se
SWEDEN Estonia
lti
Nor th
Ba
S ea Latvia
DENMARK Nov. 1989
Fall of Berlin Wall Lithuania N
UNITED March 1990 USSR E

KINGDOM Gdańsk W
EAST Belarus
June 1989 S
NETH. Berlin
GERMANY Warsaw
POLAND
U S S R
BELGIUM
WEST
GERMANY Prague
CZECH Cracow Ukraine
LUX. OSLOVAKI
A
Nov. 1989
FRANCE Budapest Moldova
SWITZ. AUSTRIA Dec. 1989
HUNGARY
Autumn, 1989 ROMANIA
Bucharest
YUGOSLAVIA Bl ack S ea
Ad
SPAIN ITALY
r ia
Corsica Sofia Nov. 1989

ti c
BULGARIA
Se
a
ALBANIA
Sardinia
GREECE TURKEY
MAPPING THE WEST The Collapse of Communism in Europe, 1989–1990

The 1989 overthrow of the Communist Party in the USSR satellite countries of eastern Europe
occurred with surprising rapidity. The transformation began when Polish voters tossed out Com-
munist Party leaders in June 1989, and then accelerated in September when thousands of East
Germans fled to Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Between October and December, Com-
munist regimes were replaced in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Within
three years, the Baltic states would declare their independence, the USSR itself would dissolve,
and the breakup of Yugoslavia would lead to war in the Balkans.
Chapter 28 Review
DNA (p. 942) samizdat (p. 950) Margaret Thatcher (p. 960)
in vitro fertilization (p. 943) Richard Nixon (p. 956) neoliberalism (p. 961)
multinational corporation Organization of Petroleum Mikhail Gorbachev (p. 963)
(p. 944) Exporting Countries (OPEC) perestroika (p. 963)
pop art (p. 947) (p. 958) glasnost (p. 964)
Ostpolitik (p. 949) stagflation (p. 959) Solidarity (p. 965)
Review Questions
1. What were the technological and scientific advances of the 1960s and 1970s, and how did
they change human life and society?
2. How did Western society and culture change in the postindustrial age?
3. What were the main issues for protesters in the 1960s, and how did governments address
them?
4. How and why did the balance of world power change during the 1980s?
Making Connections
1. What were the differences between industrial society of the late nineteenth century and
postindustrial society of the late twentieth century?
2. Why were there so many protests, acts of terrorism, and uprisings across the West in the
decades between 1960 and 1990?
3. What have been the long-term consequences of Communist rule in the Soviet bloc between
1917 and 1989?
4. How did technology shape politics over the course of the twentieth century?
The history-changing events of the 1960s to 1989 ran the gamut from life-changing technology
to dramatic political upheavals — all of them chronicled in the innovative books below. The story
of television in post-uprising Czechoslovakia illustrates that even dictatorships used this new
technology to “soften” its control.
Bolton, Jonathan. Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech
Culture under Communism. 2012.
Bren, Paulina. The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague
Spring. 2010.
Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Rights Movement. 2011.
Chaplin, Tamara. Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television. 2007.
*Freedman, Estelle B. The Essential Feminist Reader. 2007.
Gildea, Robert, James Mar, and Anette Warring, eds. Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt. 2013.
Green Parties Worldwide: http://www.greens.org
Hadley, Louisa, and Elizabeth Ho, eds. Thatcher & After: Margaret Thatcher and Her Afterlife in
Contemporary Culture. 2011.
*Primary source.
970
[1960s–1989
Important Events
1963 Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique

1966 Willy Brandt becomes West German foreign minister and develops
Ostpolitik
1967 First successful human heart transplant
1968 Revolution in Czechoslovakia; student uprisings throughout Europe and
the United States
1969 U.S. astronauts walk on the moon’s surface
1972 SALT I between the United States and Soviet Union
1973 End of Vietnam War; OPEC raises price of oil and imposes oil embargo
on the West
1973–1976 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes The Gulag Archipelago
1978 The first test-tube baby is born in England
1978–1979 Islamic revolution in Iran; hostages are taken at U.S. embassy in Teheran
1980 Solidarity organizes resistance to Polish communism; British prime
minister Margaret Thatcher begins dismantling the welfare state
1981 Ronald Reagan becomes U.S. president
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet premier
1986 Explosion at Chernobyl nuclear plant; Spain joins the Common Market
1989 Chinese students revolt in Tiananmen Square; Communist governments
are ousted in eastern Europe; Berlin Wall is demolished
Consider three events: Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique (1963),
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes The Gulag Archipelago (1973–1976), and British
prime minister Margaret Thatcher begins dismantling the welfare state (1980). How
can all of these be considered responses to postindustrial society?
Harvey, Brian. Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy, Prospects. 2007.
Horn, Gerd-Rainer. The Spirit of 68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976.
2007.
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. 2013.
Kenney, Padraic. Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989. 2002.
Kotkin, Steven. Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment. 2010.
McLaren, Angus. Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies. 2012.
Ouimet, Matthew J. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy. 2003.
Peniel, E. Joseph. Stokely: A Life. 2014.
Suri, Jeremy. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. 2003.
Tignor, Robert. Anwar Sadat. 2015.
A New Globalism
29
1989 to the Present
T
hérèse is a Congolese immigrant to France who arrived in Paris in the
late 1970s with the help of a brother who worked for an airline. Thérèse had
been well-known in Africa as the teenage girlfriend of pop singer Bozi
Boziana, who wrote a hit song about her. Congo’s political instability had made her
search for safety in Paris, however. Once there, Thérèse remained famous among
African immigrants because she ran nganda, or informal bars, for them. Like Thérèse,
the immigrants who frequent her nganda are often Congolese and other Africans
who have settled in Paris, many of them illegally. They flock to her nganda because
they like her stylish dress, the African food she cooks, the African music she plays,
and the African products she sells. Many of
Thérèse’s small bars and eateries have flour-
Global Citizens ished, only to be closed down by landlords
The world’s migrants at the turn
of the millennium sought safety,
who want more of her handsome profits or
education, or jobs in the West’s who object to her running an unlicensed café.
manufacturing and ser vice occupa- Despite such obstacles, Thérèse keeps business
tions. Like these young immigrants going by moving her faithful clientele around
from Senegal who are sharing a her Paris neighborhood from basement to shop
meal at a café in Paris, they also
front to spare room. Thérèse is a new global
appreciated Western amenities.
Children of immigrants were some- citizen, counting on networks back home for
times disillusioned, however, not supplies, constantly on the move because she
wanting the life of extreme sacrifice lives on the margins of legality, and always
that their parents had lived. Their striving to make a good living.
frustrations at not being accepted Thérèse’s story is just one example of the
as full citizens occasionally erupted
into protest and even violence.
ways in which people in the post–cold war
(© Directphoto.org / Alamy.) world crossed national boundaries while main-
taining crucial ties around the globe. The end
of the cold war rivalry between the super-
powers paved the way for a more intimately connected world. In the 1990s, global-
ization advanced further with the dramatic collapse of communism in Yugoslavia and
then of the Soviet Union itself. The world was no longer divided in two by heavily
guarded borders and hostile cold war propaganda, allowing nations and individuals
more opportunity to trade and interact freely. The Common Market transformed
973
974 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
itself into the European Union, which from 2004 on admitted many states from the
former Soviet bloc. The telecommunication systems put in place in the 1960s
advanced globalization, binding peoples and cultures together in an ever more com-
plicated social and economic web. The World Wide Web and its offspring social
networking even united them to enact stunning social and political change.
The global age brought the vast national and international migration of tens of
millions of people, an expanding global marketplace, and rapid cultural exchange of
popular music, books, films, and television shows. On the negative side, the new
globalization also brought lethal disasters such as epidemic diseases, environmental
deterioration, genocide, and terrorism. Nations in the West faced competition from
the rising economic power of Asia and Latin America. International business merg-
ers accelerated in the 1990s, advancing efficiencies but often threatening jobs. Mil-
lions of workers in this interlinked economy discovered that the global age was one
of both opportunities and insecurities.
The end of superpower rivalry resulted in the dominance of a single power, the
United States, in world affairs. When the United States sought to exercise global power
through warfare, however, European states would often resist, just as the Soviet satel-
lites had pulled away from the USSR. New forces, including the economic power of
non-Western countries and the cultural might of Islam, created new centers of
influence. Some observers predicted a huge “clash of civilizations” because of sharp
differences between Western civilization and cultures beyond the West. Others, how-
ever, saw a different clash — one between a Europe reborn after decades of disastrous
wars as a peace-seeking group of nations confronting an imperial United States that,
like Europe in the nineteenth century, was frequently at war around the world. Glo-
balization in either of these scenarios could bring global splintering or even cata-
strophic warfare.
More immediately, globalization brought economic struggles for many. Begin-
ning in 2007, the global economy collapsed, resulting in widespread hardship. U.S.
recovery came first, but as Europe and the rest of the world flagged, it became appar-
ent that a reenergizing of economic capacities was needed. Illegal immigrants con-
tinued to move into Europe because of its
safety and high standard of living, and to
CHAPTER FOCUS How has globalization
been both a unifying and a divisive influence the United States because of the promise
on the West in the twenty-first century? of opportunity. The fate of Thérèse amid
this uncertainty we do not know.
Collapse of the Soviet Union and Its Aftermath

Following the fall of communist regimes in eastern Europe, rejection of communism
spread in the 1990s, turning events in unpredictable, even violent directions. Yugo-
slavia and then the Soviet Union itself fell apart as ethnic groups began to demand
independence. The USSR had held together more than one hundred ethnicities, and
[1989 to the Present
] Collapse of the Soviet Union and Its Aftermath 975
the five republics of Soviet Central Asia were home to fifty million Muslims. For more
than a century, successive governments had attempted to instill Russian and Soviet
culture, but the policy of Russification failed to build any heartfelt allegiance, lead-
ing to a swift collapse of the USSR. In Yugoslavia, communist rulers had also enforced
unity among religious and ethnic groups, and intermarriage among them occurred
regularly. Beginning in the unstable years of the early 1990s, however, ambitious
politicians seeking to build a following whipped up ethnic hatreds, making it unclear
whether peaceful, democratic nations would emerge.
The Breakup of Yugoslavia

In Yugoslavia, tensions erupted in 1990 after Serbia’s president Slobodan Milosevic
began to promote control of the entire Yugoslav federation by ethnic Serbs as a
replacement for communism. Other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia resisted Milosevic’s
militant pro-Serb nationalism and called for secession. “Slovenians . . . have one
more reason to say they are in favor of independence,” warned one of them in the
face of rising Serb claims to dominate the small republics that comprised Yugoslavia
(Map 29.1). In the summer of 1991, two of these republics, Slovenia and Croatia,
seceded. Croatia, however, lost almost a quarter of its territory when the Yugoslav
army, eager to enforce Serbian supremacy, invaded. A devastating civil war broke out
in Bosnia-Herzegovina when the republic’s Muslim majority tried to create a multi-
cultural and multiethnic state. With the covert military support of Milosevic’s gov-
ernment, Bosnian Serb men formed a guerrilla army and gained the upper hand. A
United Nations (UN) arms embargo prevented the Bosnian Muslims from equipping
their forces even though the Serbs at the time were massacring them.
Relentless violence in the Balkans was inflicted on neighbors in the name of
creating “ethnically pure” states in a region where ethnic mixture, not ethnic purity,
was the norm. During the 1990s, civilians died by the tens of thousands as Serbs
under Milosevic’s leadership pursued a policy they called ethnic cleansing — that is,
genocide — against non-Serb ethnicities. Serb men raped women to leave them preg-
nant with Serb babies as another form of conquest. In 1995, Croatian forces murdered
Serbs who had helped seize land from Croatia. That same year, the Serbs retaliated
by slaughtering eight thousand Muslim boys and men in the town of Srebrenica:
“Kill the lot,” the commander of the Serb forces ordered. Military units on all sides
destroyed libraries and museums, architectural treasures like the Mostar Bridge, and
cities rich with history such as Dubrovnik. Many in the West explained violence in
the Balkans as part of “age-old” blood feuds typical of a backward, “almost Asian”
society. Others saw using genocide to achieve national power as simply a modern
political practice that had been employed by the imperial powers and by other politi-
cians, including Adolf Hitler.
Peacekeepers were put in place, but they turned their backs on such atrocities
as the Srebrenica massacre and let them proceed to their horrific end. Late in the
]
0 50 100 miles
AUSTRIA 0 50 100 kilometers

N
HUNGARY
W E
SLOVENIA S
Ljubljana Zagreb ROMANIA

CROATIA Vojvodina
(autonomous
province)
Belgrade
BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA
SERBIA and
Sarajevo MONTENEGRO
A Mostar
dr
ia
ti MONTENEGRO Pec Pristina
c Dubrovnik
BULGARIA
Se Kosovo
a (autonomous
province) Skopje
THE FORMER
ITALY YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC
OF MACEDONIA
ALBANIA
Yugoslavia in 1991
Capital GREECE
MAP 29.1 The Former Yugoslavia, c. 2000

After a decade of destructive civil war, UN forces and UN-brokered agreements attempted to
protect the civilians of the former Yugoslavia from the brutal consequences of post-Communist
rule. Ambitious politicians, most notably Slobodan Milosevic, used the twentieth-century West-
ern strategy of fostering ethnic and religious hatred as a powerful tool to build support for them-
selves while making those favoring peace look softhearted and unfit to rule. What issues of
national identity does the breakup of Yugoslavia indicate?
1990s, Serb forces moved to attack Muslims of Albanian ethnicity living in the Yugo-
slav province of Kosovo. From 1997 to 1999, crowds of Albanian Kosovars fled their
homes as Serb militias and the Yugoslav army slaughtered the civilian population.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pilots bombed the region to drive back
both the army and militias, but people throughout the world felt that this interven-
tion came far too late. After a new regime in Serbia emerged alongside the indepen-
dent republics of Bosnia and Croatia, Milosevic was turned over to the International
Court of Justice, or World Court, in the Netherlands to be tried for crimes against
humanity. Across a fragmenting eastern Europe, hateful racial, ethnic, and religious
rhetoric influenced political agendas in the post-communist states.
The Soviet Union Comes Apart

Less than three years after the overthrow of communism in its eastern European satel-
lites, the once powerful Soviet Union itself fell apart. Perestroika had failed to revitalize
the Soviet economy; people confronted corruption and soaring prices, and Mikhail
Gorbachev’s planned “transition to the market [economy]” satisfied no one. In 1991,
the Russian parliament elected Boris Yeltsin over a Communist candidate as president
of the Russian Republic — the last straw for a group of eight antireform hard-liners,
including the powerful head of the Soviet secret police, or KGB, who attempted a coup.
As coup leaders held Gorbachev under house arrest, Yeltsin defiantly stood atop a tank
outside the Russian parliament building and called for mass resistance. Residents of
Moscow and Leningrad filled the streets, and units of the army defected. People used
fax machines and computers to coordinate internal resistance and alert the world.
Citizen action defeated the coup and prevented a return to the Communist past.
After the failed coup, the Soviet Union disintegrated. People tore down statues
of Soviet heroes; Yeltsin outlawed the Communist Party newspaper, Pravda, and
sealed the KGB’s files. At the end of August 1991, the Soviet parliament suspended
operations of the Communist Party itself. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania declared their independence in September; other republics within the USSR
followed their lead. Bloody ethnic conflicts and anti-Semitism revived as political
tools. On December 31, 1991, the final agreements dissolved the USSR, and twelve
of the fifteen former Soviet republics banded together to form the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) (Map 29.2).
Weakened by the coup attempt, Gorbachev abandoned politics. Yeltsin stepped
in and accelerated the change to a market economy, bringing on an ever-deepening
crisis. Yeltsin’s political allies, the military, and bureaucrats bought up or simply con-
fiscated national resources. A new class of superwealthy Russians (including Yeltsin’s
own family) called oligarchs arose by stealing the wealth in natural resources and
factories once seen as belonging to all the people. Meanwhile social disorder pre-
vailed as organized criminals interfered in the distribution of goods and services and
assassinated legitimate entrepreneurs, legislators, and anyone who criticized them.
Amid these scandals, Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999. He appointed a new
protégé, Vladimir Putin, as interim president.
Putin was a little-known functionary in Russia’s new security apparatus, which
had evolved from the old KGB. In the presidential elections of spring 2000, Putin
surprised everyone when the electorate voted him in. Though associated with the
Yeltsin family corruption, he declared himself committed to legality. “Democracy,”
he announced, “is the dictatorship of law.” With a solid mandate, Putin proceeded
to drive from power the biggest figures in regional and central government, usually
the henchmen of the oligarchs. Putin’s popularity rose even higher when the govern-
ment arrested the billionaire head of the Yukos Oil Company in 2003. The pillaging
of the country — the source of ordinary citizens’ recent suffering — was finally being
punished. According to critics, however, Putin was merely transferring Russia’s natu-
ral resources and other assets to himself and his own cronies.
]
NORWAY
DENMARK U S S R, 1 9 8 9
SWEDEN
GERMANY
RUSSIA FINLAND
Tallinn
Riga ARCTIC OCEAN
POLAND N
Vilnius
ESTONIA W
E
LATVIA S
Minsk
BELARUS LITHUANIA
Kiev Moscow
Chisinau
UKRAINE
MOLDOVA R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
B
la
ck
S
ea
GEORGIA
Chechnya
ARMENIA
Grozny
Tbilisi
TURKEY Aral
Yerevan Sea
Sea
Baku KAZAKHSTAN
n
spia
UZ
Ca
AZERBAIJAN TU
R
BE
IRAQ
K IS
KM
KYRGYZSTAN MONGOLIA
TAN
EN
IST
Almaty
Ashgabat Commonwealth of Independent States
Tashkent
AN
Bishkek
Independent in 1991
IRAN Dushanbe
Independence declared 1991;
at war with Russia, 1994 to present
TAJIKISTAN
Boundary of the former USSR to 1991
CHINA Capital cities
0 250 500 miles AFGHANISTAN Capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States
0 250 500 kilometers Violent ethnic conflicts
MAP 29.2 Countries of the Former Soviet Union, c. 2000

Following an agreement of December 1991, twelve of the countries of the former Soviet Union
formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Dominated by Russia and with Ukraine
often disputing this domination, the CIS worked to bring about common economic and military
policies. As nation-states dissolved rapidly in the late twentieth century, regional alliances and
coordination were necessary to meet the political and economic challenges of the global age.
Toward a Market Economy

Developing free markets and republican governments initially brought misery to Rus-
sia and the rest of eastern Europe. The conditions of everyday life grew increasingly
dire as salaries went unpaid, food remained in short supply, and essential services
disintegrated. In 1994, inflation soared at a rate of 14 percent a month in Russia, while
industrial production dropped by 15 percent. Hotel lobbies became clogged with
prostitutes because women were the first people fired as governments privatized
industry and cut service jobs. Unpaid soldiers sold their services to the Russian Mafia.
Ordinary citizens lined the sidewalks of major cities selling their household posses-
sions. “Anything and everything is for sale,” one critic noted at the time.
The new system of government was not without pluses. People with enough
money were able to travel freely for the first time, and the media were initially more
open than ever before. Some workers, many of them young and highly educated,
emigrated to more prosperous parts of the world, further depleting the human
resources of the former Communist states. At the same time, as the different republics
that had once composed the Soviet Union became independent, the hundreds of
thousands of ethnic Russians who had earlier been sent by the state to colonize these
regions returned to Russia as hated refugees, putting further demands on the chaotic
Russian economy.
Amid chaos, the former Soviet Union itself became, in the words of one critic,
a vast “kleptocracy” as the country’s resources continued to be stolen for individual
gain. An economist described the new scene as “piratization” rather than privatiza-
tion. In this regard, one Polish adviser noted, democracy and a successful economic
transition went hand in hand, for without a powerful representative government,
former officials would simply operate as criminals. Corruption fed on the Soviet
system of off-the-books dealing, tax evasion, bribery, favoritism, and outright theft.
Additionally, because industry had not benefited from technological change or com-
petition, free trade often meant closing factories and firing all the workers.
For many in the former Soviet bloc, the first priority was getting their economies
running again on new terms. Given the spiraling misery, however, many opposed
the introduction of new market-oriented measures. With the collective farms up for
sale, most farmers on them faced landlessness and starvation. The countries that
experienced the most success were those in which farmers already sold their produce
on the open market or in which independent entrepreneurs or even government
factories dealt in international trade. Hungary and Poland thus emerged from the
transition with less strain, because both had adopted some free-market practices
early on. They set up business schools and worked to attract foreign capital, anchor-
ing themselves securely to the world economy.
A region-wide brain drain followed in a rush of migration from eastern Europe
to western Europe, often involving those with marketable skills. “I knew in my heart
that communism would collapse,” said one Romanian ex-dissident, commenting
sadly on the exodus of youth from his country, “but it never crossed my mind that
]
the future would look like this.” The everyday advantages of living in western Europe
included safe water, adequate housing, personal safety, and at least a minimal level
of social services. Although western Europe seemed to follow a neoliberal course of
reduced spending on welfare-state programs, most benefits had disappeared entirely
in former Communist countries. Day-care centers, kindergartens, and homes for the
elderly closed their doors, and health care deteriorated. In these circumstances, the
benefits of citizenship in western European countries were a powerful attraction.
International Politics and the New Russia

Although Gorbachev had pulled the Soviet Union out of its disastrous war with
Afghanistan, his successors opened another war to prevent the secession of oil-rich
Chechnya and to provide a nationalist rallying cry during the difficult transition. For
decades, Chechens had been integrated into the Soviet bureaucracy and military,
but in the fall of 1991, the National Congress of the Chechen People took over the
government of the region from the USSR to gain the same kind of independence
achieved by other former Soviet states. In June 1992, Chechen rebels got control of
massive numbers of Russian weapons.
Assassination in Moscow
In 2009, Russian citizens honored journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya,
assassinated three years earlier in her Moscow apartment building. Politkovskaya relentlessly
investigated the atrocities during the war in Chechnya as well as the corruption in the Putin
government. Honest journalism in post-Soviet Russia was increasingly dangerous; scores of
journalists were murdered in the twenty years following the collapse of communism, and many
of Politkovskaya’s collaborators were also killed. Several men were arrested, tried, and acquit-
ted in the Politkovskaya case. (AP Photo / Pavel Golovkin.)
] The Nation-State in a Global Age 981
In December 1994, the Russian government invaded. An official defended the

war: “We now need a small victorious war . . . [to] raise the President’s [Yeltsin’s]
rating.” Chechnya’s capital city of Grozny was pounded to bits. Casualties mounted
not only among Chechen civilians but also among Russians. In 2002, Chechen loyal-
ists took hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater; Chechen suicide bombers blew
up airplanes, buses, and apartment buildings as Putin pursued the Chechen war into
the twenty-first century.
Putin expanded Russian influence in Ukraine, Belarus, India, and China as well
by taking advantage of the politics of energy. Russia had the commodities — especially
oil and gas — needed to sustain the growth of emerging industries around the world.
The sale of commodities made Russia once again a real player in global politics —
now because of its economic strength. Democratic values, however, were not put into
practice. Critics of the government were mercilessly assassinated, and newspapers
and broadcast media were closed down. In 2014, when Ukraine made gestures
toward the European Union and away from Russia, Putin annexed Crimea, part of
Ukraine, and fortified pro-Russian forces in the country. Putin’s popularity remained
steady as the Russian government used its new wealth to refurbish cities and every-
day life grew easier. Putin served as prime
minister between 2008 and 2012, and amid REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
claims of dishonest elections, he was issues facing the former Soviet bloc in the
returned to the presidency for a third term 1990s and early 2000s?
in 2012.
The Nation-State in a Global Age

Although the end of the Soviet system fractured one large regional economy, it gave
a boost to European unification. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the European Eco-
nomic Community (Common Market), which renamed itself the European Com-
munity in 1993, was healthy and economically robust compared with other regions
of the world. The European Community’s economic success provoked the formation
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which established a free-
trade zone of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The nationalist function of
cities diminished as major urban areas like London and Paris became packed with
people from other countries. Organizations for world governance grew in influence
alongside large regional economic blocs. There was also resistance to these trends
from those who wanted to preserve their own traditions and who felt the loss of a
secure, face-to-face, local way of life.
Europe Looks beyond the Nation-State

The Common Market changed dramatically after the demise of European commu-
nism. In 1992, the twelve countries of the Common Market ended national distinc-
tions in certain business activities, border controls, and transportation, effectively
]
closing down passport controls at their shared borders. Citizens of the member
countries carried a uniform burgundy-colored passport, and governments, whether
municipal or national, had to treat all member nations’ firms the same. In 1994, by
the terms of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Community became the European
Union (EU), and in 1999 a common currency — the euro — came into being, first
for transactions among financial institutions and then in 2002 for general use by the
public. Common policies governed everything from the number of American soap
operas aired on television to pollution controls on automobiles to the health warnings
on cigarette packages. The EU parliament convened regularly in Strasbourg, France,
and with the adoption of a common currency, an EU central bank guided interest
rates and economic policy.
The EU was seen as the key to a peaceful Europe. “People with the same money
don’t go to war with one another,” said a French nuclear scientist about the introduc-
tion of the euro. Greece pushed for the admission of its traditional enemy Turkey in
2002 and 2003 despite the warnings of a former president of France that a predomi-
nantly Muslim country could never fit in with the Christian traditions of EU mem-
bers. Both Greece and Turkey stood to benefit by having their disputes adjudicated
by the larger body of European members, principally because they would be able to
cut that part of their defense budget used for weapons directed against each other.
Like the rivalry between Germany and France, that between Turkey and Greece, it
was hoped, would dissolve if bound by the strong economic and political ties of the
EU. As of 2015, however, Turkey still awaited progress on its application while begin-
ning to edge away from Europe.
There were drawbacks to EU membership. The EU enforced no common regu-
latory practices, and individual governments did not always observe common eco-
nomic policies such as limits on budget deficits. Individual governments also, on
occasion, set up hurdles and barriers for businesses, for example obstructing trans-
national mergers they did not like or blocking the acquisition of a company based
on its own soil no matter what the advantages to shareholders, the economy, the
workforce, or the consumers of unified Europe. Nonetheless, countries of eastern
Europe clamored to join, working hard to meet not only the EU’s fiscal requirements
but also those pertaining to human rights and social policy (Map 29.3).
The collapse of the Soviet system advanced privatization of eastern European
industry, and governments sold basic services to the highest bidder. Often, compa-
nies in the wealthy western countries of the EU snapped up eastern European assets.
For example, the Czech Republic in 2001 sold its major energy distributor, Transgaz,
and eight other regional distributors for 4.1 billion euros to a German firm. Lower
wages and costs of doing business in eastern Europe attracted foreign investment,
especially to Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia — the most devel-
oped state spun off from Yugoslavia. Eastern European countries sought membership
to gain further investment, advance modernization, and protect their economies.
In 2004, the EU admitted ten new members — the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Esto-
nia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia — and in 2007
Original members of the 0 250 500 miles

European Economic 0 250 500 kilometers
Community
N
Became members 1973–1995
W
Became members 2004–2015 E
Applying for membership S
FINLAND
NORWAY
SWEDEN ESTONIA
N. RUSSIAN
F E D E R AT I O N
a
Ireland North
Se
Sea LATVIA
tic
IRELAND DENMARK l
UNITED Ba LITHUANIA
RUSSIA
KINGDOM
BELARUS
NETH.
AT L A N T I C BEL. GERMANY POLAND

OCEAN CZECH
LUX. UKRAINE
REP.
LIECH. SLOVAKIA
FRANCE MOLDOVA
SWITZ. AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
SLOVENIA
CROATIA ROMANIA
BOSNIA- SERBIA
L
ITALY
GA
Black Sea
HERZEGOVINA
U
SPAIN BULGARIA
RT
MONTENEGRO MACEDONIA
PO
KOSOVO
ALBANIA
TURKEY
GREECE
MOROCCO ALGERIA TUNISIA

MALTA Mediterranean Sea CYPRUS
MAP 29.3 The European Union in 2015

The European Union (EU) appeared to increase the economic health of its members despite
the rocky start of its common currency, the euro. The EU helped end the traditional competi-
tion between its members and facilitated trade and worker migration by providing common
passports and business laws, and open borders. Many critics, however, feared a loss of cul-
tural distinctiveness among peoples in an age of mass communications.
it welcomed Bulgaria and Romania. Just before its admission to the EU, Poland’s
standard of living was 39 percent of EU standards, up from 33 percent in 1995. The
Czech Republic and Hungary were at 55 and 50 percent, respectively. In all three
cases these figures masked the discrepancy between the ailing countryside and thriv-
ing cities. Citizens in eastern Europe were not always happy at joining the EU. A
retiree foresaw the cost of beer going up and added, “If I wanted to join anything in
the West, I would have defected.” Still others felt that having just established an
independent national identity, they should not allow themselves to be swallowed up
once again. People in older member states were having second thoughts, too: in the
spring of 2005, a majority of voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a complex
draft constitution that would have strengthened EU ties. Commentators attributed
]
the rejection to popular anger at the EU bureaucracy’s failure to consult ordinary
people in decision making.
Although still weak by comparison with most of western Europe, the economic
life of eastern Europe had in fact picked up considerably by 2000. In contrast to the
massive layoffs, soaring inflation, and unpaid salaries of the first post-Communist
years, in 2002 residents of Poland, Slovenia, and Estonia had purchasing power some
40 percent higher than in 1989. Outsourcing by international companies began to
flourish across the region, increasing opportunities for those with language and com-
mercial skills. Even in countries with the weakest economies — Latvia, Bulgaria, and
Romania — a greater number of residents enjoyed such modern conveniences as
freezers, computers, and portable telephones. Shopping malls sprang up, mostly
around capital cities, and superstores like the furniture giant IKEA and the electron-
ics firm Electroworld became a consumer’s paradise to those long starved of goods.
“When Electroworld opened in Budapest [April 2002], it provoked a riot. Two hun-
dred thousand people crowded to get in the doors,” reported one amazed observer,
a sign of U.S.-style “consumania” of materialism and frenzied shopping. For consum-
ers, however, learning to read labels and to compare prices offered by superstores
indicated their membership in a free, global community. Many proudly believed they
had left communist poverty behind.
Globalizing Cities and Fragmenting Nations

After the collapse of communism, the West experienced the globalization of major
cities. These were cities whose institutions, functions, and visions were overwhelm-
ingly global rather than regional or national. They contained stock markets, legal
firms, insurance companies, financial service organizations, and other enterprises
that operated worldwide and that were linked to similar enterprises in other global
cities. Within these cities, high-level decision makers set global economic policy and
enacted global business. The presence of high-powered and high-income global
businesspeople made urban life extremely costly, driving middle managers and engi-
neers to lower-priced living quarters in the suburbs, which nonetheless provided
good schools and other amenities for well-educated white-collar earners. Crowded
into the slums of global cities and the poorer suburbs were the lowest-paid workers —
the maintenance, domestic, and other laborers whose menial labor was essential to
the needs and comfort of those at the top.
Global cities became centers for migration of highly skilled and medial workers
alike. Paris, London, Moscow, and New York were global spaces in direct and con-
stant contact with institutions, businesses, and governments around the world. In
contrast, citizens of more locally oriented cities took pride in maintaining a distinc-
tive national culture or local sense of community and often denounced global cities
as rootless, their citizens lacking patriotic focus on national causes. Global cities were
often the base for diasporas of prosperous migrants, such as the estimated ninety
[
1989 to the Present
thousand Japanese in England in the mid-1990s who staffed Japan’s thriving global
businesses. Because these migrants did not aim to become citizens, global cities were
said to produce a “deterritorialization of identities” — meaning that many city dwell-
ers lacked both a national and a local sense of themselves.
Ironically, as globalization took hold economically and culturally, there came
to be more nation-states in Europe in 2000 than there had been in 1945. Claims of
ethnic distinctiveness caused individual nation-states to break apart and separatist
movements — like that in Chechnya — to grow. Despite two centuries aimed at unifi-
cation of the Slavs, for example, Slavs separated themselves from one another in the
1990s and early twenty-first century. Yugoslavia came apart into several states, and
in 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia (see Map 29.3,
page 983). In 2014, after a heated campaign, Scotland’s voters, however, rejected
separating from the United Kingdom.
Activists also launched movements for regional independence in France, Italy,
and Spain. Some Bretons (residents of the historical French province of Brittany)
and Corsicans demanded independence from France, the Corsicans violently attack-
ing national officials. Sharp cultural differences threatened to split Belgium in two.
Basque nationalists in northern Spain assassinated tourists, police, and other public
servants in an effort to gain autonomy, and although in 2005 they publicly renounced
terrorism, violence often resurfaced. The push for an independent northern Italy began
when politicians saw its attractiveness to voters and loudly demanded secession. As
cities globalized and nations fragmented, new combinations of local, national, and
global identities took shape. Such changing identities, plus the overall expansion of
the EU, called the nation-state into question.
Global Organizations
Supranational organizations, some regulating international politics and others
addressing finance and social issues, also challenged the nation-state. The World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO)
raised money from national governments and dealt, for example, with the terms of
trade among countries and the economic well-being of individual peoples. The IMF
made loans to developing countries on the condition that those countries restructure
their economies according to neoliberal principles. Other supranational organiza-
tions were charitable foundations, think tanks, or service-based organizations acting
independently of governments, many of them based in Europe and the United States;
they were called nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Because some of these
groups — the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society
Foundation, for example — controlled so much money, NGOs often had considerable
international power. Some charitable and activist NGOs, like the French-based Doc-
tors Without Borders, depended on global contributions and used them to provide
medical attention in such places as the former Yugoslavia, where people facing war
]
had no other medical help. Small, locally based NGOs excelled at inspiring grassroots
activism, while the larger NGOs were often criticized for directing government poli-
cies with no regard for democratic processes.
Not everyone supported or was pleased with the process of globalization; some
people formed activist groups to attack globalization or to influence its course. In
1998, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens
(ATTAC) worked to block the control of globalization by the forces of high finance,
declaring: “Commercial totalitarianism is not free trade.” ATTAC had as its major
policy goal to tax international financial transactions (just as the purchase of house-
hold necessities was taxed) and to create with the tax a fund for people living in
poor countries. Some governments began to suggest such a tax themselves with the
aim of raising much-needed revenue, not to help the poor. Another globally known
opponent, French farmer José Bové, protested the opening of McDonald’s chains in
France and destroyed stocks of genetically modified seeds: “The only regret I have
now,” Bové claimed at his trial in 2003, “is
that I didn’t destroy more of it.” Bové went
REVIEW QUESTION What trends suggest that to jail, but he remained a hero to antiglo-
the nation-state was a declining institution at balism activists who saw him as an enemy
the beginning of the twenty-first century?
of standardization and an honest cham-
pion, in his own words, of “good food.”
An Interconnected World’s New Challenges

The rising tide of globalization ushered in as many challenges as opportunities. First,
world health and the environment came under a multipronged attack from nuclear
disaster, acid rain, the global circulation of contagious diseases, and surging popula-
tion. Second, economic prosperity and physical safety continued to elude great
masses of people, especially in the southern half of the globe. Third, as suprastate
organizations developed, transnational allegiances and religious and ethnic move-
ments vied for power and influence. Finally, a devastating economic crisis that rip-
pled from Wall Street across the globe challenged the prosperity of the United States
and Europe even as Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America developed competitive
businesses and trade.
The Problems of Pollution

By the early years of the twenty-first century, industrial growth continued to threaten
the environment. The 1986 nuclear explosion at Chernobyl had killed thirty-one
people instantly (see page 964); in the aftermath, levels of radioactivity rose for hun-
dreds of miles in all directions and some fifteen thousand people perished over time
from the effects of radiation. Moreover, as Russia opened up, it became clear that
Soviet managers and officials had thrown toxic waste into thousands of square miles
of lakes and rivers. Used nuclear fuel had been dumped in neighboring seas, and
] An Interconnected World’s New Challenges 987
many nuclear and other tests had left entire regions of Asia unfit for human, animal,
and plant life.
Other environmental problems had devastating global effects. Pollutants from fos-
sil fuels such as natural gas, coal, and oil mixed with atmospheric moisture to pro-
duce acid rain, a poisonous brew that destroyed forests in industrial areas. In eastern
Europe, the unchecked use of fossil fuels turned trees into brown skeletons and
inflicted ailments such as chronic bronchial disease on children. In other areas, clear-
ing the world’s rain forests to develop the land for cattle grazing or for cultivation of
cash crops depleted the global oxygen supply. By the late 1980s, scientists determined
that the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals found in aerosol and refrigera-
tion products, had blown a hole in the earth’s ozone layer, the part of the blanket of
atmospheric gases that prevents harmful ultraviolet rays from reaching the planet.
Simultaneously, automobile and industrial emissions of chemicals were infusing
that thermal blanket. The buildup of CFCs, carbon dioxide, and other atmospheric
pollutants produced what is known as a greenhouse effect that results in global
warming, an increase in the temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere. Already
in the 1990s, the Arctic pack ice was breaking up, and scientists predicted that global
ice melting would raise sea levels by more than ten inches by 2100, flooding coastal
areas, disturbing fragile ecosystems, and harming the fresh water supply. In 2012,
important island nations such as the Maldives were menaced with disappearance
because of rising water levels. Other results of the greenhouse effect included climatic
extremes such as drought, drenching rain, and increasingly catastrophic weather
events such as deadly storms.
Activism against unbridled industrial growth took decades to develop as an
effective political force. Rachel Carson’s powerful critique Silent Spring (1962) advo-
cated the immediate rescue of rivers, forests, and the soil from the ravages of facto-
ries and chemical farming in the United States. In West Germany, environmentalism
united members of older and younger generations around a political tactic called
citizen initiatives, in which groups of people blocked plans for urban growth that
menaced forests and farmland. In 1979, the Green Party was founded in West Ger-
many; two decades later Green Party candidates across Europe forced other politi-
cians to voice their concern for the environment.
Spurred by successful Green Party campaigns, Europeans attacked environmen-
tal problems on local and global levels. Some European cities — Frankfurt, Germany,
for example — developed car-free zones, and in Paris, whenever automobile emissions
reached dangerous levels, cars were banned from city streets until the emission levels
fell. The Smart car, a very small car using reduced amounts of fuel, became fashion-
able in Europe. European cities also developed bicycle lanes on major city streets,
with some U.S. cities following their lead. To reduce dependence on fossil fuels, parts
of Europe developed wind power to such an extent that 20 percent of some countries’
electricity was generated by wind. Many cities in the West undertook extensive recy-
cling of waste materials. By 1999, some eighty-four countries, including EU mem-
bers, had signed the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty whose signatories agreed
]
Smart Cars in Europe

The havoc caused by the oil crisis of the 1970s and the growing awareness of climate change
in the latter part of the twentieth century spurred many European states to encourage the devel-
opment of alternate sources of energy and transportation. Thus, by the twenty-first century, the
landscape was dotted not only with windmills but also with tiny, highly fuel-efficient automobiles
like the Smart car shown here. European governments also heavily taxed gasoline with the
result that it cost twice as much or more than in the United States, thus further encouraging
people to buy Smart cars rather than SUVs, which were a far rarer sight in Europe than in the
United States. (© David Cooper / Toronto Star / ZUMA / Corbis.)
to reduce their levels of emissions and other pollutants to specified targets. However,
the United States, the world’s second leading polluter after China, failed to ratify this
agreement, suggesting that the West was fragmenting over values.
Population, Health, and Disease

The issue of population was as difficult in the early twenty-first century as it had been
in the 1930s. Nations with less-developed economies struggled with the pressing
problem of surging population, while Europe experienced more deaths than births
after 1995. The less industrially developed countries accounted for 98 percent of
worldwide population growth, in part because the spread of Western medicine enabled
people there to live much longer than before. By 2015, the earth’s population had
reached 7.25 billion, with a doubling forecast for 2045. Yet many European countries
were facing problems related to an aging citizenry and a shortage of younger people
to bring new ideas and promote change. In fact, Europe as a region had the lowest
fertility in the world. The fertility rate in Italy and Spain was only 1.3 children per
woman of reproductive age, far below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to maintain
a steady population number. As a consequence, fewer young workers paid into the
social security system to fund retirees’ pensions and health care.
[
1989 to the Present
Population problems were especially urgent in Russia, where life expectancy was
declining at a catastrophic rate from a peak of seventy years for Russian men in the
mid-1970s to fifty-one years at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Heart dis-
ease and cancer were the leading causes of male death, and these stark death rates
were generally attributed to increased drinking, smoking, drug use, poor diet, and
general stress. Between 1992 and 2014, the Russian population declined from 149 to
142 million. Meanwhile, fertility rates throughout the former Soviet bloc were also
declining: the lowest levels of fertility in 2003 were in the Czech Republic and Ukraine
(1.1 children per woman of reproductive age), and children in eastern Europe lived
on average twelve years less than their counterparts in western Europe.
Good health was spread unevenly around the world. Western medicine brought
the less-developed world increased use of vaccines and drugs for diseases such as
malaria and smallpox. However, half of all Africans lacked the basic requirements
of well-being such as safe drinking water. Drought and poverty, along with the cor-
ruption of politicians in some cases, spread famine in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and
elsewhere. Around the world, the poor and the unemployed suffered more chronic
illnesses than those who were better off, but they received less care. Whereas in many
parts of the world people still died from malnutrition and infectious diseases, in the
West noncontagious illnesses (heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic obstructive pul-
monary disease, autoimmune diseases, and depression) were more lethal.
Disease, like population and technology, operated on a global terrain. In the
early 1980s, both Western values and Western technological expertise were chal-
lenged by the spread of a global epidemic disease: acquired immunodeficiency syn-
drome (AIDS). An incurable, highly virulent killer that effectively shuts down the
body’s entire immune system, AIDS initially afflicted heterosexuals in central Africa;
the disease later turned up in Haitian immigrants to the United States and in homo-
sexual men worldwide. Within a decade, AIDS became a global epidemic. The dis-
ease spread especially quickly and widely among the heterosexual populations of
Africa and Asia, passed mainly by men to and through women, but in 2010 the U.S.
capital, Washington, D.C., had a rate of infection as high as that in Africa. Protease-
inhibiting drugs helped alleviate the symptoms, but treatment was often not pro-
vided to poor people living in sub-Saharan Africa and the slums of Asian cities. In
addition to the AIDS pandemic, the deadly Ebola virus, severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS), swine flu, and dozens of other viruses smoldered like so many
global plagues in the making. Diseases such as Ebola and the global fears they pro-
voked along with environmental dangers underscored the interconnectedness of the
world’s peoples.
North versus South?

During the 1980s and 1990s, world leaders tried to address the differences between
the earth’s northern and southern regions. Other than Australians and New Zealand-
ers, southern peoples generally suffered lower living standards and measures of
]
health than northerners. Emerging from colonial rule, environmental destruction,
and economic exploitation by northerners, citizens in the southern regions could not
yet count on their governments to provide welfare services or education. Although
organizations like the World Bank and the IMF provided loans for economic devel-
opment, the conditions tied to those loans, such as cutting government spending for
education, the environment, and health care, led to criticism.
Southern regions of the world experienced other barriers to economic develop-
ment. Latin American nations grappled with government corruption, multibillion-
dollar debt, widespread crime, and grinding poverty, though some countries —
prominent among them Brazil — began to strengthen their economies by marketing
their oil and other natural resources more effectively and by building administrative
expertise among government officials. Africa suffered from drought, famine, and
civil war, while in countries such as Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan, the military rule,
factionalism, and ethnic antagonism encouraged under imperialism produced lethal
conflict and genocide in the 1990s and early 2000s. Millions of people perished; others
were left starving and homeless due to kleptocracies that drained revenues. In the
face of these conditions, other African nations began turning away from violence and
dictatorship toward constitutional government, economic sustainability, and pros-
perity. By 2015, these reforms had made many parts of Africa a major target for
outside investment.
Radical Islam Meets the West

North–South antagonisms became evident in the rise of radical Islam, which often
flourished where democracy and prosperity for the masses were missing. The Iranian
hostage crisis that began in 1979 revealed nationalism and a strong anti-Western
sentiment among Islamic fundamentalists. The charismatic leaders of the 1980s and
1990s — the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian by birth and leader of the
transnational terrorist organization al-Qaeda — variously promoted a pan-Islamic or
(outside Iran) pan-Arabic world order that gathered increasing support. Khomeini’s
program — “Neither East, nor West, only the Islamic Republic” — had wide appeal
even after his death in 1989. Renouncing the Westernization that had flourished
under the shah, Khomeini began a regime in Iran that required women once again
to cover their bodies almost totally in special clothing, restricted their access to
divorce, and eliminated a range of other rights for men and women alike. Buoyed
by the prosperity that oil had brought and following Khomeini’s lead, Islamic revo-
lutionaries across the wider region aimed to restore the pride and Islamic identity
that imperialism had stripped from Middle Eastern men.
Power in the Middle East remained fragmented, however, as war plagued the
region. In 1980, Saddam Hussein, fearing a rebellion from Shi‘ites in Iraq, attacked
Iran in hopes of channeling Shi‘ite discontent into a patriotic crusade against non-
Arab Iranians. The United States provided Iraq with massive aid in the struggle
against Iran, but eight years of combat, with extensive loss of life on both sides, ended
in stalemate. In 1990, Saddam tested the post–cold war waters by invading neighbor-
ing Kuwait in hopes of annexing the oil-rich country to debt-ridden Iraq. A United
Nations coalition led by the United States stopped the invasion and defeated the Iraqi
army, but discontent mounted in the region (Map 29.4).
BULGARIA Bla c k S e a GEORGIA RUSSIA KAZAKHSTAN
Ca
Istanbul
sp i
ARMENIA UZBEKISTAN
an S
GREECE Ankara
Aegean TURKMENISTAN
ea
TURKEY TAJIKISTAN
Sea AZERBAIJAN
Euph
ra
Tigris R
CYPRUS Teheran
tes
Nicosia SYRIA R. Kabul

Me d i t e r ra n ea n Sea Beirut
.
LEBANON Damascus AFGHANISTAN

Baghdad
Suez ISRAEL IRAN
Canal Tel Aviv Amman IRAQ
Jerusalem
Cairo JORDAN
SINAI Kuwait
PEN. PAKISTAN
er OMAN
P
sia
Nil
KUWAIT nG Strait of
LIBYA
e
EGYPT . Hormuz
R
BAHRAIN u lf
Manama Gul
Doha f of O
Riyadh m an
Abu Dhabi
SAUDI QATAR INDIA
Muscat
Re
AR ABIA
dS
UNITED ARAB OMAN Lebanon, Israel, and Gaza, 2006

Mecca
EMIRATES
e
Major Hezbollah
a
attacks LEBANON
Major Israeli
attacks
SUDAN SYRIA
Sanaa Golan
YEMEN Heights
West
Countries with majority n
Aden f A de Bank
Shi‘ite population Gulf o Gaza Jerusalem
DJIBOUTI Strip
Countries with majority N
Sunni population ISRAEL
Oil field SOMALIA W E JORDAN
ETHIOPIA S
EGYPT
Iraq War, 2003 engagements
Coalition advances, 2003 0 250 500 miles 0 25 50 miles
SAUDI
Missile and bomb attacks 0 250 500 kilometers 0 50 kilometers ARABIA
MAP 29.4 The Middle East in the Twenty-First Century

Tensions among states in the Middle East, especially the ongoing conflict between the Palestin-
ians and Israelis and animosities among Shi‘ites and Sunnis, became more complicated from
the 1990s on. The situation in the Middle East grew more uncertain in 2003 when a U.S.- and
British-led invasion of Iraq deteriorated into escalating violence among competing religious and
ethnic groups in the country. Additionally, for thirty-four days in the summer of 2006, Israel
bombed Lebanon, including its capital city and refugee camps, with fire returned by Hezbollah
and Hamas forces in the region.
]
To the east, the Taliban — a militant Islamic group initially funded by the United
States, China, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan during the cold war — took over the gov-
ernment of Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Its leaders imposed a regime that forbade
girls from attending schools and women from leaving their homes without a male
escort and demanded from men strict adherence to its rules for dress.
To the west, conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians continued. As
Israeli settlers took more Palestinian land and homes, Palestinian suicide bombers
began murdering Israeli civilians in the late 1990s. The Israeli government retaliated
with missiles, machine guns, and tanks, often killing Palestinian civilians in turn. In
2006, the Israelis, responding to the political militia Hezbollah’s kidnapping of Israeli
soldiers, attacked Lebanon, destroying infrastructure, sending missiles into its capital
city of Beirut, and killing hundreds of civilians. Beginning in the 1980s and continu-
ing into the 2000s, terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa planted bombs
in European cities, blew airplanes out of the sky, and bombed the Paris subway
system. These attacks were said to be punishment for the West’s support both for
Israel and for Middle Eastern dictatorships.
Europeans React to September 11 Terror Attacks

On September 11, 2001, terrorists killed thousands of people from dozens of countries in air-
plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Throughout the world, people
expressed their shock and sorrow in vigils, and like this British tourist in Rome, they remained
glued to the latest news. Terrorism, which had plagued Europeans for several decades, easily
traveled the world in the days of more open borders, economic globalization, and cultural
exchange. (© Alberto Pizzoli / Corbis-Sygma.)
[
1989 to the Present
On September 11, 2001, the ongoing terrorism in Europe and around the world
caught the full attention of the United States when Muslim militants hijacked four
planes in the United States and flew two of them into the World Trade Center in
New York City and one into the Pentagon in Virginia. The fourth plane, en route to
the Capitol, crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers forced the hijackers to lose
control of the aircraft. The hijackers, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, were
inspired by the wealthy radical leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who sought
to end the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. They had trained in bin Laden’s
terrorist camps in Afghanistan and learned to pilot planes in the United States. The
loss of more than three thousand lives led the United States to declare a “war against
terrorism.” The administration of U.S. president George W. Bush forged a multina-
tional coalition, which included the vital cooperation of Islamic countries such as
Pakistan, with the main goal of driving the ruling Taliban out of Afghanistan.
At first, the September 11 attacks and other lethal terrorist attacks around the
world promoted global cooperation. European countries rounded up suspected ter-
rorists and conducted the first successful trials of them in the spring of 2003. Ulti-
mately, however, the West became divided when the United States claimed that Sad-
dam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and suggested ties
between him and bin Laden’s terrorist group. Great Britain, Spain, and Poland were
among those who joined the coalition of invading forces, but some powerful Euro-
pean states — including Germany, Russia, and France — refused, sparking the anger
of many Americans, some of whom sported bumper stickers with the demand “First
Iraq, Next France” or participated in happy hours devoted to “French bashing.”
U.S. war fever mounted with the suggestion that Syria and Iran should also be
invaded, while the rest of the world condemned what seemed a sudden American
blood lust. Europeans in general, including the British public, accused the United
States of becoming a world military dictatorship to preserve its only remaining
value — wasteful consumerism. The United States countercharged that the Europeans
were too selfishly enjoying their democracy and creature comforts to help fund the
military defense of freedom under attack. The Spanish withdrew from the U.S. occu-
pation of Iraq after terrorists linked to al-Qaeda bombed four Madrid commuter
trains on March 11, 2004. The British, too, reeled when terrorists exploded bombs
in three subway cars and a bus in central London in July 2005. Barack Obama, who
was elected the first African American U.S. president in 2008, brought home all the
troops from Iraq in 2012, though the United States maintained a presence there of
military advisers. As for al-Qaeda, the United States weakened the organization by
assassinating top leaders, including Osama bin Laden in 2011.
The Promise and Problems of a World Economy

Amid the violence, an incredible rise in industrial entrepreneurship and technologi-
cal development took place outside the West. In 1982, the Asian-Pacific nations
accounted for 16.4 percent of global gross domestic product, a figure that had doubled
]
0 250 500 miles since the 1960s. By 1989, East Asia’s share of world
0 500 kilometers production had grown to more than 25 percent as
that of the West declined. By 2006, China alone
MONGOLIA Sea of
Tokyo
N.
Japan was achieving economic growth rates of more than
KOREA
Beijing Seoul 10 percent per year, and in 2010 it overtook Japan
S. KOREA JAPAN
as the second largest national economy after the
United States, with Germany falling to fourth place.
East
CHINA China South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong
Sea
PACIFIC Kong were popularly called Pacific tigers for the
Taipei
OCEAN ferocity of their growth in the 1980s and 1990s. By
TAIWAN
Hong Kong the 1990s, China, pursuing a policy of economic
HONG KONG
(U.K. until 1997) modernization and market orientation, had sur-
LAOS PHILIPPINES
South
China
passed all the others. Japan, however, led the initial
THAILAND Sea charge of Asian economies with investment in
VIETNAM
high-tech consumer industries driving the Japa-
nese economy. For example, in 1982, Japan had
CAMBODIA
thirty-two thousand industrial robots in opera-
M ALA Y SIA
tion; western Europe employed only nine thou-
Singapore
SINGAPORE sand, and the United States had seven thousand.
I N D O N E S I A In 1989, the Japanese government and private busi-
nesses invested $549 billion to modernize indus-
Tigers of the Pacific Rim, c. 1995 trial capacity, a full $36 billion more than in the
United States. As buyers around the world snapped
up automobiles, televisions, videocassette recorders, and computers from Asian-
Pacific companies, the United States poured vast sums into its wars and Asian and
Middle Eastern governments financed America’s ballooning national debt. By 2000,
China had become the largest creditor of the United States.
Despite rising national prosperity, individual workers, particularly outside of
Japan, often paid dearly for this newly created wealth. For example, safety standards
and working conditions in China were abominable, leading to horrendous mining
disasters and suicides among workers. Women in the Asia Pacific region and Central
America labored in sweatshops to produce clothing for U.S.- and Euroupean-based
companies. Using the lure of a low-paid and presumably docile female workforce,
governments were able to attract electronics and other industries. At the same time,
educational standards rose, along with access to birth control and other medical care
for these women, and many valued the escape from rural poverty.
Other emerging economies in the Southern Hemisphere continued to increase
their share of the world’s gross domestic product over the past four decades, and
some achieved political gains as well. In South Africa, native peoples began winning
the struggle for political rights when, in 1990, the moderate government of F. W. de
Klerk released political leader Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for almost three decades
because of his antiapartheid activism. After holding free elections in 1994, which
Mandela won, South Africa — like Brazil, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and
Chile — profited from the need for vast quantities of raw materials such as oil and
ores to feed global expansion. India made strides in education and women’s rights
and calmed bitter local rivalries, but the assassination of two successive Indian prime
ministers in 1984 and 1991 raised the question of whether India would be able to
attract investment and thus continue modernization. India’s economy achieved soar-
ing if unsustained growth early in the twenty-first century, taking business from
Western firms and making global acquisitions that gave it, for example, the world’s
largest steel industry.
There was a downside to global economic interconnectedness. Beginning in
1997, when speculators brought down the Thai baht, and continuing with the col-
lapse of the Russian ruble in 1998 and the bursting of the technology bubble in the
early 2000s, the global economy suffered a series of shocks. In 2008, the real estate
bubble burst in the United States, setting in motion a financial crisis of enormous
proportions. For several years, lenders had been making home mortgages available
to U.S. consumers who could not afford them. The boom in housing made the
Protesting Reform amid Economic Crisis

By 2010 and 2011, global economic crisis and the attempts to repair the damage had led to
massive government debt. To remedy the situation, governments cut back on jobs, benefits,
and ser vices while giving banks and businesses huge bailouts. Here, on the island of Cyprus,
unions and NGOs sponsored this demonstration against the policy of simultaneously heaping
money on banks and taking it from ordinary citizens. (EPA / Katia Christodouloul / Landov.)
]
economy as a whole look robust. Bankers then sold their bad housing debt around
the world to those who hoped to make handsome profits based on rate increases
written into the mortgage contracts. When people were unable to make their monthly
mortgage payments and pay their credit card debt, a global credit collapse followed,
just as it had in the stock market crash of 1929. Beginning in the United States and
continuing around the world, banks and industries became insolvent, forcing gov-
ernments to set common policies to prop up failing banks with billions of dollars,
which in turn added to government debt. Unemployment rose as businesses and
consumers alike stopped purchasing goods.
Five years later, the U.S. economy had improved because of unprecedented gov-
ernment intervention even as European nations faced threats of insolvency and
unacceptable levels of unemployment — more than 20 percent in Spain. It looked
to some as though the EU itself might
collapse due to the stubborn downturn.
REVIEW QUESTION What were the principal
challenges facing the West at the beginning of The globalization of economic crises was
the twenty-first century? another of the perils faced by the world’s
population.
Global Culture and Society in the Twenty-First Century

While warfare, booms, and crises continued, increased migration and growing global
communications were changing culture and society, prompting many to ask what
would become of national cultures and Western civilization itself. Would the world
become a homogeneous mass with everyone wearing the same kind of clothing, eating
the same kind of food, watching the same films, and communicating with the same
smartphones? Or would there be a global holocaust brought on by a clash of civiliza-
tions or a new war of religions? The information revolution and the global sharing
of culture argued against the cultural purity of any group, Western or otherwise.
“Civilizations,” Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen wrote after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, “are hard to partition . . . given the diversities
within each society as well as the linkages among different countries and cultures.”
Through global communication and migration, some believed that Western
society had changed even more rapidly from the 1980s into the twenty-first century
than it had hundreds of years earlier when it came into intense contact with the rest
of the globe. Culture knew no national boundaries, as East, West, North, and South
became saturated with one another’s cultural products via satellite television, films,
telecommunications, and computer technology. Consequently, some observers labeled
the new century an era of denationalization — meaning that national cultures as well
as national boundaries were becoming less distinct. There is no denying that even
while the West absorbed peoples and cultures, it continued to exercise not only
economic but also cultural influence worldwide. Yet the identity of the West was
becoming unclear as Westerners themselves absorbed the cultures of other regions.
] Global Culture and Society in the Twenty-First Century 997
Redefining the West: The Impact of Global Migration

The global movement of people was massive in the last third of the twentieth century
and into the twenty-first. Uneven economic development, political persecution, and
warfare (which claimed more than 100 million victims after 1945) sent tens of mil-
lions in search of opportunity and safety. By 2010, France had between five and eight
million Muslims within its borders, and Europe as a whole had between thirty-five
and fifty million. Other parts of the world were as full of migrants as the West. The
oil-producing nations of the Middle East employed millions of foreign workers, who
generally constituted one-third of the labor force. The Iraq-Iran War and the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003 sent millions fleeing, while the rise of the radical Islamic
State left 1.7 million more Iraqis homeless. After 2011, more than 2 million Syrians
were registered as refugees from the civil war and Islamic State in adjacent nations,
bringing the total number of migrants worldwide to more than 200 million in 2015,
in part because of escalating conflicts across the Middle East.
Those migrating for work from countries as different as the Yugoslav republics,
Egypt, Spain, Mexico, and Pakistan
sent money home from abroad
that constituted up to 60 percent
of national income. Sometimes
migration was coerced: many east-
ern European and Asian prosti-
tutes were held in international sex
rings that controlled their pass-
ports, wages, and lives. Others
came to the West voluntarily, seek-
ing opportunity and a better life: “I
do not want to go back to China,”
said one woman restaurant owner
Headscarf Controversy in Germany

Western countries have long debated
the relationship between religion and
the nation-state, especially in public
education. In an age of global migra-
tion, the issue of religion in the schools
resurfaced, this time focusing on the
headscarves worn by many Muslim
women. In 2003, a German court
upheld the right of teacher Fereshta
Ludin, pictured here, to wear her head-
scarf while teaching, on the grounds
of religious freedom. Note the justices’
own different clothing. (© Vincent Kessler /
Reuters / Corbis.)
]
in Hungary in the 1990s. “Some of my relatives there also have restaurants . . . and
sometimes they have to bribe somebody. . . . I would not be happy living like that.”
Like the illegal Congolese café proprietor Thérèse, whose story opens this chapter,
many lived on the margins of the law, maintaining global ties with families from a
new base in the West.
Foreign workers were often scapegoats for native peoples suffering from eco-
nomic woes such as unemployment caused by downsizing. On the eve of EU enlarge-
ment in 2004, the respected weekly magazine The Economist included an article
entitled “The Coming Hordes,” which warned of Britain’s being overrun by Roma
(Gypsies) from eastern Europe. The Moscow rock band Corroded Metals campaigned
for anti-immigrant politicians with hate-filled songs and chants in English of “Kill,
kill, kill, kill the bloody foreigners” running in the background. Even citizens of immi-
grant descent often had a difficult time being accepted. Thriving anti-immigrant and
white supremacist politicians challenged centrist parties, and in Austria and the Neth-
erlands, anti-immigration candidates were elected to head the government. Nonethe-
less, employers sought out illegal immigrants for the low wages they could be paid.
Global Networks and Social Change

Like migration, rapid technological change also weakened traditional political, cul-
tural, and economic borders and to some extent even made borders obsolete. In
1969, the U.S. Department of Defense began to develop a computer network to carry
communications in case of nuclear war. This system and others like it in universi-
ties, government, and business grew into an unregulated system of more than ten
thousand networks worldwide. These came to be known as the Internet — shorthand
for internetworking. By 1995, users in more than 137 countries were connected to
the Internet, creating new “communities” via the World Wide Web that transcended
common citizenship in a particular nation-state. By 2015, some three billion people —
more than one-third of the world’s population — used the Internet, creating an online
marketplace that offered goods and services ranging from advanced weaponry to
organ transplants, which was itself a booming global business. Critics charged that
communications technology favored elites and disadvantaged those without com-
puter skills or the financial resources needed to access computers.
The Internet had brought service jobs to countries that had heretofore suffered
unemployment and real poverty. One of the first countries to recognize the possi-
bilities of computing and help-desk services was Ireland, which pushed computer
literacy to attract business. In 2003, U.S. firms spent $8.3 billion on outsourcing to
Ireland and $7.7 billion on outsourcing to India. In that same year, the United States
bought $77.38 billion in services from foreign countries and sold $131.01 billion to
them, meaning in fact that more was insourced than outsourced. The Internet
allowed for jobs to be apportioned anywhere. Moroccans did help-desk work for
French or Spanish speakers, and in the twenty-first century Estonia, Hungary, and
the Czech Republic as well as India and the Philippines rebuilt their economies suc-
[
1989 to the Present
cessfully by providing call-center and other business services. The Internet allowed
service industries to globalize just as the manufacturing sector had done much ear-
lier through multinational corporations.
Globalization of the economy via the Internet and other technology affected the
West in complex ways. Benefiting from the booming global economy of the 1990s,
the Irish and eastern Europeans became integrated into the Western consumer econ-
omy, and by the 2000s Asians and South Americans were integrated, too. By purchas-
ing automobiles, CD players, and personal computers, non-Westerners may have
taken jobs from the West, but they often sent funds back via their new purchasing
power. For example, a twenty-one-year-old Indian woman, working for a ser vice
provider in Bangalore under the English name Sharon, used her salary to buy West-
ern consumer items such as a cell phone from the Finnish company Nokia. “As a
teenager I wished for so many things,” she said. “Now I’m my own Santa Claus.”
Some Western workers often found this global revolution threatening, as it redistrib-
uted jobs across the West and worldwide.
On the positive side, digital media enabled widespread information sharing and
allowed individuals and organizations to spread awareness of the daunting problems
of contemporary life — population explosion, scarce resources, North–South inequi-
ties, global pollution, ethnic hatred, and global terrorism — which demand, more
than ever, the exercise of humane values and rational thought. Positive social change
has occurred, thanks in part to digital media. In 2011, governments were overturned
relatively peacefully in Tunisia and Egypt because Facebook, Twitter, and other elec-
tronic media brought protesters together with a common purpose, with less public
violence than in revolutions a century earlier. Given the dramatic resurgence in con-
flict in recent years, however, claims that digital communications will ease tensions,
advance democracy, and make violence less likely remain unproven.
A New Global Culture?

Despite the sense that national boundaries are weakening, cultural exchange flowing
in many directions goes back millennia. In the ancient world, Greek philosophers
and traders knew of distant Asian religious beliefs, and Middle Eastern religions such
as Judaism and Christianity were influenced by them even as these beliefs spread
westward to Europe and the Western Hemisphere. Chinese students in Tiananmen
Square in 1989 testified to the global power of the West when in the name of freedom
they rallied around their own representation of the Statue of Liberty (which itself
was a gift from France to the United States). In Japan, businesspeople wore Western-
style clothing and watched soccer, baseball, and other Western sports using English
terms, while Europeans and Americans wore flip-flops, carried umbrellas, and prac-
ticed yoga — all imports from beyond the West.
Remarkable innovations in communications integrated cultures, possibly giving
them a Western flavor. Videotapes and satellite-beamed telecasts transported Amer-
ican television shows to Hong Kong and Bollywood movies to Europe and North
]
America. American rock music sold briskly in Russia and elsewhere in the former
Soviet bloc. More than 100,000 Czechoslovakian rock fans, including President Václav
Havel, attended a Rolling Stones concert in Prague in 1990, showing that despite half
a century of supposed isolation under communism they had been well tuned in to
the larger world. Young black immigrants forged transnational culture when they cre-
ated hip-hop and other pop music styles by combining elements of Africa, the Carib-
bean, Afro-America, and Europe. Athletes like the Brazilian soccer player Ronaldo
and pop icons such as Psy and Beyoncé became better known to countless people
than their own national leaders. Even moral titans — the Nobel Peace Prize winners
Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa; the Dalai Lama, the spiritual
leader of Tibet; and Aung San Suu Kyi, opposition leader in Burma — have been
global figures.
Tourism, Migration, and the Mixing of Cultures

Tourism was a major economic boon to the West, and Western countries were the top tourist
destinations in the world. Spreading prosperity allowed for greater leisure and travel to distant
spots. Curiosity grew about other cultures. This Scottish bagpiper in London clearly arouses
the interest of passersby, whether visitors from afar or citizens of his own country. (© Will van
Overbeek. All Rights Reserved.)
As it had done for centuries, the West continued to devour material from other
cultures — whether Hong Kong films, African textiles, Indian music, or Latin Ameri-
can pop culture. One of the most important influences in the West came from what
was called the boom in Latin American literature. Latin American authors developed
a style known as magical realism, which melded everyday events with Latin Ameri-
can history and geography and with elements of myth, magic, and religion. The
novels of Colombian-born Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez were trans-
lated into dozens of languages. His lush fantasies, including One Hundred Years of
Solitude (1967), Love in the Time of Cholera (1988), and many later works, portray
people of titanic ambitions and passions who endure war and all manner of personal
trials. García Márquez narrated the tradition of dictators in Latin America, but he
also paid close attention to the effects of global business. One Hundred Years of Soli-
tude, for example, closes with the machine-gunning in 1928 of thousands of workers
for the American-owned United Fruit Company because they asked for one day off
per week and breaks to use the toilet. Wherever they lived, readers snapped up the
book, which sold thirty million copies worldwide. García Márquez’s work inspired a
host of other outstanding novels in the magical realism tradition, including Laura
Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1989). In the 1990s, the work was translated into
two dozen languages and became a hit film because of its setting in a Mexican
kitchen during the revolution of 1910, where cooking, sexuality, and brutality are
intertwined. Innumerable authors in the West adopted aspects of this style.
Magical realism influenced a range of Western writers, including those migrat-
ing to Europe. British-born Zadie Smith, daughter of a Jamaican mother, became
a prize-winning author with her novel White Teeth (2000), which describes post-
imperial Britain through the lives of often bizarre and larger-than-life characters
from many ethnic backgrounds. Odd science fiction technology, deep emotional
wounds, and weird but hilarious situations guide a plot full of heartbreak. Equally
drawn to aspects of the magical realist style, Indian-born immigrant Salman Rushdie
published the novel The Satanic Verses (1988), which outraged Muslims around the
world because it appeared to blaspheme the Prophet Muhammad. From Iran, the
ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (decree) promising both a monetary reward and
salvation in the afterlife to anyone who would assassinate the writer. Rushdie’s Italian
and Japanese translators were murdered, while his Norwegian publisher survived an
assassination attempt. Soaring above them all in terms of global acceptance was
British author J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels, selling half a billion cop-
ies worldwide and being translated into more than seventy languages.
As groups outside the accepted circles engaged in artistic production, battles over
culture erupted. U.S. novelist Toni Morrison became, in 1993, the first African Amer-
ican woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In works such as Beloved (1987),
A Mercy (2008), and Home (2012), Morrison describes the nightmares, daily experi-
ences, achievements, and dreams of those who were brought as slaves to the United
States and their descendants. Some parents objected to the inclusion of Morrison’s
work in school curricula, however. Critics charged that unlike Shakespeare’s univer-
]
Toni Morrison, Recipient of the Nobel Prize

Toni Morrison, shown here receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, was the first African
American woman to receive the Nobel Prize. Morrison uses her literary talent to depict the con-
dition of blacks under slavery and after emancipation. She also publishes insightful essays on
social, racial, and gender issues. (AP Photo.)
sal Western truth, the writing of African Americans, native Americans, and women
represented only propaganda, not great literature. In both the United States and
Europe, politicians on the right saw the presence of multiculturalism as a sign of
national decay similar to that brought about by immigration.
In the former Soviet bloc, artists and writers faced unique challenges. After the
Soviet Union collapsed, celebrated writers like Mikhail Bulgakov, famous in the West
for his novel The Master and Margarita (published posthumously in 1966–1967),
became known in his homeland. At the same time, the collapse put literary dissidents
out of business. In helping bring down the Soviet regime, they had lost their subject
matter — the critique of a tyrannical system. Eastern-bloc writers who formerly
found both critical and financial success in the West seemed less heroic, and some
were shown to have been part of the Soviet system of reformers. New literature
aimed at rethinking the communist experience and eastern Europe’s cultural relation-
ship to the West and to its own past. Andrei Makine, an expatriate Russian author,
described the attraction of western European culture and the role of the war and the
Gulag on the imaginations of eastern-bloc people, including teenagers. Both Dreams
of My Russian Summers (1995) and Once Upon the River Love (1994) describe young
people fantasizing about the wealth, sexiness, and material goods of western Europe
and the United States. Victor Pelevin wrote more satirically and bitingly in such
works as The Life of Insects (1993), in which insect-humans buzz around Russia try-
ing to discover who they are in the post-Soviet world. Pelevin, a Buddhist and former
engineer, wrote hilarious send-ups of politicians and the almost sacred Soviet space
program, depicting it as a media sham run from the depths of the Moscow subway
system in which hundreds of cosmonaut-celebrities are killed to prevent the truth
from getting out. For him, “any politician is a TV program,” as he showed in his
novel Homo Zapiens (1999), in which politicians are all “virtual” — that is, produced
by technical effects, clothing, and scriptwriters.
In music and the other arts, much energy was spent on recovering and absorbing
all the underground works that had been hidden since 1917. For example, music
lovers were astonished as the work of first-rate composers emerged. Those compos-
ers had written their classical works in private for fear that they might contain phras-
ings, sounds, and rhythms that would be called subversive. Meanwhile, they had
often earned a living writing for films, as did Giya Kancheli, who wrote immensely
popular music for more than forty films but was in addition a gifted composer of
classical music. Alongside great artists, ordinary people in eastern Europe rethought
the past, creating ceremonies honoring victims of the Gulag and of Stalin’s purges,
with some trying to sort out what the legacy of communism, anti-Semitism, and
massive slaughter of fellow citizens had meant to their lives and to history. By 2015,
Vladimir Putin had slowed such free reflection on the Soviet past.
Simultaneously, the United States’ success in marketing its culture, along with
the legacy of British imperialism, helped make English the dominant international
language by the end of the twentieth century. Such English words as stop, shopping,
parking, okay, weekend, and rock infiltrated dozens of non-English vocabularies.
Across Europe, English served as the main language of higher education, science, and
tourism. Already in the 1960s, French president Charles de Gaulle, fearing the cor-
ruption of the French language, had banned such new words as computer in govern-
ment documents, and succeeding administrations followed his path. The ban did not
stop the influx of English into daily life, even though the EU’s parliament and national
cultural ministries regulated the amount of American programming on television
and in cinemas.
American influence in film was dominant: films such as The Matrix Reloaded
(2003) and Avatar (2009) earned hundreds of millions of dollars from global audi-
ences. Simultaneously, however, the United States itself welcomed films such as the
British Slumdog Millionaire (2009) from around the world. “Bollywood” films —
happy, lavish films from the Indian movie industry — had a huge following in all
Western countries, even influencing the plots of some American productions. The
fastest-growing television market in the United States in the twenty-first century was
Spanish-language programming, just one more indication that even in the United
States culture was based on mixture and global exchange.
Some have called the global culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries postmodernism, defined in part as intense stylistic mixing in the arts
]
without following an elite set of standards. Striking examples of postmodern art
abound in Western society, including the AT&T Building (now known as the Sony
Building) in New York City, which looks sleek and modern. Its entryway, however,
is a Roman arch, and its cloud-piercing top suggests eighteenth-century Chippendale
furniture. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by American Frank
Gehry and considered bizarre by classical or even modern standards, includes forms,
materials, and perspectives that, by rules of earlier decades, do not belong together.
Architects working in a variety of hybrid styles completed the postunification
rebuilding of the Reichstag in Berlin, whose traditional facade was given a modern
dome of glass and steel, along with solar panels. To add to the changing reality, all
of these postmodern buildings could be visited virtually on the World Wide Web.
Some intellectuals defined postmodernism in political terms as part of the
decline of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideals of human rights, individual-
The German Reichstag:

Reborn and Green
Nothing better symbolizes
the end of the postwar era
and the new millennium
than the restoration of the
Reichstag, the parliament
building in Berlin. Like
other manifestations of
postmodernism, the
restoration — designed
by a British architect —
preserves the old, while
adding a new dome of
glass, complete with solar
panels that make the build-
ing self-sufficient in its
energy needs. Visitors
can walk around the glass
dome, looking at their
elected representatives
deliberating below. (Buena
Vista Images / The Image Bank /
Getty Images.)
[
1989 to the Present
] Conclusion 1005
ism, and personal freedom, which were seen as modern. This political postmodern-
ism included the decline of the Western nation-state. A structure like the Bilbao
Guggenheim was simply an international tourist attraction rather than an institution
reflecting Spanish traditions or national purpose. It embodied consumption, global
technology, mass communications, and international migration rather than citizen-
ship, nationalism, and rights. These qualities made it a rootless structure, unlike the
Louvre in Paris, for example, which was built by the French monarchy to serve its
own purposes. Critics saw the Bilbao Guggenheim as drifting, more like the nomadic
businesswoman Thérèse, who moved between nations and cultures with no set iden-
tity. Cities and nations alike were losing their function as places providing social
roots, personal identity, or human rights.
For postmodernists of a political bent,
computers had replaced the autonomous, REVIEW QUESTION What social and cultural
questions has globalization raised?
free self and bureaucracy had rendered
representative government obsolete.
Conclusion
Postmodernist thinking has not eclipsed humane values in the global age. The
urge to find practical solutions to the daunting problems of contemporary life —
population explosion, scarce resources, pollution, global warming, ethnic hatred,
North–South inequities, and terrorism — through the careful assessment of facts still
guides public policy. Some of these global problems were briefly overshadowed by
the collapse of the Soviet empire, which initially produced human misery, rising
criminality, and the flight of population during the 1990s and even into the 2000s.
Reformers who sought improved conditions of life by bringing down Soviet and
Yugoslav communism saw unexpected bloodshed and even genocide. What appeared
to be an economic boom resulting from globalization and the collapse of commu-
nism itself had disadvantages, as a series of crises beginning in Thailand in 1997 and
finally exploding in the more sustained crisis from 2007 on cost jobs and harmed
human well-being.
Yet the past twenty-five years have also seen great improvements. Events in
South Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, for example, suggested some
progress toward democracy, even as gains at times appeared fragile. Human health
gradually improved even as scientists sought to cure the victims of global pandemics
and even to prevent such ravages altogether. The global age ushered in by the Soviet
collapse unexpectedly brought denationalization to many regions of the world, lead-
ing to weakening of borders and cooperation among former enemies. The expansion
of the European Union and the tightening of relationships within it are the best
example of this development even as they too dealt with challenges in the face of
economic adversity.
Some consequences of increasing globalization are still being determined. The
Internet and migration suggest that people’s empathy for one another grew worldwide.
]
One commentator claimed that there was little bloodshed in the collapse of the
Soviet Empire because fax machines and television circulated images of events glob-
ally, muting the violence often associated with political revolution. At the same time,
militants from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, North Africa, Britain,
France, and elsewhere unleashed terrorism on the world in an attempt to push back
global forces. Each incident was shocking, including the planned murder of seven-
teen French journalists, Jews, and police in the winter of 2015. Nor did powerful
countries hesitate to wage wars against Ukraine, Chechnya, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghani-
stan and Lebanon — or against their own people, as in Libya and Syria. On a different
level, even as globalization raised standards of living and education in many parts
of the world, in other areas — such as poorer regions in Africa and Asia — people
faced disease and the dramatic social and economic crises specifically associated with
the global age. In contrast, the most hopeful developments in recent globalization
were communication in the arts and in culture more generally and the cooperation
that nations undertook with one another in the realm of health, economics, and
politics. Social media via the World Wide Web offered people in families, localities,
nations, and the world a new way of communicating. Thus, both opportunities and
challenges lie ahead for citizens of the West and of the world as they make the transi-
tion to what some are calling the Digital Age.
The challenge to the making of the West today involves the inventive human
spirit. Over the past five hundred years, the West has benefited from its scientific
and technological advances and perhaps never more so than in the Digital Age.
Although communication and information technology have brought people closer
to one another than ever before, the use of technology has made the period from
1900 to the present one of the bloodiest eras in human history — and one during
which the use of technology has threatened, and still threatens, the future of the
earth as a home for the human race. While technology has enhanced daily life, it
has also facilitated war, genocide, terrorism, and environmental deterioration, all of
which pose great challenges to the West and to the world; the use of digital media
to promote violent causes, inflame others, and network with and recruit new follow-
ers has made some of these challenges even more significant. How will the human
race adapt to the creativity the Digital Age has unleashed? How will the West and
the world manage both the promises and the challenges of Digital Age technology
to protect the human race in the years ahead?
] Conclusion 1007
GERMANY
UNITED RUSSIA
CANADA 4
KINGDOM 10
9
6
FRANCE
5
UNITED STATES CHINA JAPAN
SPAIN
1 12 ITALY 2 3
7
INDIA S. KOREA
MEXICO 11 15
14
Highest rank
BRAZIL
8
AUSTRALIA
13
W E
Lowest rank
0 1,000 2,000 miles
11 Specific rank S
of country 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers
MAPPING THE WEST The World’s Top Fifteen Economies as of 2015

From the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the comparative economic strength of individ-
ual nations changed considerably. In the nineteenth century, India and China had the largest
economies; they were eclipsed by the European powers as the Industrial Revolution progressed.
The European powers in turn were eventually overtaken by the United States. By the end of the
twentieth century, the reemergence of non-Western economic powerhouses marked another
transformation. How would you describe economic dynamism in the twenty-first century as
shown in the map?
Chapter 29 Review
globalization (p. 974) euro (p. 982) Osama bin Laden (p. 990)
Slobodan Milosevic (p. 975) nongovernmental Pacific tigers (p. 994)
ethnic cleansing (p. 975) organizations (NGOs) Salman Rushdie (p. 1001)
Vladimir Putin (p. 977) (p. 985) Toni Morrison (p. 1001)
Maastricht Treaty (p. 982) global warming (p. 987) postmodernism (p. 1003)
European Union (EU) (p. 982) Green Party (p. 987)
Review Questions
1. What were the major issues facing the former Soviet bloc in the 1990s and early 2000s?
2. What trends suggest that the nation-state was a declining institution at the beginning of
the twenty-first century?
3. What were the principal challenges facing the West at the beginning of the twenty-first
century?
4. What social and cultural questions has globalization raised?
Making Connections
1. In what ways were global connections at the beginning of the twenty-first century different
from the global connections at the beginning of the twentieth century?
2. How did the Western nation-state of the early twenty-first century differ from the Western
nation-state at the opening of the twentieth century?
3. Migration has been a major factor across the human past. How has it affected the West
differently in the twenty-first century?
4. Economic crises caused by climate change, the spread of disease, and trade and financial
disturbances have been constants throughout history. How does the economic crisis that
began in 2007 compare to earlier crises?
Studies of the globalized world describe both hopeful efforts to cure disease and survive migra-
tion and devastating effects of terrorism and ethnic conflict. Interesting works portray politics
and everyday life in post-Soviet Russia and eastern Europe.
Bass, Gary J. Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. 2008.
Brier, Jennifer. Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Response to the AIDS Crisis. 2009.
Bucur, Maria. Heroes and Victims: Remembering the War in Twentieth-Century Romania. 2009.
Burrett, Tina. Television and Presidential Power in Putin’s Russia. 2010.
Cole, Juan. The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Changed the Middle East. 2014.
Gleich, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. 2011.
*Gorbachev, Mikhail. Memoirs. 1996.
Hsu, Roland, ed. Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World. 2010.
Humphrey, Caroline. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism. 2002.
*Primary source.
1008
Important Events
1990s Internet revolution

1990–1991 War in Persian Gulf
1991 Civil war erupts in former Yugoslavia; failed coup by Communist hard-
liners in Soviet Union
1992 Soviet Union is dissolved
1993 Toni Morrison wins Nobel Prize for Literature; Czechoslovakia splits into
Czech Republic and Slovakia
1994 Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa; Russian troops
invade Chechnya; European Union is officially formed
1999 European Union introduces the euro; world population reaches six billion
2000 Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia
2001 September 11 terrorist attacks; United States declares “war against
terrorism,” attacks Afghanistan
2003 United States invades Iraq; the West divides on this policy
2004 Ten countries join European Union
2005 Emissions reductions of Kyoto Protocol go into effect
2007 Bulgaria and Romania are admitted to European Union; world economic
crisis begins
2009 Barack Obama becomes the first African American president of the United
States
2010 China overtakes Japan to become world’s second largest economy
2014 Russia annexes Crimea and sends military assistance to anti-Ukraine
forces
Consider three events: Internet revolution (1990s), Soviet Union is dissolved (1992),
and European Union is officially formed (1994). How did each of these events help to
bring about a more interconnected, globalized world?
James, Harold. Making of the European Monetary Union. 2012.

Kavoori, Anandam P., and Aswin Punathambekar, eds. Global Bollywood. 2008.
Keller, Richard C. Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heatwave of 2003. 2015.
MacGaffey, Janet, et al. Congo-Paris: Transnational Traders on the Margins of the Law. 2000.
Osumare, Halifu. The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves. 2007.
Plokhii, Sirhil. The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. 2014.
Ried, T. R. The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy.
2005.
Shore, Marci. The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. 2013.
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Glossary of Key Terms
and People
This glossary contains definitions of terms and people that are central to your under-
standing of the material covered in this textbook. Each term or person in the glossary
is in boldface in the text when it is first defined. We have also included the page number
on which the full discussion of the term or person appears so that you can easily locate
the complete explanation to strengthen your historical vocabulary.
For words or names not defined here, two additional resources may be useful: the
index, which will direct you to many more topics discussed in the text, and a good
dictionary.
Abbasids (A buh sihds) (285): The dynasty of Alexander the Great (119): The fourth-
caliphs that, in 750, took over from the century b.c.e. Macedonian king whose con-
Umayyads in all of the Islamic realm except quest of the Persian Empire led to the greatly
for Spain (al-Andalus). From their new increased cultural interactions of Greece
capital at Baghdad, they presided over a and the Near East in the Hellenistic Age.
wealthy realm until the late ninth century. Alexius I (Alexius Comnenus) (332): The Byz-
abolitionists (580): Advocates of the abolition antine emperor (r. 1081–1118) whose leader-
of the slave trade and of slavery. ship marked a new triumph of the dynatoi.
absolutism (505): A system of government in His request to Pope Urban II for troops to
which the ruler claims sole and uncontestable fight the Turks turned into the First Crusade.
power. Alfred the Great (304): King of Wessex
agora (AH gore uh) (85): The central market (r. 871–899) and the first king to rule over
square of a Greek city-state, a popular gath- most of England. He organized a successful
ering place for conversation. defense against Viking invaders, had key Latin
agricultural revolution (550): Increasingly works translated into the vernacular, and
aggressive attitudes toward investment in and wrote a law code for the whole of England.
management of land that increased produc- Anabaptists (455): Sixteenth-century Protes-
tion of food in the 1700s. tants who believed that only adults could
Alexander II (713): Russian tsar (r. 1855–1881) truly have faith and accept baptism.
who initiated the age of Great Reforms and anarchism (732): The belief that people should
emancipated the serfs in 1861. not have government; it was popular among
G-1
G-2 Glossary of Key Terms and People
some peasants and workers in the last half Avignon (AH vee NYAW) papacy (399): The
of the nineteenth century and the first period (1309–1378) during which the popes
decades of the twentieth. ruled from Avignon rather than from Rome.
apostolic (ah puh STAH lihk) succession (198): baroque (buh ROHK) (498): An artistic style
The principle by which Christian bishops of the seventeenth century that featured
traced their authority back to the apostles curves, exaggerated lighting, intense emo-
of Jesus. tions, release from restraint, and even a
appeasement (879): Making concessions in the kind of artistic sensationalism.
face of grievances as a way of preventing Basil II (284): The Byzantine emperor
conflict. (r. 976–1025) who presided over the end of
apprentices (318): Boys (and occasionally the Bulgar threat (earning the name Bulgar-
girls) placed under the tutelage of a master Slayer) and the conversion of Kievan Russia
craftsman in the Middle Ages. Normally to Christianity.
unpaid, they were expected to be servants battle of Hastings (339): The battle of 1066
of their masters, with whom they lived, at that replaced the Anglo-Saxon king with a
the same time as they were learning their Norman one and thus tied England to the
trade. rest of Europe as never before.
aretê (ah reh TAY) (52): The Greek value of battle of Waterloo (653): The final battle lost
competitive individual excellence. by Napoleon; it took place near Brussels
Arianism (222): The Christian doctrine named on June 18, 1815, and led to the deposed
after Arius, who argued that Jesus was emperor’s final exile.
“begotten” by God and did not have an Beauvoir, Simone de (see MAWN duh bohv
identical nature with God the Father. WAHR) (926): Author of The Second Sex
Aristotle (118): Greek philosopher famous for (1949), a globally influential work that
his scientific investigations, development of created an interpretation of women’s age-old
logical argument, and practical ethics. inferior status from existentialist philosophy.
art nouveau (793): An early-twentieth-century Beethoven, Ludwig van (660): The German
artistic style in graphics, fashion, and house- composer (1770–1827) who helped set the
hold design that featured flowing, sinuous direction of musical romanticism; his music
lines, borrowed in large part from Asian art. used recurring and evolving themes to con-
asceticism (uh SEH tuh sih zuhm) (225): The vey the impression of natural growth.
practice of self-denial, especially through bin Laden, Osama (990): Wealthy leader of
spiritual discipline; a doctrine for Christians the militant Islamic group al-Qaeda, which
emphasized by Augustine. executed terrorist plots, including the
Atlantic system (541): The network of trade September 11, 2001, attacks on the United
established in the 1700s that bound together States, to end the presence of U.S. forces in
western Europe, Africa, and the Americas. his home country, Saudi Arabia.
Europeans sold slaves from western Africa Bismarck, Otto von (719): 1815–1898. Leading
and bought commodities that were produced Prussian politician and German prime
by the new colonial plantations in North minister who waged war in order to create
and South America and the Caribbean. a united German Empire, which was estab-
Augustine (221): Bishop in North Africa whose lished in 1871.
writings defining religious orthodoxy made Black Death (410): The term historians give to
him the most influential theologian in the disease that swept through Europe in
Western civilization. 1347–1352.
Augustus (177): The honorary name meaning Blitzkrieg (881): Literally, “lightning war”; a
“divinely favored” that the Roman Senate strategy for the conduct of war (used by the
bestowed on Octavian; it became shorthand Germans in World War II) in which motor-
for “Roman imperial ruler.” ized firepower quickly and overwhelmingly
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-3
attacks the enemy, leaving it unable to resist capitalism (318): The modern economic system
psychologically or militarily. characterized by an entrepreneurial class of
blood libel (384): The charge that Jews used property owners who employ others and
the blood of Christian children in their produce (or provide services) for a market
Passover ritual; though false, it led to mas- in order to make a profit.
sacres of Jews in cities in England, France, Carolingian (290): The Frankish dynasty that
Spain, and Germany in the thirteenth ruled a western European empire from 751
century. to the late 800s; its greatest vigor was in the
Bolívar, Simón (665): 1783–1830. The time of Charlemagne (r. 768–814) and Louis
Venezuelan-born, European-educated aris- the Pious (r. 814–840).
tocrat who became one of the leaders of the castellan (KAS tuh luhn) (302): The holder of
Latin American independence movement a castle. In the tenth and eleventh centuries,
in the 1820s. Bolivia is named after him. castellans became important local lords.
Bolshevik Revolution (831): The overthrow of They mustered men for military service,
Russia’s Provisional Government in the fall of collected taxes, and administered justice.
1917 by V. I. Lenin and his Bolshevik forces. Cavour, Camillo di (717): Prime minister
Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon (699): 1808–1873. (1852–1861) of the kingdom of Piedmont-
Nephew of Napoleon I; he was elected presi- Sardinia and architect of a united Italy.
dent of France in 1848, declared himself chansons de geste (shahn SOHN duh ZHEST)
Emperor Napoleon III in 1852, and ruled (366): Epic poems of the twelfth century
until 1870. about knightly and heroic deeds.
Bonaparte, Napoleon (640): The French gen- Chaplin, Charlie (874): Major entertainment
eral who became First Consul in 1799 and leader, whose sympathetic portrayals of the
emperor (Napoleon I) in 1804; after losing common man and satires of Hitler helped
the battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was exiled preserve democratic values in the 1930s
to the island of St. Helena. and 1940s.
Boniface VIII (397): The pope (r. 1294–1303) Charlemagne (SHAR luh mayn) (291): The
whose clash with King Philip the Fair of Carolingian king (r. 768–814) whose con-
France left the papacy considerably weakened. quests greatly expanded the Frankish
buccaneers (547): Pirates of the Caribbean who kingdom. He was crowned emperor on
governed themselves and preyed on inter- December 25, 800.
national shipping. Charles V (451): Holy Roman Emperor
bureaucracy (510): A network of state officials (r. 1519–1556) and the most powerful ruler
carrying out orders according to a regular in sixteenth-century Europe; he reigned over
and routine line of authority. the Low Countries, Spain, Spain’s Italian
Calvin, John (452): French-born Christian and New World dominions, and the Austrian
humanist (1509–1564) and founder of Habsburg lands.
Calvinism, one of the major branches of the Chartism (697): The British movement of
Protestant Reformation; he led the reform supporters of the People’s Charter (1838),
movement in Geneva, Switzerland, from which demanded universal manhood suf-
1541 to 1564. frage, vote by secret ballot, equal electoral
Capetian (kuh PAY shuhn) dynasty (305): A districts, and other reforms.
long-lasting dynasty of French kings, taking chivalry (367): An ideal of knightly comport-
their name from Hugh Capet (r. 987–996). ment that included military prowess, bravery,
capital-intensive industry (758): A mid- to fair play, piety, and courtesy.
late-nineteenth-century development in Christ (194): Greek for “anointed one,” in
industry that required great investments of Hebrew Mashiach or in English Messiah; in
money for machinery and infrastructure to apocalyptic thought, God’s agent sent to
make a profit. conquer the forces of evil.
Christian Democrats (910): Powerful center to World by sailing west across the Atlantic in
center-right political parties that evolved in search of a route to Asia.
the late 1940s from former Catholic parties commercial revolution (314): A term for the
of the pre–World War II period. western European development (starting
Christian humanism (448): A general intel- around 1050) of a money economy centered
lectual trend in the sixteenth century that in urban areas but affecting the countryside
coupled love of classical learning, as in as well.
Renaissance humanism, with an emphasis common law (358): Begun by Henry II
on Christian piety. (r. 1154–1189), the English royal law carried
Cicero (SIH suh roh) (161): Rome’s most out by the king’s justices in eyre (traveling
famous orator and author of the doctrine justices). It applied to the entire kingdom
of humanitas. and thus was “common” to all.
city-state (8): An urban center exercising commune (319): In a medieval town, a sworn
political and economic control over the association of citizens who formed a legal
surrounding countryside. corporate body. The commune appointed or
Civil Code (644): The French legal code formu- elected officials, made laws, kept the peace,
lated by Napoleon in 1804; it ensured equal and administered justice.
treatment under the law to all men and communists (696): Those socialists who after
guaranteed religious liberty, but it curtailed 1840 (when the word was first used) advo-
many rights of women. cated the abolition of private property in
civil disobedience (863): The act of deliberately favor of communal, collective ownership.
but peacefully breaking the law, a tactic used Concordat of Worms (326): The agreement
by Mohandas Gandhi in India and earlier between pope and emperor in 1122 that
by British suffragists to protest oppression ended the Investiture Conflict.
and obtain political change. Congress of Vienna (654): Face-to-face negotia-
civilization (3): Ways of life especially con- tions (1814–1815) between the great powers
nected with life in urban societies. to settle the boundaries of European states
classicism (531): A seventeenth-century style and determine who would rule each nation
of painting and architecture that reflected after the defeat of Napoleon.
the ideals of the art of antiquity; in classicism, conservatism (657): A political doctrine that
geometric shapes, order, and harmony of emerged after 1789 and took hold after 1815;
lines took precedence over the sensuous, it rejected much of the Enlightenment and
exuberant, and emotional forms of the the French Revolution, preferring monarchies
baroque. over republics, tradition over revolution,
cold war (900): The rivalry between the United and established religion over Enlightenment
States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to skepticism.
1989 that led to massive growth in nuclear constitutionalism (505): A system of gov-
weapons on both sides. ernment in which rulers share power
coloni (kuh LOH ny) (216): Literally, “culti- with parliaments made up of elected
vators”; tenant farmers in the Roman Empire representatives.
who became bound by law to the land they consumer revolution (549): The rapid increase
worked and whose children were legally in consumption of new staples produced in
required to continue to farm the same land. the Atlantic system as well as of other items
Colosseum (186): Rome’s fifty-thousand-seat of daily life that were previously unavailable
amphitheater built by the Flavian dynasty or beyond the reach of ordinary people.
for gladiatorial combats and other Continental System (650): The boycott of Brit-
spectacles. ish goods in France and its satellites ordered
Columbus, Christopher (444): An Italian by Napoleon in 1806; it had success but was
sailor (1451–1506) who opened up the New later undermined by smuggling.
Corn Laws (694): Tariffs on grain in Great Brit- de-Christianization (622): During the French
ain that benefited landowners by preventing Revolution, the campaign of extremist repub-
the import of cheap foreign grain; they were licans against organized churches and in
repealed by the British government in 1846. favor of a belief system based on reason.
cortes (kawr TEHZ) (396): The earliest Euro- Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
pean representative institution, called initially (615): The preamble to the French constitu-
to consent to royal wishes; first convoked in tion drafted in August 1789; it established
1188 by the king of Castile-León. the sovereignty of the nation and equal
Cortés, Hernán (445): The Spanish explorer rights for citizens.
(1485–1547) who captured the Aztec capital, decolonization (918): The process — whether
Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City), violent or peaceful — by which colonies
in 1519. gained their independence from the imperial
Council of Trent (459): A general council of the powers after World War II.
Catholic church that met at Trent between decurions (dih KYUR ee uhns) (189): Munici-
1545 and 1563 to set Catholic doctrine, pal Senate members in the Roman Empire
reform church practices, and defend the responsible for collecting local taxes.
church against the Protestant challenge. deists (579): Those who believe in God but give
Cuban missile crisis (931): The confrontation him no active role in human affairs. Deists
in 1962 between the United States and the of the Enlightenment believed that God had
USSR over Soviet installation of missile sites designed the universe and set it in motion
off the U.S. coast in Cuba. but no longer intervened in its functioning.
cult (59): In ancient Greece, a set of official, Delian (DEE lee un) League (82): The naval
publicly funded religious activities for a deity alliance led by Athens in the Golden Age
overseen by priests and priestesses. that became the basis for the Athenian
cult of the offensive (824): A military strategy Empire.
of constantly attacking the enemy that was demes (DEEMZ) (70): The villages and city
believed to be the key to winning World neighborhoods that formed the constituent
War I but that brought great loss of life while political units of Athenian democracy in the
failing to bring decisive victory. late Archaic Age.
cuneiform (kyoo NEE uh form) (11): The Diaspora (die ASS por a) (49): The dispersal of
earliest form of writing, invented in Meso- the Jewish population from their homeland.
potamia and done with wedge-shaped DNA (942): The genetic material that forms the
characters. basis of each cell; the discovery of its struc-
curials (KYUR ee uhls) (216): The social elite in ture in 1952 revolutionized genetics, molecu-
the Roman Empire’s cities and towns, most lar biology, and other scientific and medical
of whom were obliged to serve as decurions fields.
on municipal Senates and collect taxes for domesticity (688): An ideology prevailing in
the imperial government, paying any short- the nineteenth century that women should
falls themselves. devote themselves to their families and the
Cyrus (44): Founder of the Persian Empire. home.
Darwin, Charles (737): The English naturalist dominate (213): The openly authoritarian style
(1809–1882) who popularized the theory of Roman rule from Diocletian (r. 284–305)
of evolution by means of natural selection onward; the word was derived from domi-
and thereby challenged the biblical story of nus (“master” or “lord”) and contrasted with
creation. principate.
debasement of coinage (203): Putting less silver Dual Alliance (775): A defensive alliance
in a coin without changing its face value; between Germany and Austria-Hungary
a failed financial strategy during the third- created in 1879 as part of Bismarck’s system
century c.e. crisis in Rome. of alliances to prevent or limit war. It was
joined by Italy in 1882 as a third partner and Enlightenment (566): The eighteenth-century
then called the Triple Alliance. intellectual movement whose proponents
dualism (117): The philosophical idea that the believed that human beings could apply a
human soul (or mind) and body are separate. critical, reasoning spirit to every problem.
dual monarchy (723): The shared power Entente Cordiale (811): An alliance between
arrangement between the Habsburg Empire Britain and France that began with an agree-
and Hungary after the Prussian defeat of the ment in 1904 to honor colonial holdings.
Austrian Empire in 1866–1867. Epicureanism (eh puh KYUR ee uh nizm)
Duma (807): The Russian parliament set up in (131): The philosophy founded by Epicurus
the aftermath of the outbreak of the Revo- of Athens to help people achieve a life of
lution of 1905. true pleasure, by which he meant “absence
dynatoi (DY nuh toy) (283): The “powerful of disturbance.”
men” who dominated the countryside of the epigrams (129): Short poems written by women
Byzantine Empire in the tenth and eleventh in the Hellenistic Age; many were about
centuries, and to some degree challenged other women and the writer’s personal
the authority of the emperor. feelings.
Edict of Milan (217): The proclamation of equites (EHK wih tehs) (164): Literally, “eques-
Roman co-emperors Constantine and trians” or “knights”; wealthy Roman business-
Licinius decreeing free choice of religion in men who chose not to pursue a government
the empire. career.
Edict of Nantes (475): The decree issued by Estates General (611): A body of deputies from
French king Henry IV in 1598 that granted the three estates, or orders, of France: the
the Huguenots a large measure of religious clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second
toleration. Estate), and everyone else (Third Estate).
Einstein, Albert (792): Scientist whose theory ethnic cleansing (975): The mass murder —
of relativity (1905) revolutionized modern genocide — of people according to ethnicity
physics and other fields of thought. or nationality; it can also include eliminating
Eliot, George (734): The pen name of English all traces of the murdered people’s past.
novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), who Examples include the post–World War I
described the harsh reality of many ordinary elimination of minorities in eastern and
people’s lives in her works. central Europe and the rape and murders
Elizabeth I (479): English queen (r. 1558–1603) that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia
who oversaw the return of the Protestant in the 1990s.
Church of England and, in 1588, the success- euro (982): The common currency in seventeen
ful defense of the realm against the Spanish member states of the European Union (EU)
Armada. and of EU institutions. It went into effect
empire (12): A political state in which one or gradually, used first in business transactions
more formerly independent territories or in 1999 and entering public circulation
peoples are ruled by a single sovereign power. in 2002.
Enabling Act (868): The legislation passed in European Economic Community (EEC or
1933 suspending constitutional government Common Market) (912): A consortium of
for four years in order to meet the crisis in six European countries established in 1957
the German economy. to promote free trade and economic coop-
enlightened despots (592): Rulers — such as eration among its members; its member-
Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the ship and activities expanded over the years,
Great of Prussia, and Joseph II of Austria — and it later evolved into the European
who tried to promote Enlightenment reforms Union (EU).
without giving up their own supreme politi- European Union (EU) (982): Formerly the
cal power; also called enlightened absolutists. European Economic Community (EEC, or
Common Market), and then the European (The word triumvirate means “group of
Community (EC); formed in 1994 by the three.”)
terms of the Maastricht Treaty. Its members Five Pillars of Islam (253): The five essential
have political ties through the European practices of Islam, namely, the zakat (alms);
parliament as well as long-standing common the fast of Ramadan; the hajj (pilgrimage to
economic, legal, and business mechanisms. Mecca); the salat (formal worship); and the
existentialism (926): A philosophy prominent shahadah (profession of faith).
after World War II developed primarily by five-year plans (865): Centralized programs
Jean-Paul Sartre to stress the importance of for economic development begun in 1929
action in the creation of an authentic self. by Joseph Stalin and copied by Adolf Hitler;
family allowance (872): Government funds these plans set production priorities and
given to families with children to boost gave production targets for individual indus-
the birthrate in democratic countries (e.g., tries and agriculture.
Sweden during the Great Depression) and Fourteen Points (830): U.S. president Woodrow
totalitarian ones alike. Wilson’s World War I peace proposal; based
fascism (853): A doctrine that emphasizes vio- on settlement rather than on conquest, it
lence and glorifies the state over the people encouraged the surrender of the Central
and their individual or civil rights; in Italy, Powers.
the Fascist Party took hold in the 1920s as Fourth Crusade (370): The crusade that lasted
Mussolini consolidated power. from 1202 to 1204; its original goal was to
Fatimids (FAT ih mihds) (287): Members of recapture Jerusalem, but the crusaders ended
the tenth-century Shi‘ite dynasty who derived up conquering Constantinople instead.
their name from Fatimah, the daughter of Fourth Lateran Council (380): The council
Muhammad and wife of Ali; they dominated that met in 1215 and covered the important
in parts of North Africa, Egypt, and even topics of Christianity, among them the nature
Syria. of the sacraments, the obligations of the
feudalism (300): The whole complex of lords, laity, and policies toward heretics and Jews.
vassals, and fiefs (from the Latin feodum) as Franciscans (368): The religious order founded
an institution. The nature of that institution by St. Francis (c. 1182–1226) and dedicated
varied from place to place, and in some to poverty and preaching, particularly in
regions it did not exist at all. towns and cities.
fiefs (299): Grants of land, theoretically tempo- Franco, Francisco (877): 1892–1975. Right-wing
rary, from lords to their noble dependents general who in 1936 successfully overthrew
( fideles or, later, vassals) given in recognition the democratic republic in Spain and insti-
of services, usually military, done or expected tuted a repressive dictatorship.
in the future; also called benefices. Frederick I (Barbarossa) (361): King of Ger-
First Consul (641): The most important of many (r. 1152–1190) and emperor (crowned
the three consuls established by the French 1155) who tried to cement the power of the
Constitution of 1800; the title, given to German king through conquest (for example,
Napoleon Bonaparte, was taken from of northern Italy) and the bonds of vassalage.
ancient Rome. Frederick II (392): The grandson of Barbarossa
First Crusade (333): The massive armed pil- who became king of Sicily and Germany, as
grimage to Jerusalem that lasted from 1096 well as emperor (r. 1212–1250), who allowed
to 1099. It resulted in the massacre of Jews in the German princes a free hand as he battled
the Rhineland (1095), the sack of Jerusalem the pope for control of Italy.
(1099), and the setting up of the crusader Frederick William of Hohenzollern (526):
states. The Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia
First Triumvirate (167): The coalition formed (r. 1640–1688) who brought his nation
in 60 b.c.e. by Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. through the end of the Thirty Years’ War
and then succeeded in welding his scattered Gothic architecture (352): The style of archi-
lands into an absolutist state. tecture that started in the Île-de-France in
Freemasons (587): Members of Masonic the twelfth century and eventually became
lodges, where nobles and middle-class pro- the quintessential cathedral style of the
fessionals (and even some artisans) shared Middle Ages, characterized by pointed arches,
interest in the Enlightenment and reform. ribbed vaults, and stained-glass windows.
Freud, Sigmund (789): Viennese medical Great Famine (402): The shortage of food and
doctor and founder, in the late nineteenth accompanying social ills that besieged
century, of psychoanalysis, a theory of northern Europe between 1315 and 1322.
mental processes and problems and a method Great Fear (614): The term used by historians
of treating them. to describe the French rural panic of 1789,
Gladstone, William (771): 1809–1898. Liberal which led to peasant attacks on aristocrats or
politician and prime minister of Great Brit- on seigneurial records of peasants’ dues.
ain who innovated in popular campaigning Great Persecution (217): The violent program
and who criticized British imperialism. initiated by Diocletian in 303 to make
glasnost (964): Literally “openness” or Christians convert to traditional religion or
“publicity”; a policy instituted in the 1980s by risk confiscation of their property and even
Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev calling death.
for greater openness in speech and in think- Great Schism (418): The papal dispute of
ing, which translated to the reduction of 1378–1417 when the church had two and
censorship in publishing, radio, television, even (between 1409 and 1417) three popes.
and other media. The Great Schism was ended by the Council
globalization (974): The interconnection of of Constance.
labor, capital, ideas, services, and goods Green Party (987): A political party first
around the world. Although globalization formed in West Germany in 1979 to bring
has existed for hundreds of years, the late about environmentally sound policies. It
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries spread across Europe and around the world
are seen as more global because of the speed thereafter.
with which people, goods, and ideas travel Gregorian reform (324): The papal move-
the world. ment for church reform associated with
global warming (987): An increase in the Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085); its ideals
temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere included ending three practices: the purchase
resulting from a buildup of chemical of church offices, clerical marriage, and lay
emissions. investiture.
Glorious Revolution (519): The events of 1688 Gregory of Tours (265): Bishop of Tours (in
when Tories and Whigs replaced England’s Gaul) from 573 to 594, the chief source for
monarch James II with his Protestant daugh- the history and culture of the Merovingian
ter, Mary, and her husband, Dutch ruler kingdoms.
William of Orange; William and Mary agreed Gregory the Great (270): The pope (r. 590–604)
to a Bill of Rights that guaranteed rights to who sent missionaries to Anglo-Saxon
Parliament. England, wrote influential books, tried to
Golden Horde (400): The political institution reform the church, and had contact with
set up by the Mongols in Russia, lasting the major ruling families of Europe and
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Byzantium.
Gorbachev, Mikhail (963): Leader of the Soviet guild (318): A trade organization within a
Union (1985–1991) who instituted reforms city or town that controlled product quality
such as glasnost and perestroika, thereby and cost and outlined members’ responsi-
contributing to the collapse of Communist bilities. Guilds were also social and religious
rule in the Soviet bloc and the USSR. associations.
Hammurabi (ha muh RAH bee) (14): King of Hijra (HIJ ruh) (252): The emigration of
Babylonia in the eighteenth century b.c.e., Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. Its
famous for his law code. date, 622, marks the year 1 of the Islamic
Hanseatic League (429): A league of northern calendar.
European cities formed in the fourteenth Hitler, Adolf (867): 1889–1945. Chancellor
century to protect their mutual interests in of Germany (1933–1945) who, with con-
trade and defense. siderable backing, overturned democratic
heliocentrism (493): The view articulated by government, created the Third Reich, perse-
Polish clergyman Nicolaus Copernicus that cuted millions, and ultimately led Germany
the earth and other planets revolve around and the world into World War II.
the sun. Homer (52): Greece’s first and most famous
Hellenistic (122): An adjective meaning “Greek- author, who composed The Iliad and The
like” that is today used as a chronological Odyssey.
term for the period 323–30 b.c.e. home rule (772): The right to an independent
helot (65): A slave owned by the Spartan city- parliament demanded by the Irish and
state; such slaves came from parts of Greece resisted by the British from the second half
conquered by the Spartans. of the nineteenth century on.
Henry II (355): King of England (r. 1154–1189) hoplite (60): A heavily armed Greek infantry-
who ended the period of civil war there and man. Hoplites constituted the main strike
affirmed and expanded royal powers. He is force of a city-state’s militia.
associated with the creation of common law hubris (HYOO bris) (102): The Greek term for
in England. violent arrogance.
Henry IV (324): King of Germany humanism (422): A literary and linguistic
(r. 1056–1106), crowned emperor in movement cultivated in particular during
1084. From 1075 until his death, he was the Renaissance (1350–1600) and founded
embroiled in the Investiture Conflict with on reviving classical Latin and Greek texts,
Pope Gregory VII. styles, and values.
Henry VIII (453): The English king humanitas (161): The Roman orator Cicero’s
(r. 1509–1547) who first opposed the Prot- ideal of “humaneness,” meaning generous
estant Reformation and then broke with and honest treatment of others based on
the Catholic church, naming himself head natural law.
of the Church of England in the Act of
Hundred Years’ War (413): The long war
Supremacy of 1534.
between England and France, 1337–1453
Heraclius (her uh KLY uhs) (257): The Byzan- (actually 116 years); it produced numerous
tine emperor who reversed the fortunes of social upheavals yet left both states more
war with the Persians in the first quarter of powerful than before.
the seventh century.
hunter-gatherers (5): Human beings who roam
heresy (199): False doctrine; specifically, the to hunt and gather food in the wild and do
beliefs banned for Christians by councils of not live in permanent, settled communities.
bishops.
iconoclasm (261): Literally, “icon breaking”;
hetaira (heh TYE ruh) (92): A witty and attrac- referring to the destruction of icons, or
tive woman who charged fees to entertain at images of holy people. Byzantine emperors
a symposium. banned icons from 726 to 787; a modified
hierarchy (4): The system of ranking people ban was revived in 815 and lasted until 843.
in society according to their status and icons (261): Images of holy people such as Jesus,
authority. Mary, and the saints. Controversy arose in
hieroglyphic (19): The ancient Egyptian picto- Byzantium over the meaning of such images.
graphic writing system for official texts. The iconoclasts considered them “idols,”
but those who adored icons maintained that Jacobin Club (618): A French political club
they manifested the physical form of those formed in 1789 that inspired the formation
who were holy. of a national network whose members domi-
ideology (674): A word coined during the nated the revolutionary government during
French Revolution to refer to a coherent the Terror.
set of beliefs about the way the social and Jacquerie (zhah kuh REE) (416): The 1358 upris-
political order should be organized. ing of French peasants against the nobles
imperialism (689): European dominance of amid the Hundred Years’ War; it was brutally
the non-West through economic exploita- put down.
tion and political rule; the word (as distinct Jesuits (460): Members of the Society of Jesus, a
from colonialism, which usually implied Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius
establishment of settler colonies, often with of Loyola (1491–1556) and approved by the
slavery) was coined in the mid-nineteenth pope in 1540. Jesuits served as missionaries
century. and educators all over the world.
impressionism (766): A mid- to late-nineteenth- jihad (252): In the Qur’an, the word means
century artistic style that captured the “striving in the way of God.” This can mean
sensation of light in images, derived from both striving to live righteously and striving to
Japanese influences and in opposition to the confront unbelievers, even as far as holy war.
realism of photographs. Joan of Arc (414): A peasant girl (1412–1431)
indulgence (419): A step beyond confession and whose conviction that God had sent her to
penance, an indulgence (normally granted save France in fact helped France win the
by popes or bishops) lifted the temporal Hundred Years’ War.
punishment still necessary for a sin already journeymen/journeywomen (318): Laborers
forgiven. Normally, that punishment was in the Middle Ages whom guildmasters
said to take place in purgatory. But it could hired for a daily wage to help them produce
be remitted through good works (including their products.
prayers and contributing money to worthy Julian the Apostate (219): The Roman emperor
causes). (r. 361–363) who rejected Christianity and
Industrial Revolution (674): The transforma- tried to restore traditional religion as the
tion of life in the Western world over several state religion. Apostate means “renegade from
decades in the late eighteenth and early the faith.”
nineteenth centuries as a result of the intro- Julio-Claudians (184): The ruling family of the
duction of steam-driven machinery, large early principate from Augustus through Nero,
factories, and a new working class. descended from the aristocratic families of
Innocent III (380): The pope (r. 1198–1216) the Julians and the Claudians.
who called the Fourth Lateran Council; he Justinian and Theodora (236): Sixth-century
was the most powerful, respected, and pres- emperor and empress of the eastern Roman
tigious of medieval popes. Empire, famous for waging costly wars to
Investiture Conflict (325): The confrontation reunite the empire.
between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (931): U.S. president
Henry IV that began in 1075 over the (1961–1963) who faced off with Soviet
appointment of prelates in some Italian cities leader Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban
and grew into a dispute over the nature of missile crisis.
church leadership. It ended in 1122 with the Khrushchev, Nikita (nyih KEE tuh kroosh
Concordat of Worms. CHAWF) (916): Leader of the USSR from
in vitro fertilization (943): A process devel- c. 1955 until his dismissal in 1964; known
oped in the 1970s by which human eggs are for his speech denouncing Stalin, creation of
fertilized with sperm outside the body and the “thaw,” and participation in the Cuban
then implanted in a woman’s uterus. missile crisis.
Koine (koy NAY) (135): The “common” or Levellers (516): Disgruntled soldiers in Oliver
“shared” form of the Greek language that Cromwell’s New Model Army who in 1647
became the international language in the wanted to “level” social differences and
Hellenistic period. extend political participation to all male
Kollontai, Aleksandra (852): A Russian activist property owners.
and minister of public welfare in the Bolshe- liberalism (693): An economic and political
vik government who promoted social pro- ideology that — tracing its roots to John
grams such as birth control and day care for Locke in the seventeenth century and Enlight-
children of working parents. enment philosophers in the eighteenth —
Kulturkampf (737): Literally, “culture war”; a emphasized free trade and the constitutional
term used in the 1870s by German chancel- guarantees of individual rights such as free-
lor Otto von Bismarck to describe his fight dom of speech and religion; its adherents
to weaken the power of the Catholic church. stood between conservatives on the right
and revolutionaries on the left in the nine-
ladder of offices (154): The series of Roman
teenth century.
elective government offices from quaestor
to aedile to praetor to consul. limited liability corporation (758): A legal
entity, such as a factory or other enterprise,
laissez-faire (LEH say FEHR) (581): French for
developed in the second half of the nine-
“leave alone”; an economic doctrine devel-
teenth century whose owners were liable for
oped by Adam Smith that advocated freeing
only restricted (limited) amounts of money
the economy from government intervention
owed to creditors in the case of financial
and control.
failure.
lay investiture (322): The installation of clerics
Linear B (33): The Mycenaeans’ pictographic
into their offices by lay rulers.
script for writing Greek.
League of Nations (838): The international Lombards (258): The people who settled in
organization set up following World War I Italy during the sixth century, following
to maintain peace by arbitrating disputes Justinian’s reconquest. A king ruled the
and promoting collective security. north of Italy, while dukes ruled the south.
Lebensraum (876): Literally, “living space”; the In between was the papacy, which felt threat-
land that Hitler proposed to conquer so that ened both by Lombard Arianism and by the
the people he defined as true Aryans might Lombards’ geographical proximity to Rome.
have sufficient space to live their noble lives. Louis IX (393): A French king (r. 1226–1270)
Lenin, V. I. (831): Bolshevik leader who executed revered as a military leader and a judge; he
the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917, was declared a saint after his death.
took Russia out of World War I, and imposed Louis XIV (506): French king (r. 1643–1715)
communism in Russia. who in theory personified absolutism but
Leopold II (747): King of Belgium (r. 1865–1909) in practice had to gain the cooperation of
who sponsored the takeover of the Congo nobles, local officials, and even the ordinary
in Africa, which he ran with great violence subjects who manned his armies and paid
against native peoples. his taxes.
Lepanto (477): A site off the Greek coast where, Louis XVI (610): French king (r. 1774–1792)
in 1571, the allied Catholic forces of Spain’s who was tried for treason during the
king Philip II, Venice, and the papacy defeated French Revolution; he was executed on
the Ottoman Turks in a great sea battle; the January 21, 1793.
victory gave the Christian powers control of Luther, Martin (450): A German monk
the Mediterranean. (1483–1546) who started the Protestant
leprosy (384): A bacterial disease that causes Reformation in 1517 by challenging the
skin lesions and attacks the peripheral nerves. practices and doctrines of the Catholic
In the later Middle Ages, lepers were isolated church and advocating salvation through
from society. faith alone.
Lyceum (118): The school for research and materialism (131): A philosophical doctrine of
teaching in a wide range of subjects founded the Hellenistic Age that denied metaphysics
by Aristotle in Athens in 335 b.c.e. and claimed instead that only things consist-
Maastricht Treaty (982): The agreement ing of matter truly exist.
among the members of the European Com- Mazzini, Giuseppe (691): An Italian nationalist
munity to have a closer alliance, including (1805–1872) who founded Young Italy, a
the use of common passports and eventually secret society to promote Italian unity. He
the development of a common currency; believed that a popular uprising would create
by the terms of this treaty, the European a unified Italy.
Community became the European Union Medici (MEH dih chee) (434): The ruling family
(EU) in 1994. of Florence during much of the fifteenth to
Maat (MAH aht) (20): The Egyptian goddess the seventeenth centuries.
embodying truth, justice, and cosmic order. Médicis, Catherine de (974): Italian-born
(The word maat means “what is right.”) mother of French king Charles IX
Magna Carta (359): Literally “Great Charter”; (r. 1560–1574); she served as regent and
the charter of baronial liberties that King tried but failed to prevent religious warfare
John was forced to agree to in 1215. It between Calvinists and Catholics.
implied that royal power was subject to Mediterranean polyculture (30): The cultiva-
custom and law. tion of olives, grapes, and grains in a single,
mandate system (838): The political control interrelated agricultural system.
over the former colonies and territories of Mehmed II (417): The sultan under whom the
the German and Ottoman Empires granted Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople
to the victors of World War I by the League in 1453.
of Nations.
mercantilism (511): The economic doctrine
Marie-Antoinette (610): Wife of Louis XVI and that governments must intervene to increase
queen of France who was tried for treason national wealth by whatever means possible.
during the French Revolution and executed
in October 1793. Merovingian (mehr oh VIN jian) dynasty (262):
The royal dynasty that ruled Gaul from
Marshall Plan (905): A post–World War II about 486 to 751.
program funded by the United States to get
Europe back on its feet economically and mestizo (547): A person born to a Spanish
thereby reduce the appeal of communism. father and a native American mother.
It played an important role in the rebirth of metaphysics (116): Philosophical ideas about
European prosperity in the 1950s. the ultimate nature of reality beyond the
martyr (197): Greek for “witness,” the term for reach of human senses.
someone who dies for his or her religious Methodism (584): A religious movement
beliefs. founded by John Wesley (1703–1791) that
Marxism (732): A body of thought about the broke with the Church of England and
organization of production, social inequality, insisted on strict self-discipline and a
and the processes of revolutionary change “methodical” approach to religious study
as devised by the philosopher and economist and observance.
Karl Marx. metic (90): A foreigner granted permanent resi-
masters (318): Men (and occasionally women) dence status in Athens in return for paying
who, having achieved expertise in a craft, taxes and serving in the military.
ran the guilds in the Middle Ages. They Metternich, Klemens von (KLAY mehnts fawn
had to be rich enough to have their own MEH tur nihk) (654): An Austrian prince
shop and tools and to pay an entry fee into (1773–1859) who took the lead in devising
the guild. Often their positions were the post-Napoleonic settlement arranged by
hereditary. the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815).
Milosevic, Slobodan (975): President of Serbia nationalism (691): An ideology that arose in
(1989–1997) who pushed for Serb control the nineteenth century and that holds that
of post-Communist Yugoslavia; in 2002, he all peoples derive their identities from their
was tried for crimes against humanity in the nations, which are defined by common
ethnic cleansing that accompanied the disso- language, shared cultural traditions, and
lution of the Yugoslav state. sometimes religion.
mir (mihr) (714): A Russian farm community nation-state (716): An independent political
that provided for holding land in common unit of modern times based on representing
and regulating the movements of any indi- a united people.
vidual by the group. Nazi-Soviet Pact (881): The agreement reached
Mitteleuropa (miht el oy ROH pah) (811): in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union
Literally, “central Europe,” but used by mili- in which both agreed not to attack the other
tary leaders in Germany before World War I in case of war and to divide any conquered
to refer to land in both central and eastern territories.
Europe that they hoped to acquire. neoliberalism (961): A theory first promoted
modernism (791): Artistic styles around the by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher,
turn of the twentieth century that featured a calling for a return to liberal principles of the
break with realism in art and literature and nineteenth century, including the reduction
with lyricism in music. of welfare-state programs and the cutting of
taxes for the wealthy to promote economic
moral dualism (46): The belief that the world growth.
is the arena for an ongoing battle for control
Neoplatonism (201): Plotinus’s spiritual
between divine forces of good and evil.
philosophy, based mainly on Plato’s ideas,
Morrison, Toni (1001): The first African which was very influential for Christian
American woman to win the Nobel Prize for intellectuals.
Literature; her works include Beloved (1987),
new unionism (769): A nineteenth-century
Jazz (1992), and A Mercy (2008).
development in labor organizing that replaced
mos maiorum (144): Literally, “the way of the local craft-based unions with those that ex-
elders”; the set of Roman values handed tended membership to all kinds of workers.
down from the ancestors. new woman (787): A woman who, from the
Muhammad (250): The prophet of Islam 1880s on, dressed practically, moved about
(c. 570–632). He united a community of freely, and often supported herself.
believers around his religious tenets, above Nicene Creed (223): The doctrine agreed
all that there was one God whose words had on by the council of bishops convened by
been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel. Constantine at Nicaea in 325 to defend
Later, written down, these revelations became orthodoxy against Arianism. It declared that
the Qur’an. God the Father and Jesus were homoousion
multinational corporation (944): A business (“of one substance”).
that operates in many foreign countries by Nicholas II (799): Tsar of Russia (r. 1894–1917)
sending large segments of its manufacturing, who promoted anti-Semitism and resisted
finance, sales, and other business compo- reform in the empire.
nents abroad. Nietzsche, Friedrich (791): Late-nineteenth-
Mussolini, Benito (852): Leader of Italian fascist century German philosopher who called for
movement and, after the March on Rome in a new morality in the face of God’s death at
1922, dictator of Italy. the hands of science and whose theories
mystery cults (90): Religious worship that pro- were reworked by his sister to emphasize
vided initiation into secret knowledge and militarism and anti-Semitism.
divine protection, including hope for a better Nightingale, Florence (713): The Englishwoman
afterlife. who in the nineteenth century pioneered
the professionalization of nursing and the the late 1960s in which West Germany
use of statistics in the study of public health sought better economic relations with the
and the well-being of the military. Communist countries of eastern Europe.
Nixon, Richard (956): U.S. president ostracism (AHS truh sizm) (84): An annual
(1969–1974) who escalated the Vietnam War, procedure in Athenian radical democracy
worked for accommodation with China, by which a man could be voted out of the
and resigned from the presidency after trying city-state for ten years; its purpose was to
to block free elections. prevent tyranny.
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Ottonian (ah TOH nee uhn) kings (306): The
(985): Charitable foundations and activist tenth- and early-eleventh-century kings of
groups such as Doctors Without Borders Germany; beginning with Otto I (r. 936–973),
that work outside of governments, often on they claimed the imperial crown and worked
political, economic, and relief issues; also, closely with their bishops to rule a vast
philanthropic organizations such as the territory.
Rockefeller, Ford, and Open Society Founda- outwork (755): The nineteenth-century process
tions that shape economic and social policy of having some aspects of industrial work
and the course of political reform. done outside factories in individual homes.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Pacific tigers (994): Countries of East Asia so
(907): The security alliance formed in 1949 named because of their massive economic
to provide a unified military force for the growth, much of it from the 1980s on; fore-
United States, Canada, and their allies in most among these were Japan and China.
western Europe and Scandinavia. palace society (29): Minoan and Mycenaean
Nuremberg Laws (870): Legislation enacted by social and political organization centered on
the Nazis in 1935 that deprived Jewish Ger- multichambered buildings housing the rulers
mans of their citizenship and imposed many and the administration of the state.
other hardships on them. Pankhurst, Emmeline (797): 1858–1928.
Opium War (690): War between China and Organizer of a militant branch of the British
Great Britain (1839–1842) that resulted in suffrage movement, working actively for
the opening of four Chinese ports to Europe- women’s right to vote.
ans and British sovereignty over Hong Kong. Pan-Slavism (723): The nineteenth-century
optimates (op tee MAH tehs) (164): The Roman movement calling for the unity of all Slavs
political faction supporting the “best,” or across national and regional boundaries.
highest, social class; established during the Parnell, Charles Stewart (772): Irish politician
late republic. (1846–1891) whose advocacy of home
orders (152): The two groups of people in the rule was a thorn in the side of the British
Roman republic — patricians (aristocratic establishment.
families) and plebeians (all other citizens). Parthenon (PAR thuh non) (85): The massive
Organization of Petroleum Exporting temple to Athena as a warrior goddess built
Countries (OPEC) (958): A consortium atop the Athenian acropolis in the Golden
that regulated the supply and export of oil Age of Greece.
and that acted with more unanimity after partition of Poland (594): Division of one-
the United States supported Israel against the third of Poland-Lithuania’s territory between
Arabs in the wars of the late 1960s and early Prussia, Russia, and Austria in 1772.
1970s. patria potestas (PAH tree uh po TEHS tahs)
orthodoxy (199): True doctrine; specifically, the (146): Literally, “father’s power”; the legal
beliefs defined for Christians by councils of power a Roman father possessed over the
bishops. children and slaves in his family, including
Ostpolitik (949): A policy initiated by West owning all their property and having the
German foreign minister Willy Brandt in right to punish them, even with death.
patriarchy (10): Dominance by men in society ernization of Russia and built a new capital
and politics. city named after himself, St. Petersburg.
patrilineal (303): Relating to or tracing descent Petrarch, Francis (422): An Italian poet
through the paternal line (for example, (1304–1374) who revived the styles of
through the father and grandfather). classical authors; he is considered the first
patron-client system (145): The interlocking Renaissance humanist.
network of mutual obligations between Philip II (476): King of Spain (r. 1556–1598)
Roman patrons (social superiors) and clients and the most powerful ruler in Europe; he
(social inferiors). reigned over the western Habsburg lands
Pax Romana (176): Literally “Roman Peace”; and all the Spanish colonies recently settled
the two centuries of relative peace and pros- in the New World.
perity in the Roman Empire under the early Philip II (Philip Augustus) (359): King of
principate begun by Augustus. France (r. 1180–1223) who bested the
Peace of Augsburg (467): The treaty of 1555 English king John and won most of John’s
that settled disputes between Holy Roman continental territories, thus immeasurably
Emperor Charles V and his Protestant strengthening the power of the Capetian
princes. It recognized the Lutheran church dynasty.
and established the principle that all Catho- philosophes (fee luh SAWF) (576): French for
lic or Lutheran princes enjoyed the sole “philosophers”; public intellectuals of the
right to determine the religion of their lands Enlightenment who wrote on subjects rang-
and subjects. ing from current affairs to art criticism with
Peace of God (303): A movement begun by the goal of furthering reform in society.
bishops in the south of France around 990, Pietism (555): A Protestant revivalist movement
first to limit the violence done to property of the early eighteenth century that empha-
and to the unarmed, and later, with the Truce sized deeply emotional individual religious
of God, to limit fighting between warriors. experience.
Peace of Paris (836): The series of peace treaties plantation (542): A large tract of land that pro-
(1919–1920) that provided the settlement of duced staple crops such as sugar, coffee, and
World War I. The Treaty of Versailles with tobacco; was farmed by slave labor; and was
Germany was the centerpiece of the Peace owned by a colonial settler.
of Paris.
Plato (116): A follower of Socrates who became
Peace of Westphalia (484): The settlement Greece’s most famous philosopher.
(1648) of the Thirty Years’ War; it established
enduring religious divisions in the Holy plebiscites (PLEH buh sites) (155): Resolutions
Roman Empire by which Lutheranism would passed by the Plebeian Assembly; such reso-
dominate in the north, Calvinism in the lutions gained the force of law in 287 b.c.e.
area of the Rhine River, and Catholicism in polis (54): The Greek city-state, an independent
the south. community of citizens not ruled by a king.
perestroika (963): Literally, “restructuring”; politiques (poh lih TEEK) (975): Political
an economic policy instituted in the 1980s advisers during the sixteenth-century
by Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev French Wars of Religion who argued that
calling for the introduction of market compromise in matters of religion would
mechanisms and the achievement of greater strengthen the monarchy.
efficiency in manufacturing, agriculture, polytheism (10): The belief in and worship of
and services. multiple gods.
Pericles (PEHR uh kleez) (83): Athens’s political pop art (947): A style in the visual arts that
leader during the Golden Age. mimicked advertising and consumerism
Peter the Great (560): Russian tsar Peter I and that used ordinary objects as a part of
(r. 1689–1725), who undertook the West- paintings and other compositions.
popolo (399): Literally, “people”; a communal in Germany, to stimulate the economy

faction, largely made up of merchants, that through public works programs and other
demanded (and often obtained) power in infusions of public funds.
thirteenth-century Italian cities. purges (866): The series of attacks on citizens
populares (poh poo LAH rehs) (164): The of the USSR accused of being “wreckers,” or
Roman political faction supporting the saboteurs of communism, in the 1930s and
common people; established during the late later.
republic. Puritans (479): Strict Calvinists who in the six-
Popular Front (873): An alliance of political teenth and seventeenth centuries opposed
parties (initially led by Léon Blum in France) all vestiges of Catholic ritual in the Church
in the 1930s to resist fascism despite philo- of England.
sophical differences. Putin, Vladimir (977): President of Russia
positivism (739): A theory developed in the from 2000 to 2008; prime minister 2008–
mid-nineteenth century that the study of present. He has worked to reestablish Russia
facts would generate accurate, or “positive,” as a world power through control of the
laws of society and that these laws could, in country’s resources and military capabilities.
turn, help in the formulation of policies and Qur’an (kur AN/koo RAHN) (251): The holy
legislation. book of Islam, considered the word of Allah
postmodernism (1103): A term applied in the (“the God”) as revealed to the Prophet
late twentieth century to both an intense Muhammad.
stylistic mixture in the arts without a central radical democracy (83): The Athenian system
unifying theme or elite set of standards and of democracy established in the 460s and
a critique of Enlightenment and scientific 450s b.c.e. that extended direct political
beliefs in rationality and the possibility of power and participation in the court system
certain knowledge. to all adult male citizens.
praetorian guard (178): The group of soldiers raison d’état (ray ZOHN day TAH) (487):
stationed in Rome under the emperor’s French for “reason of state,” the political doc-
control; first formed by Augustus. trine, first proposed by Cardinal Richelieu
predestination (453): John Calvin’s doctrine of France, which held that the state’s interests
that God preordained salvation or damnation should prevail over those of religion.
for each person before creation; those chosen rationalism (72): The philosophic idea that
for salvation were considered the “elect.” people must justify their claims by logic and
primogeniture (303): An inheritance practice reason, not myth.
that left all property to the oldest son. Razin, Stenka (529): Leader of the 1667 rebel-
principate (177): Roman political system lion that promised Russian peasants liberation
invented by Augustus as a disguised mon- from noble landowners and officials; he was
archy with the princeps (“first man”) as captured by the tsar’s army in 1671 and
emperor. publicly executed in Moscow.
proletarians (165): In the Roman republic, the realism (733): An artistic style that arose in the
mass of people so poor they owned no mid-nineteenth century and was dedicated
property. to depicting society realistically without
Pugachev (poo guh CHAWF) rebellion (595): romantic or idealistic overtones.
A massive revolt of Russian Cossacks and Realpolitik (ray AHL poh lih teek) (709): Poli-
serfs in 1773 against local nobles and the cies developed after the revolutions of 1848
armies of Catherine the Great; its leader, and initially associated with nation building;
Emelian Pugachev, was eventually captured they were based on realism rather than on
and executed. the romantic notions of earlier nationalists.
pump priming (869): An economic policy The term has come to mean any policy
used by governments, including the Nazis based on considerations of power alone.
reconquista (ray con KEE stuh) (324): The Romanization (191): The spread of Roman law
collective name for the wars waged by the and culture in the provinces of the Roman
Christian princes of Spain against the Empire.
Muslim-ruled regions to their south. These romanticism (584): An artistic movement of
wars were considered holy, akin to the the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
crusades. turies that glorified nature, emotion, genius,
redistributive economy (10): A system in and imagination.
which state officials control the production Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (zhahn zhahk roo
and distribution of goods. SOH) (581): One of the most important
Reform Act of 1884 (771): British legislation philosophes (1712–1778); he argued that
that granted the right to vote to a mass male only a government based on a social contract
citizenry. among the citizens could make people truly
Reform Bill of 1832 (668): A measure passed moral and free.
by the British Parliament to increase the ruler cults (136): Cults that involved worship of
number of male voters by about 50 percent a Hellenistic ruler as a savior god.
and give representation to new cities in Rushdie, Salman (1001): Immigrant British
the north; it set a precedent for widening author whose novel The Satanic Verses (1988)
suffrage. led the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran
res publica (REHS POOB lih kuh) (150): to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder.
Literally, “the people’s matter” or “the public Russification (716): A program for the integra-
business”; the Romans’ name for their re- tion of Russia’s many nationality groups that
public and the source of our word republic. involved the forced learning of the Russian
restoration (655): The epoch after the fall of language and the practice of Russian Ortho-
Napoleon, in which the Congress of Vienna dox religion as well as the settlement of
aimed to “restore” as many regimes as pos- ethnic Russians among other nationality
sible to their former rulers. groups.
revocation of the Edict of Nantes (510): sacraments (327): In the Catholic church, the
French king Louis XIV’s 1685 decision to institutionalized means by which God’s
eliminate the rights of Calvinists granted heavenly grace is transmitted to Christians.
in the edict of 1598; Louis banned all Cal- Examples of sacraments include baptism,
vinist public activities and forced those the Eucharist (communion), and marriage.
who refused to embrace the state religion salon (534): An informal gathering held regu-
to flee. larly in a private home and presided over
Robespierre, Maximilien (roh behs PYEHR) by a socially eminent woman; salons spread
(619): A lawyer from northern France who, from France in the seventeenth century to
as leader of the Committee of Public Safety, other countries in the eighteenth century.
laid out the principles of a republic of virtue samizdat (950): A key form of dissident activity
and of the Terror; his arrest and execution across the Soviet bloc in which individuals
in July 1794 brought an end to the Terror. reproduced government-suppressed publica-
rococo (554): A style of painting that emphasized tions by hand and passed them from reader
irregularity and asymmetry, movement and to reader, thus building a foundation for the
curvature, but on a smaller, more intimate successful resistance of the 1980s.
scale than the baroque. Sand, George (685): The pen name of French
Romanesque (351): An architectural style that novelist Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin
flourished in Europe between about 1000 Dudevant (1804–1876), who showed her
and 1150. It is characterized by solid, heavy independence in the 1830s by dressing like a
forms and semicircular arches and vaults. man and smoking cigars. The term George-
Romanesque buildings were often decorated Sandism became an expression of disdain
with fanciful sculpture and wall paintings. for independent women.
Sappho (SAF oh) (71): The most famous woman social contract (520): The doctrine, originated
lyric poet of ancient Greece, a native of by Hugo Grotius and argued by both
Lesbos. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, that all
Schlieffen Plan (825): The Germans’ strategy political authority derives not from divine
in World War I that called for attacks on right but from an implicit contract between
two fronts — concentrating first on France citizens and their rulers.
to the west and then turning east to attack socialism (695): A social and political ideology,
Russia. originating in the early nineteenth century,
scholasticism (385): The method of logical that advocated the reorganization of society
inquiry used by the scholastics, the scholars to overcome the new tensions created by
of the medieval universities; it applied industrialization and restore social harmony
Aristotelian logic to biblical and other authori- through communities based on cooperation.
tative texts in an attempt to summarize and Socratic method (97): The Athenian philoso-
reconcile all knowledge. pher Socrates’ method of teaching through
scientific method (493): The combination of conversation, in which he asked probing
experimental observation and mathematical questions to make his listeners examine their
deduction used to determine the laws of most cherished assumptions.
nature; first developed in the seventeenth Solidarity (965): A Polish labor union
century, it became the secular standard of founded in 1980 by Lech Walesa and Anna
truth. Walentynowicz that contested Communist
Scott, Sir Walter (662): A prolific author Party programs and eventually succeeded
(1771–1832) of popular historical novels; in ousting the party from the Polish
he also collected and published traditional government.
Scottish ballads and wrote poetry. Solon (68): Athenian political reformer whose
Sea Peoples (34): The diverse groups of changes promoted early democracy.
raiders who devastated the eastern Mediter- Sophists (SAH fists) (95): Competitive intellec-
ranean region in the period of violence tuals and teachers in ancient Greece who
1200–1000 b.c.e. offered expensive courses in persuasive
Second International (770): A transnational public speaking and new ways of philosophic
organization of workers established in and religious thinking beginning around
1889, mostly committed to Marxian 450 b.c.e.
socialism. South African War (803): The war (1899–1902)
secularization (492): The long-term trend between Britain and the Boer (originally
toward separating state power and science Dutch) inhabitants of South Africa for con-
from religious faith, making the latter a trol of the region; also called the Boer War.
private domain; begun in the seventeenth soviets (831): Councils of workers and soldiers
century, it prompted a search for nonreli- first formed in Russia in the Revolution of
gious explanations for political authority 1905; they were revived to represent the
and natural phenomena. people in the early days of the 1917 Russian
Seven Years’ War (593): A worldwide series of Revolution.
battles (1756–1763) between Austria, stagflation (959): The combination of a stagnant
France, Russia, and Sweden on one side and economy and soaring inflation; a period of
Prussia and Great Britain on the other. stagflation occurred in the West in the 1970s
Shi‘ite (255): A Muslim of the “party of Ali” as a result of an OPEC embargo on oil.
and his descendants. Shi‘ites are thus opposed Stalin, Joseph (865): Leader of the USSR who,
to the Sunni Muslims, who reject the with considerable backing, formed a brutal
authority of Ali. dictatorship in the 1930s and forcefully
simony (SY muh nee) (322): The sin of giving converted the country into an industrial
gifts or paying money to get a church office. power.
Statute in Favor of the Princes (392): A statute Thermidorian Reaction (627): The violent
finalized by Frederick II in 1232 that gave backlash against the rule of Robespierre that
the German princes sovereign power within dismantled the Terror and punished Jacobins
their own principalities. and their supporters.
St. Bernard (330): The most important Cister- Third Republic (772): The French government
cian abbot (early twelfth century) and the that succeeded Napoleon III’s Second Empire
chief preacher of the Second Crusade. after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
Stoicism (131): The Hellenistic philosophy of 1870–1871. It lasted until France’s defeat
whose followers believed in fate but also in by Germany in 1940.
pursuing excellence (virtue) by cultivating Torah (47): The first five books of the Hebrew
good sense, justice, courage, and temperance. Bible, also referred to as the Pentateuch. It
contains early Jewish law.
Suleiman the Magnificent (465): Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire (r. 1520–1566) at the time total war (822): A war built on the full mobili-
of its greatest power. zation of soldiers, civilians, and technology
of the nations involved. The term also refers
Synod of Whitby (270): The meeting of
to a highly destructive war of ideologies.
churchmen and King Oswy of Northumbria
in 664 that led to the adoption of the Roman Treaty of Verdun (295): The treaty that, in 843,
brand of Christianity in England. split the Carolingian Empire into three parts;
its borders roughly outline modern western
Terror (620): The policy established under the European states.
direction of the Committee of Public Safety
triremes (TRY reems) (82): Greek wooden
during the French Revolution to arrest dissi-
warships rowed by 170 oarsmen sitting on
dents and execute opponents in order to
three levels and equipped with a battering
protect the republic from its enemies.
ram at the bow.
tetrarchy (213): The “rule by four,” consisting
troubadours/trobairitz (364): Male (trouba-
of two co-emperors and two assistant
dours) and female (trobairitz) vernacular
emperors/designated successors, initiated
poets in southern France in the twelfth and
by Diocletian to subdivide the ruling of the
early thirteenth centuries who sang of love,
Roman Empire into four regions.
longing, and courtesy.
Thatcher, Margaret (960): Prime minister of Truman Doctrine (904): The policy devised
Britain (1979–1990) who set a new tone by U.S. president Harry Truman to limit
for British politics by promoting neoliberal communism after World War II by counter-
economic policies and criticizing poor people, ing political crises with economic and mili-
union members, and racial minorities as tary aid.
worthless, even harmful citizens.
Twelve Tables (154): The first written Roman
theme (260): A military district in Byzantium. law code, enacted between 451 and 449 b.c.e.
The earliest themes were created in the sev-
Umayyad caliphate (oo MAH yuhd KAY
enth century and served mainly defensive
luhf ayt) (255): The caliphs (successors of
purposes.
Muhammad) who traced their ancestry to
Themistocles (thuh MIST uh kleez) (79): Umayyah, a member of Muhammad’s tribe.
Athens’s leader during the great Persian The dynasty lasted from 661 to 750.
invasion of Greece. United Nations (UN) (923): An organization
Theodora — See Justinian. set up in 1945 for collective security and for
Theodosius I (219): The Roman emperor the resolution of international conflicts
(r. 379–395) who made Christianity the state through both deliberation and the use of
religion by ending public sacrifices in the force.
traditional cults and closing their temples. In Urban II (332): The pope (r. 1088–1099)
395, he also divided the empire into western responsible for calling the First Crusade
and eastern halves to be ruled by his sons. in 1095.
urbanization (680): The growth of towns and and British settlers in the North American
cities due to the movement of people from colonies.
rural to urban areas, a trend that was Warsaw Pact (907): A security alliance of the
encouraged by the development of factories Soviet Union and its allies formed in 1955,
and railroads. in retaliation for NATO’s admittance of
Vatican II (925): A Catholic Council held West Germany.
between 1962 and 1965 to modernize some Weimar Republic (835): The parliamentary
aspects of church teachings (such as condem- republic established in 1919 in Germany to
nation of Jews), to update the liturgy, and replace the monarchy.
to promote cooperation among the faiths
welfare state (913): A system (developed on
(i.e., ecumenism).
both sides during the cold war) comprising
Visigoths (231): The name given to the bar- government-sponsored social programs to
barians whom Alaric united and led on a provide health care, family allowances, dis-
military campaign into the western Roman ability insurance, and pensions for veterans
Empire to establish a new kingdom; they and retired workers.
sacked Rome in 410.
wergild (234): Under Frankish law, the pay-
Voltaire (568): The pen name of François-
ment that a murderer had to make as com-
Marie Arouet (1694–1778), who was the most
pensation for the crime, to prevent feuds of
influential writer of the early Enlightenment.
revenge.
Walpole, Robert (559): The first, or “prime,”
Westernization (560): The effort, especially in
minister (1721–1742) of the House of Com-
Peter the Great’s Russia, to make society and
mons of Great Britain’s Parliament. Although
social customs resemble counterparts in
appointed initially by the king, through his
western Europe, especially France, Britain,
long period of leadership he effectively estab-
and the Dutch Republic.
lished the modern pattern of parliamentary
government. William, prince of Orange (519): Dutch ruler
war guilt clause (838): The part of the Treaty of who, with his Protestant wife, Mary (daughter
Versailles that assigned blame for World of James II), ruled England after the Glorious
War I to Germany. Revolution of 1688.
War of the Austrian Succession (564): The war wisdom literature (22): Texts giving instruc-
(1740–1748) over the succession to the tions for appropriate behavior.
Habsburg throne that pitted France and Zionism (803): A movement that began in the
Prussia against Austria and Britain and pro- late nineteenth century among European
voked continuing hostilities between French Jews to found a Jewish state.
Index
A note about the index:

Names of individuals appear in boldface.
Letters in parenthesis following pages refer to:
(i) illustrations, including photographs and artifacts
(f) figures, including charts and graphs
(m) maps
Aachen, 291, 293(i). See also defined, 505 by women, 841, 927, 953–954,
Aix-la-Chapelle Hobbes and, 520 953(i)
Abandonment. See Infant exposure Locke and, 520–521 World War I and, 828
Abbasid caliphate, 280, 285–286, Louis XIV and, 505, 506–514 Act of Supremacy (England, 1534),
295–296, 332 in Russia, 528–530 454
Abbesses, Merovingian, 269 Abstract painting, 793 Act of Union (Britain)
Abd al-Rahman I (caliph of Academies in 1707, 559
Córdoba), 287 in Athens, 116, 243 in 1801, 693
Abd al-Rahman III (caliph of in Enlightenment, 588 Adam, Robert, 589(i)
Córdoba), 288, 288(i) of Louis XIV, 508 Adam and Eve, 225
Abdul Hamid II (Ottoman sultan), Royal Academy of Sciences Adams, John, on French
809–810 (France), 532 Revolution, 633
Abelard, Peter, 349–350, 385 of Sciences (Russia), 560, 561 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 877
Abgar (Osrhoëne), 224(i) Achilles, 52 Addison, Joseph, 553
Abolitionism, 521, 579–580, 602, Acid rain, 987 Adenauer, Konrad, 910
673, 689–690. See also Slaves Acquired immunodeficiency Admass (mass advertising), 947
and slavery syndrome (AIDS), 964, Administration. See also
Abortion 989 Bureaucracy; Government;
in Byzantine Empire, 260 Acropolis (Athens), 85–86, 87(i). specific locations
in France, 843 See also Parthenon (Athens) of England, 305
in Nazi Germany and, 870 Actium, battle of, 177 of France, 616(m)
prevalence of, 785 Activism. See also specific of Russia, 715
Romania and, 967 movements Adrianople
in Soviet Union, 851–852 anticolonial, 864 battle of, 231
Abraham (Hebrew patriarch), antiglobalization, 986 Treaty of, 664
46–47 antiwar, 954 Adultery, 592
Absolutism citizen, 949, 952–954 Advancement of Learning, The
in Austria, 722 collective, 768–770 (Bacon), 495
Bodin and, 497 environmental, 987–988 Advertising
in Brandenburg-Prussia, 526 Irish, 771–772 admass (mass advertising), 947
in central and eastern Europe, in Poland, 965 culture and, 929, 930, 947
525–530 student, 952–953 Roman coins as, 178
I-1
I-2 Index
[ A ed i l es — A l l ia n ces
]
Aediles (Rome), 154 Agamemnon Albigensians, 369
Aegean Sea region, 27, 31(m), 34, 54, Schliemann on, 32 Alchemy, 499
82 vase painting of, 101, 101(i) Alcibiades, 106, 107
Aeneas, 183 Agincourt, battle of, 414 Alcohol and alcoholism, 682, 963
Aeneid, The (Virgil), 183 Agnosticism, of Sophists, 96 Alcuin, 293
Aeschylus, 101 Agora, in Athens, 85, 86(m) Aldrin, Edwin “Buzz,” 940
Affair of the Placards (France,1534), Agribusiness, 945, 952 Alemanni people, 233
452, 466 Agriculture. See also Farms and Alexander I (Russia)
Afghanistan farming; Irrigation; Land death of, 664
Alexander the Great in, 121 in Africa, 750 Holy Alliance and, 657
Greek philosophy and, 133 in ancient world, 4 Napoleon and, 649, 652
Russia and, 751 Black Death and, 413 Poland and, 667
Soviet Union and, 133, 963, 965, Byzantine, 259 reforms of, 650
980 Dutch, 488, 550 Alexander II (Russia)
Taliban in, 992 in early 19th century, 682–683 ascension to throne, 713
terrorists in, 993 economic activity and, 266 assassination of, 776, 777(i)
Africa. See also Egypt (ancient); Egyptian, 747 reforms of, 714, 716, 734
Imperialism; North Africa; Flemish, 550 Alexander III (Russia), 776
South Africa; specific locations genetic research in, 942, 945 Alexander VI (Pope), 444
c. 1890, 748(m) in Great Depression, 861, 863 Alexander the Great (Macedonia),
AIDS in, 989 Greek, 50, 55 113–114, 119, 120–122, 120(i),
Catholic discrimination in, 460 industrial innovation in, 756 121(m). See also Hellenistic
colonization in, 547, 690, in Mediterranean region, 34 world
745–750, 748(m), 754, 756, men in, 8 Alexandria, Egypt
803–804, 805(m) Mesopotamian, 13 arts in, 129
conflict and genocide in, 990 Minoan, 30 founding of, 121
decolonization in, 921–923, in Neolithic Revolution, 6–8 Jewish community in, 125
922(m) reforms in, 597 Neoplatonist school at, 243
economic development and, 990 revolution in, 550–551, 675 Rome and, 191
human movement from, 4–5 in Soviet Union, 903 Alexei (Russia, son of Peter the
immigrants from, 924, 973, 973(i) in western Europe, 313 Great), 562
imperialism in, 745–746, workers in, 551, 677, 678 Alexei I (Russia), 528–529
747–750, 756, 803–804, Ahriman (god), 46 Alexius I (Alexius Comnenus,
805(m), 810, 844, 990 Ahura Mazda (god), 45–46, 79(i) Byzantine Empire), 332, 334,
missionaries and, 754 Aïda (Verdi), 708(i), 731 338
slavery and, 444–445, 524, 542, AIDS. See Acquired Alfonso IX (Castile-León), 396
543, 656–657 immunodeficiency syndrome Alfonso X (Castile-León), 396
violence in, 749(i) Ai-Khanoum, Afghanistan, 133 Alfred the Great (Wessex),
white settlements in, 547 Airbus, 944 304–305, 304(m)
World War I and, 824, 827 Air force, Luftwaffe, 882 Algebra, 15
World War II and, 887, 888, Airline industry, international Algeria, 921(i), 924
889(m) ventures in, 944 France and, 682, 690, 712, 731, 923
Africa (Carriera), 549(i) Airplanes World War II and, 888, 892
African Americans, 918 World War I and, 834 Ali (caliph), 254–255, 287
literature by, 1001, 1002, 1002(i) World War II and, 881 Allah, 251
music and, 851 Aix-la-Chapelle. See also Aachen Alliances. See also Allies; specific
rights for, 725, 927, 950–951 Peace of (1748), 564 alliances
as U.S. president, 993 Treaty of, 511 Athenian, 81, 82
violence after King’s death, 954 Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, Egypt), in cold war, 907, 908(m), 919,
African people 25 932(m)
European attitudes toward, Akhmatova, Anna, 915 against France, 512
749–750 Akkadian Empire, 12–13, 12(m) in Seven Years’ War, 593–594,
in North American colonies, Alaric (Visigoth), 231 593(m)
491 Albania, 813 against Sparta, 118
in World War I, 829 Albanian Kosovars, 976 Spartan, 81
Afterlife Albert (England), 723, 724, 727, 736 before World War I, 810–813
Egyptian belief in, 2(i), 3, 21–22 Alberti, Leon Battista, 424, 424(i) World War I and, 822–824, 840
Paleolithic, 5 Albigensian Crusade, 374, 374(m) before World War II, 877, 881
[ A l l i es — A ra b s a n d A ra b w o rl d
] Index I-3
Allies Anatolia. See also Turkey Antiochus IV (Seleucids), 138, 194

at Congress of Vienna, 654–657 in 17th century, 537(m) Anti-Semitism. See also Holocaust;
in Crimean War, 712(m) Attalids in, 123(m), 124 Jews and Judaism; Nazis and
in Napoleonic wars, 652–653 civilization in, 4 Nazism
Roman, 165 Egypt and, 24 in Austria-Hungary, 801
World War I and, 822, 823–824, Greece and, 118–119 in Dreyfus Affair, 799–800
825, 828, 832, 834, 836 Hellenistic Greeks and, 123 in France, 772, 799–800
World War II and, 883, 886, 887, Hittites and, 26, 27–28 Freud and, 790(i)
888–889, 889(m), 891–892, languages in, 135 in Germany, 800, 867
901, 904, 909 Ottomans in, 417 in Great Depression, 862
All Quiet on the Western Front Seljuk Turks in, 342(m) of Hitler, 854, 870
(Remarque), 850, 869 Anatomy, 495 in Hungary, 874
Almourol Castle, 373(i) Anaximander, 72 in mass politics, 799–803
Alphabets. See also Languages; al-Andalus (Spain). See also Spain in Poland-Lithuania, 525
Writing Charlemagne and, 291 in Russia, 763, 799, 977
Coptic, 19(i) Muslims in, 287, 288, 371(m) in Soviet Union, 956
Cyrillic, 284 Angevin dynasty (England), 355 World War I and, 829
Latin, 864 Angles, 233 World War II and, 883–886, 901
Mesopotamian, 15 Anglican church (Church of Antiseptics, 565, 727
Phoenician, 51 England). See Church of Antislavery movement, 579–580,
al-Qaeda organization, 990, 993 England 689–690
Alsace Anglo-Saxon (Old English) Antiwar sentiment, in Vietnam War,
France and, 484, 837 language, 272, 304–305 954, 957
Germany and, 722, 756 Anglo-Saxon people and culture Anti-Western sentiment, Islamic
World War I and, 837 in Britain, 270, 271, 339–340, 357 fundamentalist, 990
Amar, Jules, 821, 822, 827, 840, 850 Roman Empire and, 233 Antoninus Pius (Rome), 186
Ambrose, 224, 242 Angola, 547 Antony (Christian ascetic), 226
Americanization, of culture, 925 Animals. See also Hunting Antony, Mark (Rome), 128,
American Revolution. See American domestication of, 4 176–177, 188(m)
War of Independence human treatment of, 590, 688 Antwerp, Spanish sack of, 472(i),
American Temperance Society, 687 Anjou, France and, 360 473
American War of Independence, Ankara, Turkey, 864 Apartheid, 994
521, 594, 598, 601–602, 608 Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 775 Aphrodite (god), 58, 130–131,
Americas. See also Exploration; New Annals (Ennius), 160 130(i)
World; Portugal; Spain; specific Annam, 751 Apocalyptism, 138, 194, 197
locations Anne (England), 559 Apollo (god), 58
civilization in, 4 Anne of Austria, 506, 507 oracle at Delphi of, 133
colonies in, 491–492, 492(m), Anschluss (merger), 878–879 Apollonis (Pergamum), 127
524–525, 546–548 Anselm (Saint), 331, 340 Apostate, 219
Dutch trade with, 560 Antarctica, 579 Apostles, 194–195
settlement of, 546 Anthony, Susan B., 796 Apostolic succession, 198
slavery in, 445, 524 Anthropology, in postindustrial Appeasement, 879–880
slave trade and, 445, 544–547, society, 948 Appliances. See Consumer goods
544(f), 545(f) Anticlericalism, 652 Apprentices, in guilds, 318, 552
travel to, 568 Anticommunism April Theses (Lenin), 831
Amerindians. See Native Americans of Hitler and Mussolini, 876 Apuleius (Rome), 191, 201
Amiens, Treaty of, 648 of McCarthy, 911 Aqueducts, Roman, 157(i)
Amnesty, after Peloponnesian War, Anti-Corn Law League (England), Arabic language, 288
107 694 Arabic numerals, 561
Amorites, in Ur III kingdom, 13 Antifascism, in 1930s, 873, 877–878 Arab-Israeli wars (1967, 1973), 958,
Amritsar massacre (1919), 843 Antigone (Sophocles), 101–102 958(m)
Amsterdam, 479, 522–523, 582, 608 Antigonus (Hellenistic king), 123, Arabs and Arab world. See also
Amun (Amen, god), 24 1356 Caliphs and caliphates; Islam;
Amun-Re (god), cult of, 25 Anti-immigrant sentiment, 998 Muhammad; specific leaders
Anabaptists, 455–457, 457(i) Antioch, Syria and locations
Anacletus, 398(i) First Crusade and, 334 in Algeria, 923
Anarchists and anarchism, 732, 770, Rome and, 191 Palestine and, 920, 920(m)
793, 796 Antiochus I (Seleucids), 124 Spain and, 273
I-4 Index
[ A ra go n — A ss e m b l i es
]
Aragon, 371, 372, 372(m), 430 Aristotle, 56, 114, 118 in Venice, 433–434, 434(i)
Aramaeans, 43 Alexander the Great and, 122 vernacular culture and, 364–367
Aramaic language, 43 Christianization of, 378(i) World War II and, 892–893, 893(i)
Arawak Indians, 444 Metaphysics, 378(i), 379 Artemia (mother of Nicetius), 269
Arc de Triomphe, 642 scholastics and, 385–386, 493 Artemis (god), 58
Archaic Age (Greece). See also translations of, 349n Arthur (legendary English king),
Greece (ancient); specific Arius, 222–223 367, 387
locations Armada (Spain), 480, 480(m) Arthur Tudor, 454
city-state in, 64–70 Armed forces. See Military; Navies; Articles of Confederation (U.S.), 601
Greece architecture and, 56 Soldiers Artisans, 552, 730, 763
slavery in, 62 Armenia, Christianity in, 223 Art nouveau, 793–794
Archilochus of Paros, 71 Armenian people, 807 Arts and crafts style, 766
Archimedes of Syracuse, 133–134 Armistice, of 1918, 821, 834, 836 Aryans
Architecture. See also Housing; Arms and armaments. See Weapons in Nazi Germany, 868, 869, 870,
specific locations Arms race 883
baroque, 498 in cold war, 965 unification of, 878–879
Bauhaus and, 850–851 before World War I, 810, 813–814 Asceticism, Christian, 225, 226. See
Egyptian, 16 Armstrong, Louis, 851 also Monasticism and
Gothic, 346(i), 347–348, 351, Armstrong, Neil, 940 monasteries; Monks
352–354 Arouet, François-Marie. See Asclepius (god), 136, 137(i), 148
Greek, 56, 85–87, 87(i) Voltaire Ashoka (Afghanistan), 135
in Greek Dark Age, 50 Arsinoe II (Egypt), 126–127 Asia. See also specific locations
neoclassical, 588, 589(i) Art(s). See also Architecture; Drama; AIDS in, 989
postmodern, 1004, 1004(i) Renaissance; Sculpture; specific art influences from, 766–767, 849
Renaissance, 424 types cold war in, 918–919
Roman, 161, 178 in 1920s, 849–851 decolonization in, 918–919
Romanesque, 351–352, 352(i), in 1930s, 874 globalization and, 974, 999
353(i) in Age of Crisis, 497–499 Great Depression in, 863–864
Archons, 68, 69, 83, 84 Asian influence on, 766–767, 849 imperialism in, 730–731,
Arctic pack ice, melting of, 987 baroque, 498, 531(i), 532(i) 750–752, 750(m), 751(m), 804,
Areopagitica (Milton), 530 in Carolingian renaissance, 294, 806, 806(m)
Areopagus Council (Athens), 69, 83, 294(i) Japan and, 804, 806, 876
84 Christian, 195(i) missionaries in, 460–461
Ares (god), 58 classicism in, 531, 531(i), 532(i) Mongols in, 400–401, 401(m)
Aretê (excellence), 52, 54, 97, 124 in cold war, 930–931 nuclear tests in, 987
Argentina, 961 Dutch, 523(i) Russian expansion in, 712,
Argos, in anti-Spartan coalition, Egyptian, 22 729–730, 751, 751(m)
118 freedom and order in, 530–533 white settlements in, 547–548
Argument, Aristotle on, 118 Greek, 50, 51, 56, 70, 99–103 World War I and, 827
Arianism Greek influence on Roman, World War II and, 889, 890(m),
of Theodoric, 222–223, 233 160–161 891
of Visigoths, 272 Hellenistic, 129–131 Asia Minor
Ariosto, Ludovico, 462, 533 Louis XIV and, 508–509, 531 Rome and, 160, 166
Aristarchus, 134 Minoan, 32 Turks in, 332
Aristides (Athens), 81 modern, 792–794 Asian-Pacific nations, global gross
Aristocracy. See also Elites; Nobility; Mycenaean, 32 domestic product of, 993–994
specific locations in Nazi Germany, 869 Aspasia (Miletus), 92
after 1848 revolutions, 703 neoclassical, 588, 589(i) Assassinations. See also specific
in Athens, 69 politics and, 600, 793 individuals
Bodin on, 497 pop, 947–948, 947(i) by anarchists, 796
in Britain, 339, 761 postmodernism in, 1004 Assemblies. See also Councils
Carolingian, 295 realism in, 733–736, 735(i) entries; National Assembly
in France, 508, 614, 617, 626 in Renaissance, 423–428, 461–462 (France); specific locations
in Germany, 722 in Rome, 156, 160–161, 183–184 in Athens, 84, 94
in Merovingian society, 267–269 rustic styles in, 766 in France, 398
in Rome, 145 in Soviet bloc, 950, 1002–1003 in Germany, 722
special privileges of, 586–587 in Soviet Union, 866–867 in Rome, 155
Aristophanes, 95–96, 98, 103 state power and, 486(i) in Spain, 396
[ A ssembly of Notables — Auth oritarianism
] Index I-5
Assembly of Notables (France), 611 trade in, 115 Congress of Vienna and, 654, 656
Assembly of the Land (Russia), women in, 85, 115 Crimean War and, 712
528–529 Athletes. See also Sports dissent in, 663
Assignats (paper money), 616 male, 765 France and, 593, 617, 621, 648,
Association for the Taxation of women as, 235(i) 649, 712
Financial Transactions and Aid Atlantic Charter, 892 German Anschluss with, 878–879
to Citizens (ATTAC), 986 Atlantic Ocean region. See also in Great Depression, 874
Assyria, 13–14 Atlantic system; specific Habsburgs in, 485, 527–528
invasions of, 34 locations Hungary and, 528, 564(m)
Neo-Assyrian Empire and, 43 division between Portugal and iron industry in, 676
Astarte figurines, 49 Spain, 444 Italy and, 667, 700, 717, 719
Astell, Mary, 570 slave trade and, 603(m) Napoleon and, 640, 648, 649
Astrologia (Gole), 567(i) Atlantic revolutions, 608 Poland and, 630–631, 631(m)
Astrology, 499 Atlantic system Poland-Lithuania and, 563, 593
Astronauts, 940 settlement and, 546–548 Prussia and, 720–721
Astronomy slave trade in, 524, 542–548 Social Democratic Party in, 769
Hellenistic, 134, 136 trade and expansion in, 541 suppression of revolutionary
Mesopotamian, 15 Atomic bomb, 792, 891–892, 891(i), movements by, 663
Neo-Babylonian, 44 900, 904, 907, 911. See also War of the Polish Succession and,
revolution in, 493–495 Nuclear weapons 563
solar system and, 134, 941 Atomic theory, 96, 160, 792 World War I and, 814–815, 836,
universe and, 875, 941 ATTAC. See Association for the 837
Aswan Dam, 921(i) Taxation of Financial Austria-Hungary. See also Austria;
AT&T Building, 1004 Transactions and Aid to Hungary
Aten (god), cult of, 25 Citizens anti-Semitism in, 801
Athaulf (Visigoths), 234 Attalid kingdom, 123(m), 124 Balkan region and, 813
Atheism, 579, 623 Attila (Huns), 231 in Dual Alliance, 775
Athena (god), 57, 58, 86, 115(i), Attlee, Clement, 910 heir to throne assassinated in,
148 Auerstädt, battle at, 649 784
Athenagoras I (Patriarch), 323n Augsburg industry in, 757
Athenian Empire, 81–83 League of, 512 liberalism in, 774
Athens, 57. See also Greece Peace of (1555), 467, 473, 474, 482 monarchy in, 722–723, 723(m)
(ancient); Philosophy; specific Augustine (archbishop of nationalism in, 801
philosophers Canterbury), 270 in Three Emperors’ League, 773
in 5th century, 86(m) Augustine of Hippo (Saint), 221, in Triple Alliance, 775, 810
alliances of, 82 224–225, 274, 304 World War I and, 814–815,
architecture in, 85–87, 87(i) Augustinus (Jansen), 509 822–823, 830
citizenship in, 68 Augustus (Octavian, Rome), Austrian Empire. See also Austria;
civil war in, 78 170(m), 183(i) Austria-Hungary
coins of, 69, 115(i) death of, 185 1848 revolution in, 701–702
Delian League and, 82–83, 85 Egypt and, 128(i) industrialization in, 676–677
democracy in, 68–70, 83–85, 96 forum of, 178, 179(i) nationalism in, 691–692
in Greek Golden Age, 81–89 Pax Romana under, 176 War of the Austrian Succession
lifestyle in, 115–116 principate under, 177–178 and, 564
Long Walls in, 86(m), 105, 115, public buildings of, 178 Austrian Netherlands
115(m) in Second Triumvirate, 176–177 c. 1715, 558(m)
Macedonians and, 120 succession to, 184 agriculture in, 551
navy of, 78, 82(i), 83, 85, 119 title of, 177 Congress of Vienna and, 656
Peloponnesian War and, 78, Aung San Suu Kyi, 1000 France and, 621, 629
104–107, 105(m) Aurelian (Rome), 205 revolt in, 608, 609, 641
after Peloponnesian War, 114–116 Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration War of the Austrian Succession
Persian Wars and, 77, 78–79, 81 camp, 859, 885 and, 564
philosophy in, 71–73, 96–99, Austerlitz, battle of, 649 Authoritarianism
116–118 Australia, 579, 763, 913, 989 Bismarck and, 710
silver in, 115 Austrasia, 263(m), 269 Napoleon I and, 640
Sparta and, 77, 81, 85 Austria, 998. See also Austria- Napoleon III and, 710, 711
Thirty Tyrants in, 107 Hungary; Austrian Empire in Russia, 833
Tower of the Winds in, 132(i) Balkan region and, 811, 813 in Soviet Union, 851–852
I-6 Index
[ A uth o r it y — Belgium
]
Authority. See also Government; French expansion and, 634(m) Barcelona, bombing in, 879(i)
Political power superpowers and, 900, 957–959 Barnard, Christiaan, 942
clerical, 460 Thirty Years’ War and, 482–487 Barons (England), 340, 359, 396
growth of state, 486–487 War of the Spanish Succession Baroque arts, 498, 530–531, 531(i),
Hobbes on, 520 and, 556–557 588
Locke on, 520–521 after World War I, 844 Barter, in Sumer, 8
in Merovingian dynasty, 269 Baldwin of Flanders, 370 Barth, Karl, 875
Authors. See Literature; specific Balkan region, 975. See also specific Basil I (Byzantine Empire), 282
works and authors locations Basil II (Byzantine Empire), 284
Autobahn, 869 in 17th century, 537(m) Basil of Caesarea (“the Great”), 227
Automobiles, 755, 844, 959, 987 in c. 1878, 776(m) Basket case, use of term, 840
Smart car, 987, 988(i) in 1908–1914, 811–813, 812(m) Basques, 960, 960(m), 985
Avaris (Hyksos capital), 23 Bulgars in, 258, 259 Basset, Ralph, 358(i)
Avars, 257, 258, 259, 291 Byzantine Empire and, 258–259, Bastille (Paris), fall of, 612(i), 613–614
Avatar (movie), 1003 281(m), 283 Bastille Day (France), 873
Aviation. See Airplanes Germany and, 811 Bathing, 566, 727
Avicenna. See Ibn Sina (Avicenna) nationalism in, 664–665, 664(m), Battle of the Nations (1813), 653
Avignon papacy, 399, 410, 418 810, 811–812 Battles. See specific battles and wars
Axis powers, 882, 883, 886, 889(m), Ottomans in, 410, 417, 481, 528, Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre, 734
909 774, 775 Bauhaus, 850–851
Aztecs, 445 Roman Empire and, 214 Bavaria, 631(m)
Russia in, 774–775 Baxter, George, 704(i)
Baby boom, 946 World War I and, 828 Bayeux Tapestry, 339, 339(i)
Babylonia, 14 Balkan Wars, 813 Bayle, Pierre, 534, 566–567
collapse of, 34 Ballet, 794 Bay of Pigs invasion, 931
Hittites in, 28 Ballot Act (Britain, 1872), 771 Beatles, 928, 947
Israelites in, 48 Baltic region. See also specific Beat poets, 928
Neo-Babylonian Empire and, locations Beatrice of Burgundy, 362
43–44 balance of power in, 562 Beauharnais, Eugène de, 643
Babylonian captivity, of Roman cities and towns of, 373–374 Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin
Catholic Church, 399, 423 Dutch trade in, 560 Caron de, 600
Bacchus (god). See Dionysus (god) Great Northern War and, 562, Beauvoir, Simone de, 926
Bacon, Francis (scientist), 495 563(m) Beccaria, Cesare, 595, 661
Bacteria, 727, 942 Hanseatic League and, 429 Becket, Thomas, 358–359
Bactria independence in, 968(m), 977 Beckford, William, 546
Alexander the Great and, 122 Northern Crusades and, 373–374 Becquerel, Antoine, 792
Greeks in, 124 Soviet annexation of, 882 Bede (English monk), 271–272
Badr, battle of, 252 World War II and, 881, 888 Bedouins, 250–251
Bagatelle, battle at, 826(i) Balzac, Honoré de, 684–685 Beer Hall Putsch, 842, 854
Baghdad Bandung Convention, 923 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 660–661
Abbasid capital in, 280, 285–286 Bankruptcy, 486, 758 Beguines, 368–369, 369(i), 383
Seljuk Turks in, 332 Banks and banking Behn, Aphra (woman author), 534
Bahamas, Columbus in, 444 Bank of England, 560 Beijing, Tiananmen Square protests
Baht (Thai), 995 in Dutch Republic, 608 in, 965–966, 999
Bailouts, in global economic crisis, economic crisis (2008–) and, Béla III (Hungary), 363
995(i) 995(i), 996 Belarus, Russia and, 981
Baker, Josephine, 851 EU, 982 Belgium. See also Austrian
Baker Arent Oostward and His Wife, in France, 557, 642 Netherlands
The (Steen), 523(i) Fugger family and, 465–466 birthrate in, 946
Bakunin, Mikhail, 732 in Germany, 774 after Charlemagne, 295
Baku region, 807 Baptism, Christian, 194, 455 cultural differences in, 985
Balance of power. See also Baptists, 516 decolonization and, 923
Diplomacy Barbados, 524 in ECSC, 912
1750–1775, 593 Barbarians. See also specific groups German invasion of, 881
Crimean War and, 712 Roman Empire and, 212, 229–235 imperialism of, 747, 749(i)
diplomacy and, 564–565 society of, 230–235 independence and, 609, 667
in eastern Europe, 562 Barbarossa. See Frederick I Napoleon and, 653
economic, 490–492 Barbarossa (Germany) railroads in, 676
[ B e lgrad e — B o lsh ev ik Revo l ut io n
] Index I-7
revolt in, 667 Big bang theory, 941 Kulturkampf and, 737
urbanization in, 763 Big business, 953 power politics and, 709, 773–774
voting rights in, 772 “Big Three,” at Yalta (1945), 892 Triple Alliance and, 810
war reparations for, 838 Bildung (importance of education), Bithynia, king of, 131
World War I and, 815, 822, 825, 796 Black and Tans, 843
839 Bill of Rights Black codes, 524
Belgrade, 564 in England, 1689, 519 Black Death, 409–413, 411(m). See
Bellini, Gentile, 408(i), 409, 433 in United States, 1791, 602 also Plague
Beloved (Morrison), 1001 bin Laden, Osama, 990, 993 Black-figure style, of painting, 40(i)
Ben Bella, Ahmed (Syria), 921(i) Biology Black monks, 329–330
Benedictines and Benedictine rule, Darwin and, 737–738 Black Panthers, 952
228, 321–322, 329 research on reproduction, 738, Black power, 952
Benedict of Nursia (Saint), 228 942–943 Black Sea region, 713
Benevento, duchy of, 273, 274 revolution in, 942 Greek settlements in, 56
Bentham, Jeremy, 694 Birth, out of wedlock, 490, 591, 681 Black Shirts (Italy), 852, 853, 853(i)
Benz, Karl, 755 Birth control, 942, 948, 994 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon),
Berbers, in Africa, 244(m) in 17th century, 490 927
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, in early 19th century, 682 Blanc, Louis, 696
926 dissemination of information on, Blanche of Castile, 393, 394(i)
Berlin 764, 785 Blenheim, battle of, 557
airlift in, 907, 907(m) France and, 843 Blitz (battle of Britain), 882
blockade of, 906–907, 907(m) Great Depression and, 862 Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), 881, 886
cold war in, 906–907 in Nazi Germany, 870 Blockade
Congress of, 775 Romania and, 967 of Berlin, 906–907, 907(m)
expansion of, 773, 773(m) in Rome, 193 in Cuban missile crisis, 931
population growth in, 552 in Soviet Union, 851–852, 866 in World War I, 825
postmodern architecture in, 1004, Birth-control pill, 942–943, 953 Blood libel, 384
1004(i) Birth of the Virgin (Giotto), 391(i) Blood pressure, Hellenistic medicine
reuniting of, 966 Birth of Venus, The (Botticelli), 425, and, 134
uprising in, 700, 701 426(i) Blood sports, 688
World War II and, 889 Birthrate Bloody Sunday
Berlin conference (1884–1885), 749, in 1960s and 1970s, 946 in Northern Ireland, 960, 960(m)
804 decline in, 784, 785, 913, 946 in Russia (1905), 807
Berlin Wall, 907(m), 925, 931, 950, in eastern bloc, 914 Blue-collar workers, 944
966 in Great Depression, 860, 862 “Blue Rider” artists, 793
Bernadette (Saint), 737 rise in, 927 Blues (faction), 237, 240
Bernard (Franks), 279 in Rome, 180–181, 191–192 Blum, Léon, 873
Bernard, Jean Frédéric, 569(i) Soviet, 866, 903 Bodin, Jean, 496–497, 499, 570
Bernard of Clairvaux (St. Bernard), U.S. baby boom and, 946 Boers, 749
330, 336, 356–357 World War II and, 888, 913 Boer War, 803–804, 813
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 530–531, Biscop, Benedict (England), 271 Bohemia
531(i) Bishops (Christian), 198–199, 221 Christianity in, 308
Berthold (Franciscan preacher), of Alexandria, 223 Habsburgs and, 482, 526, 527, 528
382 Byzantine, 260 in Holy Roman Empire, 428
“Best circles,” upper classes as, German, 307 Hus and, 420, 421
761–762 medieval, 303 industry in, 757
Betrothed, The (Manzoni), 661 monasteries and, 228–229 official language in, 774
Bible power of, 267, 268 Peace of Westphalia and, 485
Christian New Testament, 194, 196 of Rome, 221, 223 political formations in, 429
Darwin and, 737, 738 in Spain, 272–273 Thirty Years’ War and, 483
Enlightenment challenges to, 567 Bismarck, Otto von, 957 Boleslaw the Brave (Poland), 308
Erasmus and, 449 Africa and, 747 Boleyn, Anne, 454, 466
Hebrew Old Testament, 43, authoritarianism, 710 Bolívar, Simón, 665, 665(i)
46–47, 49–50, 138, 196 Berlin conference and, 749 Bolivia, 665
Latin, 293, 448, 449, 460 Congress of Berlin and, 775 Bollywood films, 999, 1003
translations of, 458, 458(i) dismissal of, 795 Bologna, university in, 348, 349, 351
Bicycle, 755, 765, 987 German unification and, 705, Bolshevik Revolution (Russia), 831,
Bicycle Thief, The (movie), 930 719–722 916
I-8 Index
[ Bolsh ev iks — Britain
]
Bolsheviks, 795, 831–832, 834, 836, Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne (Bishop), China and, 690
848, 851 509, 567 Christianity in, 270–272
Bombs and bombings. See also Boston Tea Party, 601 colonies of, 546, 603(m), 690, 864,
Atomic bomb; Nuclear weapons Botticelli, Sandro, 425, 426(i), 427, 923
anarchist, 770, 796 435 Common Market and, 913, 949
in Ireland, 960 Boucher, François, 554(i) Congress of Vienna and, 654, 655,
NATO, 976 Boudica (Britain), 186 656
of Pearl Harbor, 883 Boulanger, Georges, 772 Crimean War and, 712–713
in Spanish Civil War, 878, 879(i) Boulton, Matthew, 674 decolonization and, 918, 922–923
terrorist, 992 Boundaries. See also Frontiers Dutch and, 518, 523, 557, 608
in Vietnam, 952 of Egypt, 23 education in, 729, 946
World War I and, 824 of Roman Empire, 240 Egypt and, 747, 811, 920–921
World War II and, 883, 888, Boundaries. See also Borders enclosure and, 551
890–891, 891(i), 901 Bourbon dynasty, in France, 474, Enlightenment and, 582
Bomb shelter, 931 653, 655, 658, 669(m) in Entente Cordiale, 811
Bonald, Louis de, 657 Bourgeoisie, 587, 696. See also foreigners in, 960–961, 984–985
Bonaparte family. See also Napoleon Middle class formation of Great Britain, 559
I Bonaparte; Napoleon III Bourges, cathedral of, 389(i) France and, 621
Caroline, 643 Bouvines, battle of, 359 German occupation by, 892, 906,
Jerome, 649 Bové, José, 986 907(m)
Joseph, 643, 651, 653 Boxer Uprising (China), 808, 809(i) government of, 910
Louis, 643, 650 Boys. See also Men in Great Depression, 861, 872–873
Bonhomme, Jacques (name for Athenian, 94–95 Hitler and, 882, 883
peasants), 416 Spartan, 65–66 imperialism by, 730, 747,
Boniface (Bishop), 272, 290 Bracciolinus, Poggius, 422 749–750, 752, 843, 844
Boniface VIII (Pope), 395, 397–399 Bradbury, Ray, 930 India and, 809
Book of Common Prayer Brahe, Tycho, 494, 499 industrialization in, 674–675, 755,
(Anglican), 517, 518 Brain drain, 945, 956, 979–980 756
Book of Hours, 419, 420(i) Brandenburg, 485, 526 Iraq War and, 993
Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Brandenburg-Prussia, 526, 527(m). Ireland and, 693, 724, 798, 830,
(Kundera), 956 See also Prussia 843, 960
Book of Psalms (Psalter), 260 Brandt, Willy, 949 liberalism in, 694, 798
Book of the Dead (Egypt), 2(i), 26 Braque, Georges, 793 Liberal Party in, 771
Book of the New Moral World, The Brasidas (Sparta), 106 manufacturing in, 676–677
(Owen), 695 Braun, Eva, 889 Monroe Doctrine and, 666
Books. See also Literature; specific Brazil, 990, 994 Napoleon and, 640–641, 648–649,
works and authors Napoleon and, 651 650, 652
burning by Nazis, 869 Portugal and, 444 navy of, 594, 648–649, 813–814
for children, 590 slavery in, 445, 542, 657, 690 political participation in, 771–772
in Christian Britain, 271 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 831 poor laws in, 688
consumer revolution and, 553 Brethren of the Common Life, 419, Prussia and, 593
in Enlightenment, 575, 582–583, 448–449 reforms in, 723–724
583(f), 589–590 Bretons, 985 religious revival in, 658
in France, 582–583 Brezhnev, Leonid, 950 rise of, 560
in late Roman Empire, 242–243, Brezhnev Doctrine, 956, 966 Rome and, 185, 187, 191
242(i) Britain. See also England; Ireland; St. Domingue and, 632
novels, 534, 556, 684–686 Scotland; specific leaders Scotland and, 985
printing press and, 447–448, agriculture in, 550–551 slave trade and, 543, 656, 689
447(i) American Revolution and, southern Africa and, 749–750
Bordeaux, 413 601–602 Suez Canal and, 921
Borders. See also Boundaries; Anglo-Saxons in, 233, 270 suffragists in, 796–797
Frontiers Balkan region and, 774–775 terrorism in London and, 993
Common Market and, 981–982 banking in, 560 Thatcher in, 957, 960–962
globalization and, 998 battle of, 882, 883 urbanization in, 680–681, 763
Borodino, battle at, 652 Boer War and, 803–804 Vikings and, 297–298
Bosnia, 976 British Isles, 270(m) voting rights in, 668, 724
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 774, 775, 811, Canada and, 726 War of the Austrian Succession
814, 975 Chartism in, 697, 702–703 and, 564
[ B r ita i n — Cal v i n
] Index I-9
water in, 680–681 Soviet, 852, 865, 963 Russia and, 283–285
welfare state and, 913, 914 Thirty Years’ War and, 487 scholars in, 289
World War I and, 815, 822, Burgundian people, 233 Seljuk Turks and, 332
823–824, 825, 826, 836, 838, Burgundy use of term, 250
843 in 15th century, 430–431 warfare in, 257–259
World War II and, 881, 882, 889, duchy of, 414–415 women in, 260
895 in Frankish kingdom, 269 Byzantium (Constantinople), 250.
after World War II, 900, 910 Germany and, 362 See also Byzantine Empire;
British Commonwealth, 824, 913 Merovingians and, 263(m) Constantinople
British East Africa, 922–923 Philip II (Spain) and, 467
British East India Company, 546, Burials Cabet, Étienne, 696
690, 730 catacombs for, 195(i) Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The
Brittany, 985 in Crete, 30 (movie), 848
Broken Eggs (Greuze), 591(i) in Egypt, 26 Cable News Network (CNN), 965
Brontë, Charlotte, 685 Etruscan, 152(i) Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 444
Bronze, 12, 51 in Greece, 33 Cádiz, 444
Bronze Age, 12, 31, 33 at Mycenae, 32 Caesar, Julius (Rome), 163, 166(i),
Brown, Louise, 943, 943(i) Paleolithic, 5 167–169, 176
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Burke, Edmund, 657 Caesarion (Cleopatra’s son), 128(i)
683 Burma, 750, 750(m), 883 Cafés, 549
Brown Shirts (Germany), 842 Burschenschaften (student societies), Cage, John, 948
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 663 Cairo, 747
927 Bush, George W., 993 Calas, Jean, 579
Bruno, Giordano, 493 Business. See also Commerce; Trade Calculus, 532
Bruno of Cologne, 330 in 1870s and 1880s, 758–759 Calcutta, 678
Brunswick, Charles William in Canaan, 15 Calendar
Ferdinand (duke of), 618 commercial revolution and, in Egypt, 25
Brussels, Common Market in, 913 314–321 in French Republic, 623
Brutus, Marcus Junius, 169, 169(i) forms of, 318 Gregorian, 561, 830
Bubonic plague. See Black Death; in France, 644–645, 757 Islamic, 252
Plague in Germany, 759 Julian, 561n, 830n
Buccaneers, 547 globalization and, 974, 984, 985, Calico, from India, 548
Budapest, 801 998–999 Calicut, India, 443
Buddha, Greek-style, 135(i) in Great Depression, 860–861 California, 724
Buddhism, 135 multinational corporations and, Caligula (Rome), 185
Building. See also Architecture; 944 Caliphs and caliphates (Islamic). See
specific buildings revolution in, 759–761 also specific locations and
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1002 temporary workers for, 925 individuals
Bulgaria, 968(m), 981, 984 Byron, George Gordon (Lord), 660, Abbasid, 280, 285–286, 295–296,
Balkan region and, 812, 813 664 392
Byzantines and, 280, 283, 284 Byzantine Empire. See also Eastern of Córdoba, 288
migration from, 841 Roman Empire dissolution of, 289
Ottoman Empire and, 774 in c. 600, 258(m) dual roles of, 250
Russia and, 774 in 1025, 281(m) as successors to Muhammad,
Soviets and, 892, 904 in 12th century, 364 254–255
World War II and, 882, 888 in c. 1215, 375(m) Umayyad, 251(i), 254–255, 256
Bulgarians, nationalism of, 809 Comnenian dynasty in, 338 Call centers, 999
Bulgars, 257, 258, 259 dynatoi in, 283, 286, 332 Calvin, John, and Calvinism. See
Bulls (papal). See Papal bulls eastern Roman Empire as, 236 also Puritanism
Bundesrat (Germany), 722 emperors in, 364 in c. 1648, 501(m)
Burden, The (Daumier), 735(i) fall of, 409 in France, 466, 474–476, 510, 579
Bureaucracy, 1005 government in, 259–260, 364 in Germany, 526
Byzantine, 259 icons and iconoclasm in, 260–262 in Netherlands, 478
of EU, 984 Macedonian renaissance in, 280, Peace of Augsburg and, 467, 474,
expansion of, 727–728 282–283, 282(i) 482
of Louis XIV, 510–511 Muslims in, 253, 254 Peace of Westphalia and, 485
Roman, 185, 189 religion in, 260–262 religious reform and, 452–453
Russian, 828 Roman Catholicism and, 274 in Scotland, 467, 480
I-10 Index
[ Camb o d ia — Central Eu ro p e
]
Cambodia, 751, 919, 957 Caroline minuscule, 294 Cathedrals. See also specific
Cambridge University, 496, 729 Carolingian Empire cathedrals
Cameroon, 747, 804, 838 capital at Aachen, 291, 293(i) Gothic, 346(i), 347–348, 351,
Camus, Albert, 926 economy in, 295–297 354(i), 389, 390(i), 424
Canaan (Palestine), 15, 47, 48, 49(i) end of, 305 schools in, 348
Canada, 913 establishment of, 269 at Trier, 263
cession to Britain, 558(m), 594 expansion of, 292(m) Catherine II (the Great, Russia)
French, 446, 491, 511 invasions of, 297–299 Enlightenment and, 650
NAFTA and, 981 local rule after, 299–308 law code reforms and, 595
self-determination for, 690 monarchs, 289, 291–293, 294–295 nobility and, 587
United States and, 726 rise of, 290 Peter III and, 594
World War II and, 889 Roman Catholicism and, 290 Poland and, 594(i), 609, 631
Canals Carolingian renaissance, 289–290, portrait of, 574(i)
European food distribution and, 293–294 Pugachev uprising and, 599
682 Carpaccio, Vittore, 434(i) Voltaire and, 575, 592
in Mesopotamia, 8 Carpathian Mountains, 826 Catherine de Médicis, 474
Suez, 712, 731, 747, 888, 921 Carrier, Jean-Baptiste, 625, 627 Catherine of Alexandria, 227(i)
Cancino, Fernandez Luis, 665(i) Carriera, Rosalba, 549(i) Catherine of Aragon, 454
Cannae, battle at, 158 Cars. See Automobiles Catholicism. See Roman Catholicism
Cannons, 416 Carson, Rachel, 987 Catholic League, 475
Canon (church) law, reforms of, 328 Cartels, 759 Cato, Marcus Porcius, 147, 159, 160
Canon of Medicine (Ibn Sina), 289 Carthage Cavaliers (England), 515
Canossa, Investiture Conflict and, Phoenicians in, 56, 57(m) Cavendish, Margaret, 532–533
325, 326(i) Punic Wars and, 158–160 Cavour, Camillo di, 709, 717, 719
Cantons, Swiss, 629 Rome and, 158–160 Ceauçescu, Nicolae, 967
Cape Colony, 803 Syracuse and, 81 Celibacy, Christian clerical, 199, 328,
Cape Horn, 443(m) Carthusian order, 330 350, 368, 459
Cape of Good Hope, 443, 547 Cartwright, Edmund, 674 Celtic peoples. See also Gauls (Celts)
Capetian dynasty (France), 305–306, Casino Royale (Fleming), 930 Anglo-Saxons and, 233
374 Cassatt, Mary, 767, 767(i) in Britain, 270
Capital cities, 726. See also specific Cassiodorus, 236 Censors (Rome), 155
locations Castellans, 302, 303 Censorship
Capital-intensive industry, 758 Castiglione, Baldassare, 462 by Catholic Church, 459
Capitalism Castile, 371, 372, 372(m), 396, 430 in France, 508, 568, 611, 642, 645,
Marxists on, 770 Castile-León, cortes of, 396 667
medieval business forms and, Castle, The (Kafka), 850 in German states, 448, 664
318 Castlereagh, Robert, 654–655, 657 in Nazi Germany, 868, 869
Capitalists, 695 Castles, 301–302, 314–315, 316 in Russia, 807
Caporetto, battle at, 834 Castro, Fidel, 931 in Soviet bloc, 915
Caracalla (Rome), 203, 203(i), 204 Casualties in World War II, 887
Caravels, 443 in Afghanistan, 963 Census
Carbonari, 651, 662, 663 in Chechnya, 981 Domesday survey as, 340
Cardinals, papacy and, 418 in Crimean War, 713 Italian catasto as, 435
Caribbean region. See also specific in Napoleonic wars, 652, 654 routinization of, 727
locations in Seven Years’ War, 594 Central America, 524, 994. See also
colonization of, 491, 492, 492(m), in War of the Spanish Succession, Americas; Latin America;
603(m), 608, 631–633, 648, 557 specific locations
675, 678, 689 in World War I, 821, 823(m), 824, Central Asia. See also Asia; specific
French in, 631–633, 648 825, 826, 834 locations
immigrants to Europe from, 923, in World War II, 881, 883, 886, Muslims in, 975
924(i) 891, 892, 894(m), 903 Central Europe, 900. See also
pirates (buccaneers) in, 547 Catacombs, Christian, 195(i) Europe; specific locations
slavery in, 446, 492, 524, 543, Çatalhöyük, housing at, 7(i) 1848 revolutions in, 700–702
545–546 Catallus (Roman poet), 161 absolutism in, 525–530
Carib people, 444, 492, 547 Catalonia, 483 in Great Depression, 874
Carlsbad Decrees (1819), 664 Catasto (Italian census), 435 Hitler and, 878–881
Carnegie, Andrew, 757 Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of, 464 Jews in, 802
Carnival, 536 Cathars, 369, 374 monarchies in, 306–308
[ Central Eu ro p e — Christ ian humanism
] Index I-11
Peace of Augsburg in, 467 Schmalkaldic League and, 467 of middle and upper classes, 592,
power politics in, 773–777 wealth of, 461 759
Thirty Years’ War in, 482–487, welfare tax imposed by, 459 mortality of, 490
485(m), 488 Charles VI (Holy Roman Empire), in Nazi Germany, 869
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 564 in postindustrial society,
930, 931 Charles VII (France), 414 946–947
Centralization Charles IX (France), 474, 475, 477 in Romania, 967
in England, 305 Charles X (France), 666 in Rome, 148
by Napoleon, 642 Charles Albert (Piedmont- sexuality of, 592, 789
Central Powers (World War I), Sardinia), 663, 700 Soviet Union and, 963
822–823, 828, 830, 834 Charles Martel (Franks), 290 upper class, 761, 762
Central Short Time Committee Charles of Anjou, 393 welfare state and, 913, 914, 914(i)
(Britain), 680 Charles the Bald (Carolingians), working class, 687, 764
Centuriate Assembly (Rome), 155 278(i), 279, 295 World War II and, 887
Ceramics, Greek, 50, 51 Charles the Bold, 415, 430, 431 Chile, 446, 965, 995
Cervantes, Miguel de, 480, 555 Charles the Great. See Charlemagne China
Cézanne, Paul, 792 Charles the Simple (Frankish king), Boxer Uprising in, 808, 809(i)
CFCs. See Chlorofluorocarbons 298 civilization in, 4
Chaeronea, battle of, 120 Charter 77 (Czechoslovakia), 966 Communists in, 911, 918, 957
Chalcedon, Council of, 223–224, Charter of the Nobility (Russia), 587, economy in, 994, 1006(m)
241 599 European imperialism in, 730,
Chaldeans, 43–44 Chartism, 697, 702–703 731
Chamberlain, Neville, 880 Chartres cathedral, 346(i), 347–348, foreigners in, 547
Chamber of Deputies (France), 658, 354(i), 389 Japan and, 804, 808, 876
772, 873 Chastity, Augustine on, 225. See also missionaries in, 547, 730, 731, 808
Chamber of Peers (France), 658 Celibacy Mongols in, 400–401, 401(m)
Champagne, France, fairs in, 314 Chateaubriand, François-René de, Nixon in, 957–958
Chansons de geste, 366–367 645–646 opium in, 690, 690(m), 691
Chaplin, Charlie, 874 Châtelet, Émilie du, 577 pollution from, 988
Chariots Chávez, César, 952 population growth in, 550
Byzantine, 237 Chechnya, 980–981, 980(i), 985 resistance to colonialism in, 808
Hittite, 28 Cheka (secret police), 833 revolution in (1949), 911, 918,
Mycenaean, 33–34 Chelmno concentration camp, 885 957
Roman, 174(i) Chernobyl catastrophe (1986), 964, Russia and, 751, 981
Charity(ies), 459, 590, 687, 688, 764, 986 Soviet Union and, 938, 949, 957
985–986 Chevet (apse), in churches, 352 Tiananmen Square protests in
Charlemagne (Frankish king) Chiefdoms, barbarian, 230 (1989), 965–966, 999
cultural renaissance and, 289–290, Childbearing as U.S. creditor, 994
293–294 in Greece, 92 Vietnam and, 952
empire of, 289–290, 291–294 in Rome, 192(i), 193 World War II and, 884
Harun al-Rashid and, 285 Childbirth Chingiz (Genghis) Khan, 400
Charles I (England), 514–515, 516, medicine and, 727, 943 Chirac, Jacques, 962
619 postponement of, 682 Chivalry, 367, 416
Charles II (England), 518, 520 risks of, 490 Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 987
Charles II (Spain), 512 in Sweden, 872 Cholera, 681, 681(m), 727
Charles IV (Spain), 651, 652 test-tube babies and, 943, 943(i) Chopin, Frédéric, 686
Charles V (Holy Roman Empire, Child labor, 678, 679–680, 679(i), Choricius (rhetoric professor),
Charles I of Spain) 703 243
Catherine of Aragon and, 454 Children. See also Child labor; Chosen people, 47
colonies inherited by Philip II Education; Infant exposure Chosroes II (Sasanid), 257
from, 477 in concentration camps, 885, Christ. See also Jesus (Christ)
Diet of Worms and, 451 885(i) use of term, 194
Erasmus and, 449 in eastern Europe, 989 Christian IV (Denmark), 482
Fugger family and, 466 government support for, 787, Christian Bible. See Bible
Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman wars 951 Christian Democrats, in Italy, 910,
and, 463(i), 464, 465 in Great Depression, 862 960
New Spain and, 445 illegitimate, 681 Christian humanism, 448–450, 451,
resignation of, 467 of immigrants, 925 454
I-12 Index
[ C h r ist ian it y — C i v i l iz at i o n ( s )
]
Christianity. See also Bible; Churchill, Winston, 761, 882, 892, religious orders in, 368–370
Crusades; Great Schism; Jesus 904, 910 in Rome, 179–181, 180(i)
(Christ); specific groups Church of England (Anglican sanitation and health in, 565,
in Americas, 441 Church) 680–681
Arian, 222–223, 233 Charles I and, 514, 515 social life in, 551–554
in Britain, 270–272 under Elizabeth I, 466, 479–480 technopoles and, 950
Byzantines and, 283 on family limitation, 785 after World War II, 901
in China, 730, 731, 808 Henry VIII and, 453–454 Citizen initiatives (political tactic),
of Clovis, 234 Ireland and, 798 987
competing beliefs about, 221–226 Puritans and, 479 Citizens and citizenship. See also
Constantine and, 211–212 Test Act and, 518 Democracy; Voting and voting
conversion to, 196, 211, 217, 218, Wesley and, 584–585, 658 rights
441 Church of the Holy Wisdom. See in Athens, 68, 83, 85
Coptic, 223 Hagia Sophia global, 973(i)
deist criticisms of, 579 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency in Greece, 42, 59–60, 62
in Denmark, 298 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 242, 421, 422 Jews and, 316
in eastern Roman Empire, 237, daughter of, 147 of non-European immigrants,
241 education for young men and, 148 924(i), 925
in England, 270–272 as Roman “new man,” 182 in Rome, 143, 150, 165, 181, 189,
in Germany, 308 writings of, 161 204
growth of, 196–199 Cimon (Athens), 85 in Sparta, 64–65
Hebrew Bible and, 46 Cincius Romanus, 422 City of God, The (Augustine of
hierarchy in, 221 Ciompi Revolt, 434 Hippo), 225
imperialism and, 754 CIS. See Commonwealth of City-states. See also Citizens and
in Islamic Spain, 287 Independent States citizenship; Polis; specific
Jews in society of, 383–384 Cisalpine Republic, 629 locations
lay piety and, 382–383 Cistercians, 330, 331(f), 373 Greek, 42, 54–63, 64–73, 73(m),
in Lithuania, 429 Cîteaux, monastery of, 330 114, 118, 120
polytheism and, 218–221 Cities and towns. See also Urban Mesopotamian, 8–9
Roman, 175, 193–201, 205, 207, areas; Urbanization; Walled Minoan and Mycenaean, 27
212, 217–229, 220(m), 271, 272 cities; specific locations in Near East, 6(m)
in Russia, 284–285 in 1050–1150, 313–314 Civil cases, in England, 357–358
Spanish reconquista and, 324, in mid-1800s, 726–727 Civil Code (Napoleonic)
371–372 along Baltic coast, 373–374 annexed territories and, 649
spread of, 220(m) bombings in World War II, 883, establishment of, 640
of Vikings, 298 888, 890–891, 891(i) Louis XVIII and, 658
women in, 221 Byzantine, 259–260 paternalism and, 644–645
Christine de Pisan, 423 characteristics of, 316–317 women and, 688
Church(es). See also Religion(s); commerce in, 314–315 Civil Constitution of the Clergy
specific religions development of, 4 (France, 1790), 615–616
in cities, 316 in Egypt, 16 Civil disobedience
decline in attendance, 737, 949 electricity in, 755 in India, 863
Gothic, 346(i), 347–348, 351, environmentalism in, 987 in U.S. civil rights movement,
352–354, 354(i), 389, 389(i) in Frankish kingdoms, 262–263 927
government control of, 596 globalization of, 981, 984–985 Civilians
Hagia Sophia as, 240 government of, 319–320 World War I and, 827–829, 837,
hierarchy of Christian, 198–199 in Great Famine, 402 845
music sponsored by, 428 in Greece, 85–89 World War II and, 860, 878,
reform of, 321–331, 450–455 as Hanse, 429 879(i), 883–886, 891
Romanesque, 351–352, 352(i), Hellenistic, 125, 126 Civilization(s). See also Culture;
353(i) industrialization and, 680–681 Geography; West, the; specific
Church and state, Investiture Jews in, 315–316 locations
Conflict and, 324–327, 341 Mesopotamian, 8, 15, 36 ancient, 3–37
Church fathers movement to, 590, 591, 763 defined, 3–4
on orthodoxy disputes, 224 nation building and, 726–727 Greek, 4, 27
writings of, 271, 379 poor people in, 681 in Mesopotamia, 3–4, 8–13
Churchill, Jeanette Jerome, 761 population growth and, 548, Sen, Amartya, on, 996
Churchill, Randolph, 761 551–552, 680–681 violent ends to, 34–36
[ C i v i l iz i n g , th ro u g h i m p e r ial is m — C o l l e c t i v iz at i o n
] Index I-13
Civilizing, through imperialism, 754 Clement XIV (Pope), 596 Coal and coal industry, 674, 676,
Civil rights Cleon (Athens), 106 677, 679(i), 680, 755, 759, 843,
in France, 579, 597 Cleopatra VII (Egypt), 128, 128(i), 961, 987
in Nazi Germany, 868 139, 168, 177, 188(m) Coalitions
in U.S., 900, 927, 950–951, 952 Clergy. See also Monasticism and anti-Swedish, 562
Civil Rights Act (U.S., 1964), 951 monasteries; specific groups English-Dutch, 634(m)
Civil service. See Bureaucracy Byzantine, 260 in Iraq War, 993
Civil service law (Britain, 1870), 728 celibacy of, 199, 328, 350, 368, Kuwait invasion and UN, 991
Civil war(s) 459 in Seven Years’ War, 593–594,
in Athens, 78 church reform and, 460 593(m)
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 975 education and, 419 Coca-Cola, in France, 929
in China, 731 in France, 611, 615–616, 626 Cochin China, 730, 751. See also
in England, 340, 432, 515 in Germany, 307 Indochina; Vietnam
between French Catholics and in Great Famine, 402 Codes. See also Law(s); Law codes
Huguenots, 474–476 Luther on, 451 Christian monastic, 228
in French Revolution, 624–625 masters and students as, 351 in World War II, 882, 888
in Rome, 163–169, 176–177, 186, medieval, 300, 303 Codex (Justinian), 241
204 in Prussia, 737 Coffee (kavah), 541
in Russia, 285, 832–834, 833(m), taxation of, 397–398, 490–491 Coffeehouses, 540(i), 549, 553, 575
841 Clermont, Council of, Urban II and, Coins
in Spain, 874, 877–878 332 from Athens, 69, 115(i)
in United States, 714(i), 725 Client armies, in Rome, 163, debasement in Rome, 203
Clair, René, 874 164–165 devaluation of, 465
Clairvaux, 330 Client republics, of Napoleon, 640 Roman, 169(i), 178
Clans, non-Roman, 230–231 Clients, in Rome, 145–146, 160 Coitus interruptus, 785
Clare (Order of the Sisters of St. Climate Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 510–511, 532
Francis), 368 in Egypt, 22 Cold war, 899–900, 904(f), 911(i),
Classes. See also Aristocracy; Estates global warming and, 987 949–952, 968–969, 992
(French classes); specific classes Great Famine and, 402 in Asia, 918–919
in ancient civilizations, 4 in Mediterranean region, 34 Cuba and, 931
in cities, 682 of Mesopotamia, 8, 13 culture of, 915, 925–927, 930–931
in England, 432, 724 Paleolithic, 5–6 decolonization during, 917–925
in feudal society, 300–301 Clito, William, 320 détente and, 958
in France, 475–476, 698–699, Cloning, 942 division of Germany and, 901,
873 Cloth and clothing. See also Textile 906–907, 907(m)
in Italy, 399–400, 700 industry; specific types emerging nations in, 900, 921(m)
Marx on, 732 in 1920s, 845, 846 end of, 965
Plato on, 117 gender roles and, 688–689 military spending during, 912
in Rome, 152–156, 191–192, 216 industrialization and, 319, 674, origins of, 893, 903–906
in Russia, 529 675 space exploration and, 917,
in Venice, 433 new look in, 929 940–941, 940(i)
World War I and, 827 of new woman, 787 world during (1960), 932(m)
Classical culture. See also Classical of rock-and-roll culture, 928(i) “Cold war,” before World War I, 810
Greece; Literature in Russia, 561 Cole, Thomas, 683
in late Roman Empire, 241–243 social status and, 553 Collaborators, in World War II, 908
in Renaissance, 421, 423 of upper classes, 762 Collection in 74 Titles, 323
Classical Greece. See also Golden workers for, 994 Collective action, by workers, 768
Age; specific locations Clotilda (Franks), 234 Collective security. See also
duration of, 77 Clouds, The (Aristophanes), 98 Alliances; specific alliances
after Peloponnesian War, 114–119 Clovis (Franks) Hobbes on, 520
Classical music, 588–589 Gregory of Tours on, 249 Little Entente for, 840
Classicism as honorary consul, 233 after World War I, 840
in French arts, 531, 532(i) law code under, 234–235 World War II and, 892
vs. romanticism, 659 Visigoths and, 272 Collectivization
Claudius (Rome), 185 Cluniac monks, 321–322 in China, 918
Cleisthenes (Athens), 70, 84 Cluny, Benedictine monastery of, in Soviet bloc, 915, 916(i)
Clemenceau, Georges, 836 321–322, 329, 330, 351 in Soviet Union, 865, 903
Clement VII (Pope), 418, 454 Cnut (Canute), 298, 305 World War II and, 883
I-14 Index
[ Colleges — Condition of th e Wo rking Class in England, Th e
]
Colleges. See Universities crafts and, 318–319 in eastern Europe, 901, 904,
Colloquy of Marburg, 452 Dutch, 479, 522–523, 522(m) 915–916
Coloni (tenant farmers), 216, 265 fairs and, 314 of English Diggers, 516
Colonies and colonization. See also Greek, 51 in Germany, 842, 867
Decolonization; Empire(s); Islamic, 288 origins of, 696–697
Imperialism; specific locations in Mycenae, 32 in Soviet Union, 851–852,
in Africa, 547, 690, 745–750, Napoleon and, 650 865–867, 963–965, 973
748(m), 754, 756, 803–804, Commercial revolution, 314–321 war, 833, 851
805(m) Committee of Public Safety World War I and, 822
in Americas, 491–492, 492(m), (France), 619, 620, 623, in World War II resistance, 887
511, 546–548 625–626 Communist China. See China
black slavery and, 524 Commodities, Russian sale of, 981 Communist International
British, 491, 492, 521, 524–525, Common land (Comintern), 833–834
546, 564, 601–602, 690 conversion to private property, Communist Manifesto, The (Marx
in Caribbean region, 491, 492, 682 and Engels), 696
492(m), 603(m), 608, 631–633, defined, 550 Communist Party. See also
648, 675, 678, 690 enclosure movement and, 551 Communism; specific
colonialism compared to Common law (England), 358 locations
imperialism, 689 Common Market, 912–913, 933, in Czechoslovakia, 954, 966
criticism of, 579 944, 945, 949, 958, 962, in France, 873, 929
Dutch, 524 981–982 in Hungary, 966
European attitudes toward, European Union and, 912, in Poland, 965
749–750, 752–754 973–974, 982 in Soviet Union, 831–832, 852,
French, 491, 492, 511, 512, 564, Common people 963, 964, 977
631–633, 690 in France, 611 Communities
French and Indian War and, political power and, 418 Christian, 220
593–594 in Rome, 152–155, 165 Internet, 998
in Great Depression, 863–864 Commonwealth, British, 824, 913 socialist, 695
imperialism and, 745–754 Commonwealth of Independent worker activities in, 770
independence movements in, States (CIS), 977, 978(m) Comnenian dynasty (Byzantine
900 Communal values, in Rome, 216 Empire), 338
nation building and, 729–731 Communards, 733 Company of Pastors, 474
resistance to, 808–810 Communes. See also Paris Competition
slave trade and, 488, 524, 543–548 Commune control of, 759
Spanish, 476–477, 492 in Italy, 319–320, 327, 361 EU and, 983(m)
World War I and, 824, 827, 829, in Middle Ages, 319–320 globalization and, 974, 986
829(i) in Paris (1871), 733, 741, 769 among great powers, 810–813
after World War I, 837(m), 838, Communication. See also superpowers and, 900
843–844 Languages; Writing Composers, 499, 555, 736, 794. See
World War II and, 875, 887, 892 global, 963, 965, 977, 996, 998, also specific individuals
Colonization, use of term, 56 1007 Computers, 1005
Colosseum (Rome), 153(i), 186, global culture and, 1006 evolution of, 939–940
187(i) information age and, 938–940 networks for, 939, 998
Colossus (computer), 939 mass journalism and, 771, 938 Comte, Auguste, 689, 739
Columbanus (Saint), 268 in Mesopotamia, 11 Concentration camps
Columbian exchange, 442, 446 Persian, 45 Armenians in, 828
Columbus, Christopher, 442, 444 telecommunications and, 974 in Boer War, 804
COMECON. See Councils (political) Tiananmen Square protests and, in Kenya, 923
Comedy (drama) 965–966, 999 Nazi, 859, 869, 884–886, 884(m)
Greek, 102–103 Communications satellites, 939, 940, survivors of, 886, 901
Hellenistic, 130 941 Concert of Europe, 654, 710, 716,
of manners, 533–534 Communism, 917. See also 775
Commerce. See also Business; Socialism Conciliar movement, 419
Commercial revolution; in China, 911, 918 Concordat of Worms (1122), 326,
Economy; Seaborne commerce; cold war and, 904, 931 341, 361, 363
Trade collapse of, 966–967, 968, 968(m), Concorde (aircraft), 944
Assyrian, 13–14 973, 977 Condition of the Working Class in
with colonies, 491 in Czechoslovakia, 954, 966–967 England, The (Engels), 696
[ Con doms — C o u n c ils (C h r ist ian )
] Index I-15
Condoms, 682, 785 in France, 614–616, 617, 628, 641, Contraception. See Birth control
Confederate States of America, 725 699, 772, 910 Contracts, business and, 318
Confederation of the Rhine, 649, in Germany, 701, 722 Convention, the. See National
653, 654 in Japan, 752 Convention (France)
Confessions (Augustine of Hippo), in Poland, 609, 667 Convents, 269, 300
225 in Russia, 664 Conversion, to Christianity, 196,
Confraternities, 535 in United States, 601–602, 927 211, 217, 218, 441
Congo region. See also Africa in West Germany, 910 Conversos (Spain), 436
Belgium and, 747, 749(i) Constitutionalism Cook, James, 579
immigrants from, 973 defined, 475, 505 Cooperatives
Congregationalism, in England, 515 in Dutch Republic, 521–523 farmers’, 945
Congress (U.S.), 951 in England, 505–506, 514–521, 559 producer and consumers’, 695
Congress of Berlin, 775 in English North America, 521, Copernicus, Nicolaus, 493, 494
Congress of Vienna 525 Coptic alphabet, 19(i)
allies at, 654–657 Enlightenment and, 582 Coptic Christians, 223
caricature of, 655(i) Locke and, 520 Corday, Charlotte, 624
Europe after, 656(m) natural law, natural rights, and, Córdoba, 287, 288, 289, 962
France and, 654, 712, 713 497 Corinne (Staël), 645
Netherlands and, 667 in Poland-Lithuania, 525–526 Corinth, 64(m)
Conrad III (Germany), 336, 341 Constitutional monarchy in anti-Spartan coalition, 118
Conscription. See Military draft in Belgium, 667 black-figure vase from, 40(i)
Conservatism, 961(i) in Britain, 655 navy of, 81
emergence of, 657–658 in France, 614, 615, 667 Rome and, 160
in France, 654, 699 in Italy, 798 tyranny in, 67
liberalism vs., 693 Constitutions of Melfi (Frederick II), Corinthian style, 86, 88(i)
Nazis and, 869 392 Corneille, Pierre, 509, 534
women and, 703 Consulate, in France, 641 Cornelia (Rome), 147
Conservative Party (Britain), 724, Consuls Corn Laws (Britain), repeal of, 694
771, 814, 910, 960 in Milan, 320 Coronation, of Charlemagne, 292
Constance, Council of, 419, 421, 422 in Rome, 154–155, 165, 167, 177 Coronation of Napoleon and
Constantine (Rome), 207 Consumer economy, 999 Josephine, The (David), 643(i)
coin portrait of, 217(i) Consumer goods Corporations, 318, 758, 944
conversion to Christianity, in 1920s, 847, 851 Corruption
211–212, 217, 218 in eastern Europe, 914, 984 in former Soviet Union, 977, 979,
Council of Nicaea and, 223 in postindustrial society, 929, 946 980(i)
as emperor, 212, 214 in Soviet bloc, 916, 929, 949, 950 in Italy, 798
Constantine (Russia), 664 after World War II, 900, 903, 912 Corsica and Corsicans, 158, 640, 985
Constantine Porphyrogenitos Consumerism, 927 Cortes (Spain)
(Byzantine Empire), 283 empire and, 761 of Castile-León, 396
Constantinople. See also Byzantine gender norms and, 929 defined, 430
Empire in Soviet bloc, 929 Cortés, Hernán, 440(i), 445
Black Death in, 411 teenagers and, 946–947 Corvée labor, 22
as Byzantium, 250 Consumer revolution (1600s and Cosimo de’ Medici, 434
Constantine and, 218 1700s), 549–550 Cosmetics industry, in 1920s, 847
economic and cultural life in, 257 Consumption Cosmonauts, 917, 940
fall of, 409 agricultural revolution and, 550 female, 940, 940(i)
in Fourth Crusade, 370 conspicuous, 552 Cosmos, use of term, 72
as Istanbul, 215, 864 industrial growth and, 758, Cossacks, 525, 599
Ottoman conquest of (1453), 760–761 Cotton and cotton industry
417–418 patterns of, 446, 546 in India, 548, 548(i)
patriarch of, 260 Contado (countryside), 320, 433 industrialization and, 675
sack of (1204), 364 Continental Europe. See also Europe; slavery and, 678
siege of (1453), 417(m) specific locations Councils (Christian)
suffering of people in, 338 industrialization in, 677 in 430 and 431, 223
Constantius (Roman Empire), 213 labor movement in, 697 of Chalcedon, 223–224, 241
Constitution(s) liberalism in, 694 of Clermont, 332
EU and, 983–984 workday in, 680 of Constance, 419, 421, 422
in Florence, 434 Continental System, 650 Fourth Lateran, 380–382
I-16 Index
[ C o u n c i ls ( C h r ist ia n ) — Cu lt u re
]
Councils (Christian) (continued) Crete, 23 in Europe, 370–374
of Lyon, 392 Minoans in, 23, 26, 28–30, 31(m) impact of, 337
of Nicaea, 223 Mycenaeans and, 33 Jews during, 383
of Pisa, 419 Crick, Francis, 928, 942 Louis IX (France) and, 393, 395
of Soissons, 350 Crime. See also Punishment Northern, 373–374
Third Lateran, 384–385 in cities, 682 “Cry of the Children, The”
Vatican II as, 925 in England, 668 (Browning), 683
Councils (political). See also Senate in former Soviet Union, 977 Crystal Palace exhibition (London),
of the Areopagus (Athens), 69, Israelite punishment of, 48 703–704, 704(i)
83, 84 Crimea, Putin and, 981 Ctesibius (scientist), 134
in Athens, 69, 70 Crime and Punishment Ctesiphon, 257
of Fifteen (England), 397 (Dostoevsky), 734 Cuba
of Five Hundred (Athens), 83, 94 Crimean War, 710, 712–713, 712(m), slavery in, 690
of Four Hundred (Athens), 70 714(i), 731 Spain and, 665
government and, 396–397 Crimes against humanity U.S. and, 804, 931
for Mutual Economic Assistance by Milosevic, 976 Cuban missile crisis, 900, 925, 931,
(COMECON), 915 Nuremberg trials and, 909 932
in Sparta, 64 Critias (Greece), 96 Cubism, 793, 794
of State (England), 517 Critique of Pure Reason, The (Kant), Cult(s)
of State (France), 641 583, 583(f) of Amun-Re, 25
Counterculture, 953, 957 Croatia, 527, 691, 975, 976 of Asclepius, 148
Counter-Reformation, 455, 459–461 Croats (Croatians), 906 of Aten, 25
Counterrevolutionaries in Austrian Empire, 691 of Demeter, 58, 62, 90, 199
in French Revolution, 617 independence of, 834 of Dionysus, 136
in Russian civil war, 832 nationalism of, 801 of dukes of Burgundy, 430
Countryside. See Rural areas Serb massacre by, 975 Greek, 59, 89–90, 135–138
Coups World War I and, 828 imperial (Rome), 186
in Germany, 842 Cromwell, Oliver, 515, 516–517, of Isis, 137, 200
in Russia, 977 517(i), 518 of Lenin, 852
Courbet, Gustave, 736 Cromwell, Thomas, 454 of Mithras, 200, 200(i), 201
Couriers, Persian, 45 Crop rotation, Carolingian, 296 mystery, 90, 137, 199
Courtier, The (Castiglione), 462 Crops. See also Agriculture; specific of the offensive, in World War I,
Courtly love, 365 crops 824
Courtly manners, 533–534 fertilizers and, 756 of personality (Khrushchev), 916
Court of Star Chamber (England), fodder, 550–551 of Reason, 623
515 in Great Famine, 402, 403, 403(i) religious, 199–201
Courts (law) in Greece, 55 Roman, 148–149
in England, 358–359 New World, 441 ruler, 136
in France, 506–507, 597, 620 plague and, 413 of the Supreme Being, 623
in Russia, 715 Crossbows, 416 of Vesta, 148–149
Courts (papal), 323 Cross-cultural connections. See of Virgin Mary, 535
Courts (royal) Culture; specific cultures and women and, 62
culture of, 461–463 locations Cultivation. See Agriculture; Crops;
of Louis XIV, 505, 508–509 Cross in the Mountains (Friedrich), Farms and farming
music in, 427–428 660, 661(i) Culture. See also Art(s); Classical
Covenant, Hebrew, 47, 48 Crucifixion, of Jesus, 194–195 culture; Intellectual thought;
Cracow University, 413 Crusader states, 332, 334, 335–336, Society; specific cultures
Craft-based unions, 769 336(m), 342(m), 370 in 1920s, 847–851
Crafts Crusades in 1930s, 874–875
in Crete, 30 First, 332, 333–336, 333(m), 337, of Anglo-Saxons in England, 340
in Middle Ages, 318–319 383 in Byzantine Empire, 260
Cranach, Lucas, 458(i) Second, 334, 336–337, 372–373, in cold war, 915, 925–927,
Cranmer, Thomas, 454 383 930–931
Crassus, Marcus Licinius, 167 Third, 359, 370 counterculture and, 953, 957
Creation myths, 10 Fourth, 364, 370, 380 courtly, 461–463
Credit Albigensian, 374, 374(m) Egyptian, 16
collapse of, 996 anti-heretic campaigns and, during Enlightenment, 585–592
Great Depression and, 860 371(m) Etruscan, 151
[ Cult u re — D efen s e
] Index I-17
French, in Vietnam, 730 in Great Depression, 874 D’Aubigné, Françoise (marquise de

of French court, 508–509 industrial sector of, 841 Maintenon), 509
globalization and, 974, 996, in Little Entente, 840 Daumier, Honoré, 735(i)
999–1005 Nazi invasion of, 879–880 David (Israelite king), 48, 283,
Greek, 42, 50, 51, 138 Prague Spring in, 954–956, 955(i), 294(i)
Hellenistic, 122, 129–138 955(m) David (Michelangelo), 461
imperialism and, 754, 761–767 protests in, 937 David, Jacques-Louis, 621, 638(i),
interactions in Mediterranean refugees from, 901 643(i)
region, 32, 113–114 Soviets and, 905, 955–956, 955(i) Davis, Angela, 954
Irish, 798 television in, 956 Dawes Plan (1924), 839
in later Roman Empire, 212, after World War I, 836 Day care, welfare state and, 913,
241–243 Czech people 914(i)
mass (in 1920s), 846, 847–851 in Austria-Hungary, 723, 774, 801 D-Day (June 6, 1944), 888
in mid-19th century, 710 in Austrian Empire, 691 Dean, James, 928
in Nazi Germany, 869 family size of, 786(i) Death. See also Burials; Relics and
non-Roman kingdoms and, 229, Hus and, 420–421, 451 reliquaries
234–236 independence of, 834 in Egypt, 21–22, 26
peasant, 535–536 as Roman Catholics, 308 Paleolithic, 5
popular, 530–536 in Thirty Years’ War, 482 Death rate. See Mortality
postindustrial, 947–948 World War I and, 828 Debasement of coinage, in Rome,
proletarian, 851 Czech Republic, 982, 983, 985, 989, 203
in Renaissance, 461–463 998 Debt
of rock-and-roll, 927–929, 928(i) dynastic wars and, 465–466
Roman, 182–184, 189, 190–192 Dachau concentration camp, 869 global economic crisis and, 995(i),
in Russia, 561, 974 Dacia (Romania), 186 996
samizdat, 950 Da Gama, Vasco, 443 of peasants, 490
social order and, 733–739 Daguerre, Jacques, and in Soviet bloc, 950
Soviet, 917, 930, 974 daguerreotypes, 686, 686(i) of United States, 957, 958, 994
space race and, 940–941 Daily life. See Lifestyle Debt slavery, in Athens, 68
Stalinism and, 915 Daladier, Edouard, 880 Debussy, Claude, 794
Sumerian, 13 Dalai Lama, 1000 Decembrist Revolt (1825), 664, 688
in United States, 1003 Dalmatic (vestment), 329(i) De-Christianization
vernacular, 364–367 Damascus in revolutionary France, 622–623
in western Roman Empire, Abbasid caliphate and, 280, 285 in Soviet bloc, 915
234–236 Great Mosque at, 256(i) Decius (Rome), 205
youth, 927–928, 947 in Second Crusade, 336 Declaration of Independence
Cuneiform, 11–12, 11(i), 13, 15 Umayyad caliphate and, 254(m), (United States, 1776), 576, 601
Curials (urban social elite), 216, 255 Declaration of Indulgence (England,
259 Dance, modern, 794 1673), 518
Curie, Marie, 792 “Dance of Death,” 412(i), 413, 429 Declaration of the Rights of Man
Curie, Pierre, 792 Danelaw, 298 and Citizen (France), 615
Curius, Manius, 163 Danes. See Vikings Declaration of the Rights of Women
Currency. See also Coins Dante Alighieri, 387 (Gouges), 615
euro as, 982 Danton, Georges-Jacques, 623, Decolonization. See also specific
Curriculum 626 locations
common (France), 772 Danube River region, 230–231, 694 in Africa, 921–923, 922(m)
in Rome, 183 Rome and, 186, 187 in Asia, 918–919
university, 351, 952–953 Russian protectorate in, 664 during cold war, 917–925, 933
Cynics, 133 Dardanelles, Strait of, 713 literature on, 927
Cyprus, 481, 982, 995(i) Darius I (Persia), 44–45, 45(m), 77, in Middle East, 920–921
Cypselus (Corinth), 67 78, 79(i), 80(m) Decretum (Gratian), 328
Cyrillic alphabet, 284 Dark Age(s) Decurions (Rome), 189, 191, 216
Cyrus (Persian Empire), 44, 48, 80(m) in Greece, 50–52 Deductive reasoning, 495
Czartoryska, Zofia, 578 in Mediterranean region, 37, Defender of the Peace, The
Czechoslovakia, 1000 42–43 (Marsilius), 418
breakup of, 985 Darwin, Charles, 737–738, 738(i), Defense. See also Military spending
collapse of communism in, 739, 765 of Greece against invasions, 35
966–967, 968(m) Das Kapital (Marx), 732 Roman, 189
I-18 Index
[ D efe n s e D e p a r t m e nt ( U. S. ) — D i ve rs it y
]
Defense Department (U.S.), welfare state in, 914(i) Dior, Christian, 929
computer network of, 998 World War II and, 881 Diphtheria, 914
Deficits Department stores, 760 Diplomacy. See also Balance of
French, 512, 699 Dépôts de mendicité (“beggar power
trade, 759 houses”), 590 Bismarck and, 773, 775, 777
in United States, 962 Depression (economic), in 1873, cold war, 931, 933
Defoe, Daniel, 555 758–759. See also Great in 18th century, 564–565
De Gaulle, Charles, 939, 941 Depression emergence of, 542
Algerian independence and, 923 Descartes, René, 495–496 Hittite-Egyptian, 28
protests and, 954 Desprez, Josquin, 428 after Napoleon, 654–657
World War II and, 883, 887 Détente policy, 958, 962 Roman, 157
Degeneration (Nordau), 789 Devaluation, of coinage, 465 after World War I, 838–840
De Genlis, Stéphanie, 590, 592 Deventer, school at, 419 Diplomatic congress, after Thirty
Deification, of kings, 136 Dhuoda (Franks), 279, 295 Years’ War, 484
Deists, 579, 623 Dia, Contessa de, 365 Diplomatic Revolution, 593
Deities. See Gods; specific deities Diamonds, in Africa, 749–750 Directory (France), 625, 628, 629,
de Klerk, F. W., 994 Diaphragm, for birth control, 764, 640–641
De Kooning, Willem, 930 785 Disability insurance, 774, 913
Delacroix, Eugène, 660, 662(i) Diary of a Young Girl (Frank), 926 Disabled people, Nazis and, 870, 885
Delhi, British in, 730 Diaspora, Jewish, 49 Disarmament, after World War I,
Delian League, 82–83, 85 Dickens, Charles, 685, 734 839–840
Delphi, oracle of, 59, 133 Dictators (Rome) Discourse on Method (Descartes),
Deluge (Poland-Lithuania), 525 Caesar as, 168–169 495–496
Demagogues, in Great Depression, Sulla as, 166 Discovery of Achilles on Skyros
861(i), 862 Dictatorships (Poussin), 532(i)
Demes (political units), 70, 86(i) in 1930s, 859–860 Discrimination
Demeter (god), cult of, 58, 62, 90, in 1970s, 960 against Jews, 383, 956
199 Diderot, Denis, 577, 582, 591(i), legislation against, 927, 951
Demetrius (Macedonia), 136 597 racial, 460, 918
Democracy(ies), 1005. See also Dien Bien Phu, battle of, 951(m) Diseases
specific locations Diet (food). See also Food(s) in 14th century, 409–413
in 1930s, 860 in ancient world, 4 cholera as, 681, 681(m)
Aristotle on, 114 in Athens, 115–116 in cities, 681, 726–727
in Athens, 68–70, 81, 83–85, 96, in concentration camps, 886 environmental causes of, 565, 987
107 in Egypt, 18 food shortages and, 473
Bodin on, 497 in Greece, 55 global health and, 989
economic, 841, 871 Jewish, 196 Indians and, 441, 446, 488
in Europe, 576 Mediterranean, 30 in Mesopotamian medicine, 15
Great Depression in, 862, 871–875 in Rome, 180 in New World, 446
Plato on, 114 Diet (assembly), in Hungary, 528 vaccines and, 565–566, 914, 942,
Rousseau and, 582 Diet of Worms, 451 989
terrorism against, 960 Dietrich, Marlene, 874 venereal, 728
totalitarianism and, 871 Digest (Justinian), 241 World War II and, 886
in United States, 576, 602 Diggers (England), 516 Disraeli, Benjamin, 724, 775
after World War II, 910 Digital Age, 1007 Dissection
Demographics. See Population; Digital electronic circuitry, 939 Hellenistic, 134
Wealth; specific locations Digital media, 999 medical, 495, 565
Demoiselles d’Avignon, Les (Picasso), Dioceses, in Rome, 213 Dissent
793 Diocletian (Rome) in Austria, 663
Denationalization, era of, 996, 1005 Christian persecution by, 207, in France, 619, 620
Denmark, 949 211, 217 in Soviet bloc, 916, 917, 954–956,
Angles from, 233 division of Rome by, 213, 214(m) 965
Christian kingdom of, 298 government reforms by, 212 Dissidents, Soviet, 950, 956, 1002
Great Northern War and, 562 wage and price controls under, Distribution of goods, 682, 758. See
Northern Crusades and, 373 215–216 also Transportation
Prussia and, 720 Diogenes (Cynic), 133 Diversity
slave trade and, 543 Dionysus (god), 34, 58, 69, 99 in Austrian Empire, 691
in Thirty Years’ War, 482 cult of, 136 in Dutch Republic, 478–479
[ D ive rsit y — Easte rn Eu ro p e
] Index I-19
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 135 Domitian (Rome), 186, 232(m) decolonization and, 923
linguistic, 692(m) Donation of Constantine, 291 England and, 518, 521, 523
in Muslim world, 286–288 Donation of Pippin, 290 independence of, 478, 485
Roman, 189–190 Donatus and Donatist Christianity, revolts against Spain, 477, 478
Dives (Bible, rich man), 312(i), 313 223 in southern Africa, 749, 803
Divided Heaven (Wolf), 950 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 480, 555 Thirty Years’ War and, 488
Divination, in Rome, 151 Doric style, 86, 88(i) trade and, 522–523, 522(m), 547
Divine Comedy (Dante), 387 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 734, 736, 775, after World War I, 843
Divine right of monarchs 776 after World War II, 901
Hobbes on, 520 Double Helix, The (Watson), 928 Dutch East India Company, 522(m)
James I (England) on, 487 Double monasteries, 269 Dutch Republic. See also Dutch;
Locke on, 520 Downsizing, 998 Netherlands
Divinity. See also Gods Dowry in 17th century, 537(m)
concept of, 3 barbarian, 230 agriculture in, 551
healing by, 136 in Greece, 62 commerce of, 479, 522–523,
Division of labor Merovingian, 267–268 522(m)
in barbarian society, 230 Draco (Athens), 68 Congress of Vienna and, 656
by gender, 8 Draft. See Military draft constitutionalism in, 521–523
Smith on, 581 Drama. See also Comedy (drama); decline of, 523, 560
Divorce Tragedy (drama) England and, 557, 601
advocacy for, 724 Greek, 90, 99–103 establishment of, 477
in Byzantine Empire, 260 Hellenistic, 130 France and, 511, 523, 621, 629,
Council of Trent on, 460 Roman, 160 656
in France, 624, 644, 787 Dreadnought, HMS (ship), 813 homosexuals in, 592
in Greece, 91 Dream of Philip II, The (El Greco), literacy in, 523, 590
Hammurabi on, 14 478(i) political reform and, 602
Milton on, 530 Dreams of My Russian Summers population growth in, 488
Protestantism and, 459 (Makine), 1002 Prussia and, 608
rising rates of, 784 Dresden, World War II and, 883 religious toleration and, 478–479,
in Rome, 148 Dreyfus, Alfred, and Dreyfus Affair, 567
in Soviet Union, 851–852, 866 799–800, 800(i) revolts in, 608–609
DNA, 928, 942 Drinking water, 680–681, 989 scientific research in, 495, 496
Doctors. See also Medicine Drought, 756, 989 slave trade and, 543
childbirth and, 727 Dual Alliance, 775 Dutch War, 512
professionalization of, 728 Dualism Dynamite, 813
public health care and, 565–566 as heresy, 369–370 Dynasties. See Kings and kingdoms;
Doctors Without Borders, 985 moral, in Zoroastrianism, 46 Monarchs and monarchies;
Doctor Zhivago (novel and movie), Plato on, 117 specific dynasties and rulers
898(i), 899, 917, 931, 932 Dual monarchy, 723, 801, 811. See Dynatoi (Byzantine Empire), 283,
Doctrine (Christian), 198, 450, 459, also Austria-Hungary 286, 332
460 Dubček, Alexander, 954, 955,
Dollfuss, Engelbert, 874 966–967 Earth. See Astronomy
Doll’s House, A (Ibsen), 766 Dublin, 830 Earthquakes, in Rome, 204–205
Dome of the Rock (Jerusalem), Dubrovnik, destruction of, 975 East, the, 4, 900, 915–917
255(i), 256 Duchies East Africa, 745, 747, 804, 810,
Domesday survey (England), 340 of Burgundy, 414–415 922–923
Domestication, of animals, 4, 6 in Germany, 306 East Anglia, 305
Domesticity Dukes (Burgundy), personal cult of, East Asia, 730, 731, 876, 887, 899,
ideology of, 673, 688, 689 430 918–919, 994
in postwar society, 929 Duma (Russia), 807, 831 Easter, dating of, 270
Domestic service. See also Servants Duncan, Isadora, 794 Eastern Christianity. See Greek
women in, 490, 553, 591 Dunkirk, 882 Orthodox Church; Orthodox
Domestic system, of manufacturing, Duns Scotus, John, 386–387 Christianity; Russian Orthodox
675 Dürer, Albrecht, 449(i) Church
Dominate (Rome), 212–218 Dutch. See also Dutch Republic; Eastern Europe. See also specific
Dominic (Saint), 374 Netherlands locations
Dominicans, 374, 385 in Africa, 749 1848 revolutions in, 701–702
Dominions, British, 726 agriculture of, 488, 550 1989 revolutions in, 966–967
I-20 Index
[ Easte rn Eu ro p e — Ed u cat i o n
]
Eastern Europe (continued) East Germany, 907, 916, 931, 949, redistributive, 10, 13
absolutism in, 525–530 966, 967(i), 968(m). See also in Rome, 161, 188–189, 203–204,
brain drain from, 956, 979–980 Germany 215–217
after Charlemagne, 295 East India Company in Russia, 713
cold war in, 933 British, 546, 690, 730 serfdom and, 491
collapse of communism in, 965, Dutch, 522(m) service, 937
966–967, 968, 968(m), 982 French, 546 Soviets and, 851, 865, 963, 977
communism in, 901, 904, East Indies, 444, 547 Thirty Years’ War and, 487–492
915–916 East Prussia, 526, 825, 837 in United States, 902–903, 962,
eastern Roman Empire as, Ebert, Friedrich, 835, 836 996
249–250 Ebla, Syria, 13 in Ur III, 13
economy of, 984, 999 Ebola virus, 989 in western Europe, 313–314,
empires in, 481 Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 849(i) 911–912
in EU, 982–983 Economic democracy, 840, 871 world’s top fifteen economies
formation of, 283–285 Economics (2015), 1006(m)
governments in, 363–364 laissez faire, 774 after World War I, 838–839, 841
Great Depression in, 862 liberalism in, 693–695 after World War II, 900
Huns in, 230 monetarist (supply-side), 961 ECSC. See European Coal and Steel
industrialization in, 677–678, 915 Smith, Adam, on, 580–581 Community
Jews in, 481, 802, 862 Economic shocks, 995 Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Ávila
literature in, 1002–1003 Economist, The (periodical), 694, 998 (Bernini), 531(i)
monarchies in, 306–308 Economy. See also Agriculture; Ecumenism, Vatican II and, 925
oil and, 959 Farms and farming; Global Edessa
outsourcing to, 984 economy; Great Depression; crusaders and, 334
peasants in, 551 Labor; Trade; Wealth mosaic of family from, 224(i)
political formations in, 429–430 in 1920s, 844–845 Edgar (England), 305
pollution in, 987 in Athens, 68, 115 Edict of Milan, 217
power in, 428 balance of power and, 490–492, Edict of Nantes
power politics in, 773–777 958 enactment of, 475
religion in, 284–285, 481 boom and bust cycles in, 841 revocation of, 510, 526, 542
serfdom in, 491 Carolingian, 295–296 Edict of Restitution, 482–483
social welfare in, 914, 980 collapse of global economy, 974, Edmund (Saint), 358(i)
Soviet Union and, 888–889, 904, 995–996, 1005 Education. See also Higher
915, 949 commercial, 314–321 education; Learning; Schools
women in, 787 Common Market, 913 Black Death and, 413
after World War I, 841–842 crisis in 1870s and 1880s, 758–759 Byzantine, 260
World War II and, 883, 900 in Dutch Republic, 479 in France, 623, 772, 799
Eastern Europe. See also Soviet bloc dynastic wars and, 465–466 in Germany, 756, 796
Eastern front, World War I and, 825, in eastern Europe, 984 Great Depression and, 862
826 in Egypt, 747 in Greek Golden Age, 93–95
Eastern Orthodox Church. See emerging, 944, 994–995 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 127
Greek Orthodox Church; in England, 358, 359, 723–724, improvement through, 592
Orthodox Christianity; Russian 961 in Ireland, 962
Orthodox Church in former Soviet Union, 977, 979 Islamic, 289
Eastern Roman Empire, 139(m). See in France, 962 Jesuit, 460
also Byzantine Empire; Roman in Germany, 869, 906 literacy and, 553
Empire; Western Roman in global south, 989–990 Locke and, 521
Empire in Great Depression, 859, in Merovingian society, 268
in c. 600, 244(m) 860–861, 862, 863 Napoleonic, 644
Christianity in, 237 in Greece, 50 for nation building, 728–729
classical culture in, 241–243 Hittite, 28 in postindustrial society, 946
as eastern Europe and Turkey, 249 Marx on, 732 reforms of, 596, 687–688
under Justinian, 234, 236, Mesopotamian, 8–9, 13 in Rome, 148, 182–183
239–241, 257 money economy, 313–314 school attendance and, 728, 729
lifestyle in, 236–239 in non-Roman kingdoms, 231 segregation in, 927
Theodosius and, 212 oil and, 958–959 in Sparta, 65
western Roman Empire and, in peasant society, 266–267 for women, 94
214–215, 215(m) in Ptolemaic kingdom, 125 of workers, 728, 729, 795
[ Ed ward — England
] Index I-21
Edward (the Confessor, England), in population, 988 Emerging economies, 944, 994–995
338 poverty of, 913 Emerging nations, in cold war, 900,
Edward I (England), 397–398 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 337, 355–357, 921(m)
Edward III (England), 413, 414(f) 357(i) Emigration. See also Immigrants and
Edward VI (England), 454, 466 Elect, in Calvinism, 453, 480 immigration; Migration
EEC. See Common Market; Elections. See also Voting and voting to Americas, 547
European Economic rights from Europe, 682
Community in Soviet Union, 965 from French Revolution, 626
Ego, id, and superego, Freud on, 789 Electoral system, in Germany, 722 Greek, 56
Egypt (ancient), 17(m). See also Electors from Ireland, 698
Ptolemaic rulers of Brandenburg, 485, 526 from Nazi Germany, 870
Abbasids and, 285 of Holy Roman Emperor, 482 Emir (commander), 287
afterlife in, 2(i), 3l, 21–22 of Saxony, 467 Emissions, from autos and industry,
Alexander the Great and, 121 Electricity 987
Caesar in, 168 atomic power plants for, 914 Emperors. See also Holy Roman
Christianity in, 223 industrial growth and, 755 Empire; specific empires and
civilization in, 4 in London, 757(i) rulers
Hellenistic gods and, 137 from wind power, 987 Byzantine, 364
Hellenistic kingdom in, 125–126, Elements of the Philosophy of Newton in central and eastern Europe, 482
128 (Voltaire), 568 Charlemagne as, 292–293
Hittites and, 27 El Greco, 478(i), 498 church reform and, 322–323
Islam and, 253, 254 Eliezer, Israel ben, 584 German kings as, 362
Israelites and, 47 Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), in Rome, 181
magic in, 26 734 Empire(s), 12. See also Imperialism;
Middle Kingdom in, 22–23 Elisabeth de Valois, 477 specific empires and rulers
monks in, 226 Elisabeth of Hungary, 383 competition before World War I,
New Kingdom in, 23–26 Elites. See also Aristocracy; Nobility 810–813
Nubia and, 20 in Byzantine Empire, 280–285 decolonization and, 918–919,
Old Kingdom in, 16–22 in eastern Roman Empire, 241 921–923, 925, 933
peoples of, 18–19 in England, 516, 517 economies and technology of,
religion in, 25, 26 English in North America, 524 755–761
in Roman Empire, 177, 188(m) French Revolution and, 633 in Near East, 42–50
Sasanids in, 257 Greek, 51, 54, 92 Empiricism, 583
social hierarchy in, 22 in India, 750 Employment. See also Labor
unification of, 15–16 in Italy, 299 after World War I, 845
warfare and, 34, 36(m) Merovingian, 265, 267–269 Enabling Act (Germany, 1933), 868
writing in, 16, 19, 19(i), 112(i) Mesopotamian, 12 Enclosure, 551
Egypt (modern), 958 middle-class, 586, 587–590 Encyclopedia (Diderot), 576–577,
Britain and, 747, 811, 920–921 Nubian, 20 598
digital media and government in, in Rome, 145, 163, 185, 189, 191, Energy
999 192 alternative sources, 988(i)
Fatimids in, 287 socialist, 796 Einstein’s theory of, 792
imperialism in, 747 social order and, 682–683 from nuclear power, 941–942
Israeli peace accords with, 961(i) working class and, 688 politics of, 981
Napoleon in, 641 Elizabeth (Russia), 594 wind power, 987
nationalism in, 810 Elizabeth I (England), 454, 466, 474, Engels, Friedrich, 696–697
revolt in (1920s), 843 479–480, 479(i), 481 Engineering. See Inventions;
Suez Canal and, 712, 731, 747, Ellis, Havelock, 787–788 Technology; Weapons
921 Ellison, Ralph, 951 England. See also Britain; specific
World War II and, 888 Elpinike (Greece), 92 rulers
Eiffel Tower, 755 Emancipation in 15th century, 429
Einstein, Albert, 790, 792 of Russian serfs, 714–715, 715(i) Alfred the Great in, 304–305,
Eisenhower, Dwight, 888 of U.S. slaves, 725 304(m)
Eisenstein, Sergei, 848, 849, 867 Embargo black slavery and, 524, 543
Elba, Napoleon on, 653 oil, 958, 959(f) Calvinism in, 473
Elderly UN arms, 975 civil wars in, 340, 432, 514, 515
in concentration camps, 885 by U.S. against Japan, 876 classes in, 432
in Nazi Germany, 870, 885 Embassies, diplomacy and, 565 colonies of, 491, 492, 492(m)
I-22 Index
[ England — Ethnic groups
]
England. (continued) Enheduanna (Akkad), 12 Epigrams, by Hellenistic women,
constitutionalism in, 505–506, Enlightened despots (absolutists), 129–130
514–521 592, 597 Equal Employment Opportunity
Domesday survey in, 340 Enlightenment, 948 Commission (EEOC), 951
Dutch and, 518, 521, 523, 557 birth of, 566–570 Equality. See also Gender and gender
economy in, 359, 488 conservative thinkers on, 657 issues
finances in, 358 Declaration of Independence and, in French Revolution, 614, 615
formation of Great Britain and, 576, 601 in Greece, 59, 61
559 in France, 567–568, 582–583, 614 in marriage, 787
France and, 359, 394, 511, 594, 633 Freemasonry and, 587–588 in Russia, 715
gentry in, 432, 586 in Germany, 583 Equestrian order (Rome), 191
Glorious Revolution in, 519 individual and society in, 580–582 Equiano, Olaudah, 580
house of Hanover and, 559 intellectual thought in, 542 Equites (Roman equestrians,
human capital in, 565 philosophes in, 576–580, 578(i), knights), 164
Hundred Years’ War and, 413–416 583, 597 Erasmus, Desiderius, 449–450, 454
Industrial Revolution in, 674–675, society and culture during, Eratosthenes, 134
755 585–592 Erhard, Ludwig, 910
Ireland and, 517, 559, 693, 724, spreading, 582–584 Eridu (Mesopotamian city-state), 8
960 state power in, 592–602 Eriksen, Vigilius, 574(i)
Jews in, 383, 384 women in, 567(i), 570, 577–578, Ermengard (wife of Louis the
kingdom in, 262 589–590 Pious), 294, 295
literacy in, 553, 590 Enlil (god), 13 Esquivel, Laura, 1001
Luddite riots in, 675 Ennius (Roman poet), 160 Essay Concerning Human
Magna Carta and, 359 Entente Cordiale, 811, 822 Understanding (Locke), 521
in Middle Ages, 355–359 Entertainment. See also Drama; Estates (French classes). See also
naming of, 270 Leisure; Sports specific estates
nobility in, 586 in eastern Roman Empire, 237 deputies from, 611
Normans in, 338–340, 338(m), for peasants, 590 in Hundred Years’ War, 416
339(i) Roman, 181 Estates (land), expansion of, 682
Parliament in, 514 Entrepreneurs Estates General
peasant rebellion in, 416 Assyrian, 14 in Dutch Republic, 521–522
Peterloo massacre in, 667 industrial, 993 in France, 396n, 398, 611, 612
plague in, 518 in United States, 757 Este, Isabella d’, 428
playwrights in, 481, 498 Environment Esterházy family, Haydn and, 589
political reforms in, 771–772 disease and, 565, 987 Estonia, 881, 977, 982, 984, 998
political system in, 304–305 globalization and, 974, 986–988 Ethics
Protestantism in, 453–455, protesters (1960s) and, 969 Aristotle on, 118
479–481 Ephialtes (Athens), 84 Christianity and, 242
published materials in, 555 Ephors, in Sparta, 64 in Judaism, 196
railroads in, 673, 676 Epic literature. See also Homer; Socrates on, 97–98
reform societies in, 633, 687, 688 specific works Ethiopia, 989
religious divisions in, 466 Iliad as, 32 Christianity in, 223
representative government in, in Middle Ages, 366–367 European struggle for (1896), 798,
396–397 Epic of Creation (Mesopotamia), 10 803(m)
Restoration in, 518–520 Epic of Gilgamesh, 10 Italy and, 798, 876–877
St. Domingue and, 632 Epicurus and Epicureanism, 131 Ethnic cleansing, 909(i), 975
Scotland and, 517, 557, 559 Epidaurus, Greece, 137(i) Ethnic groups. See also specific
Spanish Armada and, 480 Epidemics. See also Black Death; groups and countries
theaters in, 498 Diseases; specific diseases in Africa, 748(m), 922(m)
vernacular language in, 304–305 AIDS as, 964, 989 in Austria-Hungary, 723, 801
Vikings in, 298, 305 in Athens, 106 in Austrian Empire, 691–692
Wessex in, 304 in cities, 727 in Balkan region, 774, 811–812
working class in, 668, 678, 795 in eastern Roman Empire, 240 in former Soviet Union, 977, 979
English language globalization and, 974 in Germany, 701
Anglo-Saxons and, 304–305 influenza pandemic and, 834 in Holy Roman Empire, 482
as dominant international in mid-19th century, 681, 681(m) in Hungary, 701, 723, 801
language, 1003 among native Americans, 446 independence movements and,
European continent and, 340 in Rome, 204–205 985
[ Eth n i c g ro u p s — Fam i l i es
] Index I-23
among non-Romans, 230 industrialization in, 677(m) Executions, in French Revolution,

in Poland, 837, 842, 842(m) Iraq War and, 993 619, 620, 626
in Russia, 716, 776–777, 807 languages of (19th century), Existentialism, 926, 948
in Soviet Union, 973–974 692(m) Exodus (Ezechiel), 130
after World War I, 841 migration and, 763, 923–925 Expansion. See also Crusades
after World War II, 909(i) Muslims in, 997 of France, 511, 629, 630(m)
in Yugoslavia, 906, 975 Napoleon and, 646–649, 647(m) of Greece, 35, 55–56, 57(m)
Etruscans, 142(i), 151, 152(i), 156 nation-states in, 985 imperialist, 729–731
EU. See European Union at outbreak of World War I, 816(m) by Nazi Germany, 876–877,
Euboea, 51, 56 papacy and, 290 878–881, 880(m)
Eucharist after peace settlements (1919– Ottoman, 417–418, 417(m)
dignity of, 420 1920), 837(m) of Persian Empire, 45(m)
Jewish rituals and, 384 population in, 590, 988 Roman, 150, 158–160, 159(m),
as sacrament, 327, 328 postwar recovery in, 910–913, 186, 188(m)
transubstantiation and, 381, 452, 915–917, 933 Russian, 481, 712, 729–730, 751,
460 recovery in 1920s, 840–847 751(m)
Euclid, 133 Reformation in (c.1560), 468(m) before World War II, 875
Eugenics, 786 religious divisions of (c. 1648), Exploration. See also Invasions;
Eugénie (France), 711, 711(i) 501(m) specific individuals
Eulalius (Count), 268–269 Russia as power in, 560–563 Enlightenment and, 579
Euphrates River region, 3, 4, 8 scholars in, 289 by France, 511
Euripides (Athens), 90, 101 terrorism in, 992 by Portugal, 441, 442–443
Euro, 982, 983(m) totalitarianism in, 864–870 of space, 917, 940–941
Europe. See also specific locations, trade patterns of (c. 1740), 543(m) by Spain, 441, 444, 445
wars, and issues after World War I, 834, 835 Exports. See Trade; specific locations
in 400 b.c.e., 108(m) World War II and, 860, 881–882, Expressionism, 793
in c. 1050, 309(m) 887–889, 889(m) Extermination camps, World War II
in c. 1150, 342(m) after World War II, 894(m), 899, and, 884–886, 884(m)
in 1150–1190, 356(m) 901, 902(m) Eylau, battle of, 648(i)
in c. 1215, 375(m) European Coal and Steel Eyres, in England, 357
in c. 1340, 405(m) Community (ECSC), 912 Ezechiel (Jew in Alexandria), 130
in 1492, 437(m) European Community (EC), 981
c. 1715, 558(m) European Economic Community Fabian Society, 764
in 1750, 571(m) (EEC). See also Common Factories
in c. 1780, 603(m) Market child labor in, 678, 679–680,
in 1799, 634(m) European Economic Community 679(i)
in 1830, 669(m) (EEC, Common Market). See in Great Depression, 862
in 1850, 705(m) Common Market industrialization and, 675
in 1871, 740(m) European Union (EU), 912, Soviet, 865
in 1929, 855(m) 973–974, 982–984, 987, 1005 workers in, 678–679, 763
in Africa, 749–750, 921–923 in 2015, 983(m) working class and, 678
Black Death in, 411–413, 411(m) global economic crisis and, 996 Factory Act (Britain, 1833), 679–680
cholera in, 681, 681(m) members of, 974, 982–983 Factory system, 755
collapse of communism in, parliament of, 982 Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), 930
968(m) “Europe first” strategy, in World Fairs
Common Market in, 912–913, War II, 889 commerce and, 314
933, 981–982 Evangelicals, 451 upper class rejection of, 533
Congress of Vienna and, 654–657, Evans, Arthur, 28 Faith
656(m) Evelyn, John, 519(i) Council of Trent on, 460
crusades in, 374 Evolution, Darwin on, 737–738 crisis of, 925
economy in, 487–492, 974, Exarchate of Ravenna, 258, 274 Luther on, 451
1006(m) Exchequer (England), 358 Falange Party (Spain), 877
emigration from, 682, 762–763 Exclusion Crisis (England, 1678), Families
foreign-born population in, 924, 518, 520 in barbarian society, 230
974 Excommunication in Byzantine Empire, 259–260
global economic crisis and, 996 of Henry IV, 325 Civil Code of Napoleon and, 644
imperialist expansion by, Roman Catholic–Greek Orthodox corporations of, 318
729–731, 745–746, 747–754 schism and, 323n economy and, 490
I-24 Index
[ Fam i l i es — Fo r ts, Po r t u g u es e
]
Families (continued) in Spain, 860, 873, 877–878 First Intermediate Period (Egypt), 23
in factories, 679–680 spread of, 864 First International, 770
in France, 302–303, 624 totalitarianism of, 864 First Moroccan Crisis (1905), 811
in Greece, 62–63 World War I and, 822 First Punic War, 158
of helots, 65 young people and, 862 First Triumvirate (Rome), 167–168
in Italy, 304 Fashoda, Sudan, 811 First world (capitalist bloc), 900
medieval patrilineal, 303 Fathers. See Families; Men First World War. See World War I
middle class, 759 Fathers and Sons (Turgenev), 734 Five good emperors (Rome),
neoclassical depictions of, 588 Fatihah (Qur’an), 252 186–187
in postindustrial society, 946–947 Fatimah (Islam), 255, 287 Five Pillars of Islam, 253
in Rome, 146–148, 149, 192–193 Fatimids, 287, 287(i), 332 Five-year plans, Soviet, 865, 903
rural, 682 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 796 Flaccus, Valerius, 422
sizes of, 490, 764, 785, 786(i), 888, Federal Reserve Bank (U.S.), 860 Flagellants, 412
914 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), Flanders, 314, 319, 320, 414–415
in Soviet Union, 866, 963 953 Flappers, 848, 848(i)
in Sparta, 66 Feminism. See also Women Flaubert, Gustave, 733, 734
in Sweden, 872 in France, 703, 953(i) Flavian emperors (Rome), 186
Family allowances on marriage reform, 787 Fleming, Ian, 930
in Denmark, 914(i) nationalism and, 810 Flemish people, agriculture of, 550
in eastern Europe and Soviet in World War I, 827 Fleurs du mal, Les (Baudelaire), 734
Union, 914 Ferdinand I (Austrian Empire), 701, Fleury, Hercule de, 557
in Sweden, 872, 913 702 Floods
Family planning centers, 862 Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Empire), in Epic of Gilgamesh, 11
Famines, 957. See also Starvation 469 global warming and, 987
of 1846–1851, 698, 705(m) Ferdinand II (Aragon), 430, 436, by Nile River, 17
in Africa and Asia, 756 444, 447, 454 Noah and, 11
economic crisis and, 473, 487, Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Empire), Florence, 403(i), 434–435, 461
488, 489 482–483 Flour War (food riot, France, 1775),
Great Famine, 391, 402–404 Ferdinand VII (Spain), 652, 663 599
in Ireland, 698 Fergola, Salvatore, 672(i) Flu. See Influenza
in World War I, 828 Fertile Crescent, 5, 7 Flying buttresses, 353
Fanon, Frantz, 927 Fertility rates, population and, 988, Flying shuttle, 674
Farming package, 6–8 989 Food(s). See also Agriculture; Crops;
Farms and farming. See also Fertilizers, chemical, 756, 945 Diet (food)
Agriculture; Irrigation; Festivals increased production of, 590
Peasants; Rural areas; Serfs and in France, 621 of Paleolithic peoples, 5
serfdom in Greece, 89, 100 prices of, 551
British, 550–551 upper class rejection of, 533 in Rome, 180
Byzantine, 259 Feudal society, relationships in, shortages of, 473, 611, 698, 829,
Carolingian, 296 300–303 901, 965
collectivization of, 865, 883, 903, Fides (faithfulness), in Rome, 145 surpluses of, 7, 30
915, 916(i) Fiefs, 299–300 Food riots
enclosure and, 551 Fields, Gracie, 874 in Britain, 599
in former Soviet bloc, 979 Fighting “Téméraire” . . . (Turner), in France, 599
in Great Depression, 861 684, 684(i) Forced labor. See also Slaves and
in Greece, 55 Films. See Movies slavery
industrial innovation in, 756, 785 “Final Solution,” World War II and, Nazis and, 870, 885, 885(i), 901
medieval, 301 884. See also Holocaust Soviet, 906, 956
Minoan, 30 Finances. See Economy Ford, Henry, 844, 847
in postindustrial age, 945 Finland, 481, 797, 797(i), 912 Ford Foundation, 985
in Rome, 163, 216 Fire, for cooking, 5 Ford Motor Company, 844
surplus food and, 7, 30 Fireside chats, by Roosevelt, F. D., Foreign aid, Marshall Plan and, 905
tenant farmers and, 551, 771 872(i) Foreign policy. See specific locations
women and, 6 First Balkan War (1912), 813 Forests, acid rain and, 987
Fascism. See also Nazis and Nazism First Consul, Napoleon as, 641–642 Forging, 319
(Germany) First Crusade, 332, 333–336, 333(m), Formosa. See Taiwan
in Italy, 852–854 337, 383 Forms, Plato’s theory of, 117, 118
resistance to, 873, 875, 887 First Estate (clergy), in France, 611 Forts, Portuguese, 443, 443(m)
[ Fo rum — Frankish ki ngdoms
] Index I-25
Forum expansion of, 511, 629, 630(m), Second Empire in, 699, 722, 772
of Augustus, 178, 179(i) 634(m), 730–731 Seven Years’ War and, 593–594
in Rome, 153(i) explorations by, 446 slavery and, 524, 543, 689–690
Fossil fuels, 987 families in, 302–303 socialism in, 695–696, 962
Fouché, Joseph, 642 Germany and, 811, 838, 839, 906, Soviet bloc and, 950
Foundling hospitals, 591 907(m) Spain and, 511–512, 557, 663
Fountains Abbey, 331(f) government in, 391 student strike in, 954
Fourier, Charles, 695 Grand Army in, 646–649 Suez Canal and, 712, 731, 921
Fourteen Points (1918), 830, 836, in Great Depression, 873 taxation in, 486, 510, 512, 610,
909(i) Greek settlements in, 56 614, 615
Fourth Crusade, 364, 370, 380 Hitler and, 877 terrorism in, 1006
Fourth Lateran Council, 380–382 Huguenots (Calvinists) in, Thirty Years’ War and, 483
Fourth Republic (France), 910 474–476, 526 Tunisia and, 747
France, 983. See also French Hundred Years’ War and, 413–416 United States and, 602
Revolution; Napoleon I Huns in, 231 urbanization in, 763
Bonaparte; Paris; Second imperialism by, 512, 730–731, Vichy France in, 882
Empire; specific rulers 747, 751, 843, 844 Vietnam and, 731, 919, 951(m)
in 12th century, 340–341 Indochina and, 751, 810, 919 voting in, 611, 612, 615, 618, 641,
in 15th century, 429 industry in, 757 658, 667, 698, 699
Algeria and, 682, 690, 731, 923 inflation in, 959 War of the Polish Succession and,
American Revolution and, 601 Iraq War and, 993 563
American settlement by, 546 Italian unification and, 717, 719 War of the Spanish Succession
Austria and, 563, 564, 593, 617, Italian Wars and, 463–464 and, 556–557
712 Jews in, 383–384, 395 wars of religion in, 474–476, 580
authority of state in, 510–514 July revolution in, 667 woman suffrage in, 841, 841(f)
birthrate in, 785 June Days in, 699, 699(i), 703 women in, 644, 908, 953, 953(i)
Bourbon restoration in, 653, 655, liberalism in, 694 World War I and, 815, 822,
658 literacy in, 553, 590 823–824, 826
Breton and Corsican Louis IX and, 395(m) after World War I, 836, 837, 838,
independence and, 985 in Middle Ages, 359–360, 360(m) 840, 842–843
Burgundy in, 430 middle class in, 587 World War II and, 881–882, 888,
Calvinism in, 473, 474, 579 Milan and, 431 892, 895
Canada and, 594 monarchy in, 505, 506–514, 614, Franche-Comté, 512
Capetian dynasty in, 305–306 617–619, 658 Francia, Gaul as, 233
after Charlemagne, 295 Morocco and, 811 Francis (Saint), 368
colonies of, 491, 492, 492(m), 682, Muslims in, 997 Francis (son of Henry II, France),
754, 864 Naples and, 431 467, 474
Congress of Vienna and, 654, 655, Navarre and, 372(m) Francis I (France), 461, 462(i),
712, 713 non-Europeans in, 923–924, 973 463(i), 464, 465, 466
constitutional monarchy in, 614, Peace of Westphalia and, 484, Francis I (Holy Roman Empire),
615, 667 485(m) 564, 691
constraints on power of, 556 peasants in, 611, 614 Franciscans, 368, 385
Crimean War and, 712–713 plague epidemic in, 489 Francis Ferdinand (Austria), 814,
crusades in, 374 political system in, 305–306 815(i)
de Gaulle in, 910, 923, 939, 950 Protestants in, 452 Francis Joseph (Austrian Empire),
diplomacy in, 564–565 Prussia and, 617–618, 720, 702, 712, 720, 722, 723, 726
division of (1940), 882(m) 721–722 Francis Xavier, 461
divorce in, 787 railroads in, 711 Franck, Hans Ulrich, 484(i)
Dreyfus Affair in, 799–800 reforms in, 597–598 Franco, Francisco, 877, 878, 960
Dutch and, 511, 523, 621, 629 regional departments in, 615, Franco-Prussian War, 722, 732, 756,
economic crises in, 962 616(m) 773, 811, 823
in ECSC, 912 religion in, 466, 658 Frank, Anne, 926
education in, 687, 946 republics in, 618, 628, 698–699, Frankenstein (Shelley), 639, 660
Egypt and, 747 772, 799–800 Frankfurt, 987
England and, 359, 394, 558(m) revolution and civil war in Frankfurt parliament (1848), 701
in Enlightenment, 567–568, (1870–1871), 733 Frankish kingdoms, 262–266, 269,
582–583 Rome and, 160 280, 290. See also Carolingian
in Entente Cordiale, 811 Russia and, 710, 712–713, 811 Empire
I-26 Index
[ Fra n ks — G e n d e r a n d ge n d e r issu es
]
Franks. See also Carolingian Empire; in former Soviet Union, 979 Frontiers. See also Boundaries;
Frankish kingdoms in grain, 599 Invasions
Clovis and, 249 NAFTA and, 981 Byzantine, 257–259
under Hugh Capet, 305, 306(m) Smith, Adam, on, 581 of Carolingian Empire, 291, 299
Roman Empire and, 233 Free Woman, The (newspaper), 696 Christianity along, 372–373
settlement patterns of, 264 Freikorps, 835 Congress of Vienna and, 656(m)
Frederick I (Brandenburg-Prussia), French Academy of Science, 792 of Roman Empire, 202–205
526 French and Indian War. See Seven Fugger family, 465–466
Frederick I Barbarossa (Germany) Years’ War Führer, Hitler as, 868
conquests of, 361–363 French East India Company, 546 Fulbert (cleric), 349, 350
imperial power of, 341 French Empire, 628, 639 Fur trade, 491, 511
portrait of, 361(i) French Indochina. See Indochina
territory held by, 356(m) French language, 388, 623 Gaelic language, 693, 798
Third Crusade and, 370 French Revolution (1787–1800) Gagarin, Yuri, 917, 940
Frederick II (Sicily, Germany, Holy conservative thinkers on, 657 Gaius. See Caligula
Roman Empire), 392–393 Directory in, 625, 628, 629, Gaius Gracchus. See Gracchus
Frederick II (the Great, Prussia), 640–641 family
564 education during, 623 Galatians. See Gauls (Celts)
Freemasonry and, 587 fall of Bastille and, 612(i), Galen, 495
partition of Poland and, 594(i), 613–614 Galerius (Roman Empire), 213
595 family life in, 624 Galicia, 693, 826
reforms by, 595, 596, 597 Freemasonry and, 588 Galileo Galilei, 494–495, 494(i)
Sanssouci palace built by, 588 major events of, 627(f) Gallicanism, 432
Seven Years’ War and, 593, 594 as model of modern revolution, Gallienus (Rome), 205
Frederick V (Palatinate), 482 607–608 Gallo-Romans, 265
Frederick the Wise (elector of monarchy in, 614, 617–619 Gambling, 590
Saxony), 451 origins of, 609–614 Game laws, in England, 586
Frederick William I (Prussia), Paris in, 613–614, 618, 620–621, Gandharan style, 135(i)
562–563 626 Gandhi, Mohandas (“Mahatma”),
Frederick William II (Prussia), 608 reforms after, 614–616 863–864, 863(i), 918, 927
Frederick William III (Prussia), 650 Republic of Virtue during, 620, García Márquez, Gabriel, 1001
Frederick William IV (Prussia), 621–624 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 700, 718–719
700, 701 resistance to, 624–625 Gas (natural gas), in Russia, 981
Frederick William of Hohenzollern Rousseau and, 582 Gas (poison), in World War I, 824
(Great Elector of Brandenburg- Terror in, 619–628 Gas chambers, in World War II,
Prussia), 526 Vendée Rebellion and, 624–625, 885
Free Companies, 416 626 Gasoline engine, 755
Free Corps (Dutch Republic), 608 wars during, 617, 619, 620–621, Gaul. See also France
Freedom(s). See also Religious 626, 628–633, 630(m) kingdom in, 249, 262
toleration; Rights women in, 606(i), 607, 615, 624 Magyars in, 298
in cities and towns, 319 worldwide reaction to, 633–635 monasteries in, 268
in Greece, 61, 91 French Wars of Religion, 474–476, Rome and, 160, 185, 191, 231
philosophes on, 576, 577 580 Visigoths and, 231, 272
religious, 596–597 Freud, Sigmund, 783, 784, 785, Gauls (Celts), 157
in Rome, 150 789–790, 790(i), 802 Gay liberation movement, 952
for slaves, 9 Friars. See also Religious orders Gays. See Homosexuals and
Freedom of a Christian (Luther), 451 Dominican, 374 homosexuality
Free French, 883, 887, 910 Franciscan, 368 Gaza, 958
Free markets. See also Market(s) Friedan, Betty, 953 Gehry, Frank, 1004
physiocrats and, 597–598 Friedland, battle at, 649 Gender and gender issues. See also
Smith, Adam, on, 580, 598 Friedrich, Caspar David, 660, Homosexuals and
Freemasons, 587–588. See also 661(i) homosexuality; Men; Women
Masons and Masonic lodges Friends of Blacks, 632 division of labor and, 8
Free peasants, 301 Froissart, Jean, 415 in Egypt, 22
Free people, in England, 357–358, Fronde, The (France), 506–507, in Great Depression, 862
359 508 among Israelites, 49
Free trade Front for National Liberation (FNL, in Nazi Germany, 869
in 19th century, 693, 694, 711, 759 Algeria), 923 Olympic Games and, 52–53
[ G e n d e r a n d ge n d e r issu es — G l o b a l iz at i o n
] Index I-27
in postwar society, 927–929, 947 Germanic peoples and kingdoms. Social Democratic Party in, 769,
in protest movements, 954 See Barbarians; specific groups 949
religion and, 737 German people in Thirty Years’ War, 482, 483
social distinctions in mid-19th in Austria-Hungary, 774, 801 in Three Emperors’ League, 773
century, 688–689 in Austrian Empire, 691 in Triple Alliance, 810
social roles and, 523, 592, in Baltic region, 373 unification and, 526, 701, 705,
784–785, 828–829, 947 as refugees, 901 719–722, 721(m), 773
in space race, 940(i) Germany. See also East Germany; urbanization in, 763
wages and, 770, 845 Nazis and Nazism (Germany); war guilt of, 838
in welfare state, 913 West Germany; World War I; women in, 796, 869, 908, 911(i)
General Maximum (France), 620 World War II; specific leaders workhouses in, 590
General School Ordinance (Austria), anti-Semitism in, 800 working class in, 774
596 antisocialist laws in, 795 World War I and, 814–815, 822,
General strike birthrate in, 785 825–826, 830, 834
in England (1926), 843, 845 Bismarck in, 773–774, 775, 777 Zollverein in, 692
in Germany, 835 after Charlemagne, 295 Germ theory, 727
in Russia (1914), 808 colonies of, 754, 804, 838, 843 Gerome, Jean-Léon, 711(i)
Syndicalists on, 796 division of, 901, 906–907, 907(m) Gestapo, 868–869, 884
unionism and, 769 in Dual Alliance, 775 Geta (Rome), 203(i), 204
General will, Rousseau on, 581–582 duchies in, 306 Ghana, state of, 203(i), 921–922
Generation gap, 947 economy in, 756, 842, 906 Ghettos, Jews in, 776–777, 802, 884
Genetics, 738, 914, 942, 945 empire in, 392–393 Ghibellines, 361
Geneva, Calvin in, 453 in Enlightenment, 583 Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 424–425, 425(i),
Geneva Conference (1954), 919, France and, 633, 838, 839 427
951–952 government of, 360–363 Giacometti, Alberto, 893(i)
Genghis Khan. See Chingiz Great Depression in, 861(i), 867 Giant Hamburger with Pickle
(Genghis) Khan imperialism by, 745, 747, 804 Attached (Oldenburg), 947,
Genius of Christianity industry in, 756 947(i)
(Chateaubriand), 646 intellectual thought in, 633 Gibbon, Edward, 582
Genoa, Black Death in, 410–411 Investiture Conflict and, 321, Gibraltar, 513
Genocide, 974. See also Holocaust 324(m), 326, 327, 337, 341 Gift economy, in western Europe,
in Africa, 990 Iraq War and, 993 266
ethnic cleansing as, 975 Jews in, 413, 801 Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian hero),
World War II and, 881, 899, 909 Kulturkampf in, 737 10, 11
Gentilhomme, 533 in League of Nations, 840 Giolitti, Giovanni, 798
Gentry, in England, 432, 586 literary works in, 686 Giotto, 390, 391(i)
Geoffrey of Anjou, 355n Magyars in, 298 Girls. See Gender; Women
Geoffrin, Marie-Thérèse, 578, in Middle Ages, 360–363 Girondins (France), 618–619, 620,
578(i) Morocco and, 811 621, 624, 626
Geography. See also specific Muslims in, 997(i) Girton (women’s college), 729
locations Napoleon and, 649, 651, 653 Giza, pyramids at, 20–21, 21(i)
of Egypt, 17 nationalism in, 633 Gla, palace at, 35
of Greece, 41, 54 non-European immigrants to, Gladiators (Rome), 155, 181, 182(i),
mathematical, 134 923–924 187(i)
of Mesopotamia, 8 occupation of, 892, 901 Gladstone, William, 771
Paleolithic, 5–6, 6(m) Pietism in, 584, 658 Glanvill, 358
of Rome, 150, 190(m) Poland and, 892 Glasnost (openness), 964, 969
Geology, 567 princes in, 362–363 Glenn, John, 940
Geometry, Euclid and, 133 principalities in, 392–393 Global economy, 979, 993–995
George I (England), 559 Realpolitik in, 719–722 Atlantic system in, 541, 542–550
George II (England), 559 reparations after World War I, collapse of, 974, 995–996, 1005
George III (England), 600 837–839 shocks in, 995
George V (England), 825 republic in, 834 Globalization, 1005–1007. See also
German Confederation, 656, 721 reuniting of, 966, 967(i) Immigrants and immigration;
German Democratic Party, 839(i) Russian Revolution and, 831 Market(s); Market economy;
German Federal Republic. See West Saxons from, 233 Migration; specific issues
Germany Schmalkaldic League and, 467 attacks on, 986
Germania (Germany), 264(i), 307(i) settlers in Poland from, 429 of cities, 981, 984–985
I-28 Index
[ G l o b a l iz at i o n — G reat M os q u e
]
Globalization (continued) churches, 347–348, 351, 352–354, of Sparta, 64–67
of communications, 963, 996 354(i), 389, 389(i) technological development and,
of culture and society, 996–1005 painting, 389–390 941–942
immigrants and, 973, 974 in Venice, 434 of United States, 601–602,
nation-states and, 981–986 Gouges, Olympe de, 615, 621 910–911
pollution, environmentalism, and, Goulash communism, 916 of Venice, 433
986–988 Government. See also of Wessex, 304
population growth and, 988–989 Administration; Authority; in West Germany, 910
telecommunication systems and, Kings and kingdoms; Law in World War I, 828
974 codes; Politics; Society; State World War II and, 886–887
Global markets, 974 (nation); specific locations and after World War II, 910
Global organizations, 981, 985–986 rulers Goya y Lucientes, Francisco Jose
Global warming, 987 of Athens, 68–70, 83–85 de, 651(i)
Glorious Revolution (England, of barbarian tribes, 231 Gracchus family
1688), 519 in Byzantine Empire, 259–260, Gaius Sempronius, 147, 163, 164
Gödel, Kurt, 875 364 Tiberius, 147, 163–164
God figurines, from Judah, 49(i) after Carolingians, 299–308 Grain
Gods. See also Cult(s); Polytheism; of cities and towns, 319–320 deregulation of trade and, 597
Religion(s); specific deities constitutionalism and, 505–506 in Great Famine, 402, 403
Babylonian, 14 of Dutch Republic, 521–522 Paleolithic, 5
Egyptian, 3, 25, 26 in eastern Europe, 363–364 Soviet imports of, 963
Greek, 57–59, 88, 89 in eastern Roman Empire, as staple crop, 489
Hittite, 27–28 238–239 Granada, Spain, 447, 962
Indo-European, 27 economy and, 581 Grand Alliance. See Allies, World
Mesopotamian, 4, 10 of Egypt, 20 War II and
Mycenaean, 34 of England, 305, 340, 355–359, Grand Army (France)
Roman, 148–149 396–397, 505–506, 559, 910 conquests of, 646–649
Goering, Hermann, 869 of English North American retreat from Moscow by, 652
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 584, colonies, 524 Grand tours, of Europe, 588
660 of France, 359–360, 505, 582, 624, Gratian (church reformer), 328
Golan Heights, 958 625, 733, 873, 910 Great Awakening, 584, 585(i), 659
Gold, from New World, 441, 445, of Germany, 308, 360–363 Great Britain. See also Britain;
446, 465, 477, 487, 488 in Great Depression, 861, 862, 867 England
Gold Coast (Africa), 750, 921–922 Greek, 64–70 formation of, 559
Golden Age of Hellenistic kingdoms, 125 Great Charter. See Magna Carta
in Greece, 77–109 Hittite, 27 Great Council (Venice), 433
of Latin literature (Rome), Hobbes on, 520 Great Depression (1930s)
183–184 as institution, 355–364 in Britain, 861, 872–873
in Roman politics and economy, intervention in society by, 688, in central Europe, 874
186–187, 188–193, 204 764 culture during, 874–875
Golden Ass, The (Apuleius), 191, 201 of Italy, 362, 910 in democracies, 871–875
Golden Horde, 400 of Japan, 731, 752 economy in, 859, 860–861, 862,
Gole, Jacob, 567(i) labor strikes and, 768–769 863
Gömbös, Gyula, 874 Locke on, 520–521 in France, 873
Gonne, Maud, 798 Mesopotamian, 10 global suffering due to, 892
Good Emperors. See Five Good in Middle Ages, 391–404 in non-Western countries,
Emperors under Napoleon, 642–643 862–864
Goods and services, in online nation-states and, 710 society and, 862
marketplace, 998 in Near East, 42 in Sweden, 871–872
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 938, 957, parliamentary, 559, 960 totalitarianism during, 859–860,
963–965, 964(i), 966, 977 popolo in, 399–400 864–870
Gorbachev, Raisa, 964(i) reforms after Seven Years’ War, in United States, 871
Gordon, George, 600 595–598 Great Famine, 391, 402–404
Gordon riots (London, 1780), 600 representative, 396–397, 524 Great Fear, in rural France, 614
Gospels, 194, 451 Roman, 152–156, 163, 188, Great Fire (London), 518, 519(i)
Gothic arts and architecture 212–215, 235–236 Great Khan (Mongols), 400. See also
cathedral elements, 347, 351, 389, Smith, Adam, on role of, 581 Chingiz (Genghis) Khan
389(i), 424 of Spain, 396 Great Mosque (Damascus), 256(i)
[ G reat N o r th e rn War — Hamlet
] Index I-29
Great Northern War, 562, 563(m) reemergence of, 42, 50–54 Guam, 804, 883
Great Persecution, of Christians, religion in, 57–59, 89–90 Guangzhou, China, foreigners in,
217, 218 Rome and, 150–151, 160–161, 201 547, 690
Great powers Sea Peoples and, 35 Guardianship, of children, 787
Britain as, 560 slavery in, 61, 90 Guelphs, 361
at Congress of Vienna, 654 trade in, 55–56 Guernica (Picasso), 878
Diplomatic Revolution and, 593 urban areas in, 85–89 Guest workers, 924–925
Great Pyramid (Giza), 9(i), 21, 21(i) women in, 42, 59, 62, 89, 90–92, Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao),
Great Reforms (Russia), 714 91(i) 1004, 1005
Great Schism Greece (modern) Guilds
of 1054, 328 Balkan region and, 812, 813 abolition of, 597
of 1378–1417, 410, 418–421 Byzantine Empire and, 283 Byzantine, 281
Great Society, 951 in cold war, 904–905 in Middle Ages, 318
Great Sphinx, 16, 18(i) democracy in, 960 universities as, 351
Great War. See World War I in EU, 982 Guillotin, J. I., 619(i)
Greece (ancient). See also Athens; independence of, 664–665 Guillotine, 619, 619(i), 620, 621, 624
Classical Greece; Hellenistic migration from, 841 Guise family, 474, 475
world; Ionia; Minoan Crete; Turks and, 664–665 Guizot, François, 687
Mycenaeans; Sparta; specific World War II and, 892 Gulag, 866, 916, 917, 956, 1002
locations Greek fire, 260 Gulag Archipelago, The
in 400 b.c.e., 108(m) Greek language, 15 (Solzhenitsyn), 956
Aegean region and, 31(m) classical, 242, 243 Gunpowder, 416
agriculture in, 55 Hebrew Bible in, 138 Gustavus Adolphus (Sweden), 483
Alexander the Great and, in Hellenistic kingdoms, 124, 135 Gutenberg, Johannes, 447, 448
113–114, 120, 122 Linear B and, 33 Guyenne, 413
arts in, 70–71, 99–103 in Mycenae, 32 Guyon, Jeanne Marie, 556
citizenship in, 56–58, 59–60 Rome and, 148, 237 Gypsies
city-states in, 54–63 Greek Orthodox Church in Britain, 998
civilizations in, 4, 27 Ottoman Turks and, 481, 501(m) Nazis and, 860, 870, 886
competition in, 52–53, 53(i) separation from Catholic church,
cross-cultural contacts in, 51 323 Habsburg dynasty. See also Dual
drama in, 99–103 in Sicily, 309(m) monarchy; Holy Roman
expansion of, 35, 55–56, 57(m) Green Armies, 851 Empire
Golden Age in, 77–109 Greenhouse effect, 987 in Austria, 485, 722
government in, 64–70 Greenland, Vikings and, 297 in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,
Hellenistic gods and, 137 Green Party, 987 723
hero cults in, 89–90 Greens (faction), 237, 240 Balkan region and, 811, 812
hoplites in, 60 Gregoras, Nicephorus, 410 challenges to, 828
intellectual thought in, 70–73, Gregorian calendar, 561, 830 France and, 512
93–103 Gregorian reform, 324 German unification and, 721(m)
Jews in, 138 Gregory VII (Pope), 321, 323, in Holy Roman Empire, 393, 482,
Macedonia and, 119–120 324–326, 326(i), 328, 369 483, 527–528, 564
metallurgy in, 51 Gregory XI (Pope), 418 Peace of Westphalia and, 484–485,
metics in, 90 Gregory of Tours (Bishop) 485(m)
Minoan impact on, 28–30, 31(m) on Clovis, 249 state building by, 527(m)
Mycenaeans and, 31–34, 31(m) Histories by, 265, 269 wars with Valois dynasty and
noncitizens in, 61 Jews, commerce, and, 267 Ottomans, 463–465
Olympic Games in, 52–53 power of bishops and, 268 World War I and, 814, 836
Peloponnesian War and, 78, on relics of St. Martin, 266 Hadith literature, 256
104–107, 105(m) on Roman Empire, 249, 250 Hadrian (Rome), 186–187, 188(m)
after Peloponnesian War, 114–116 Gregory the Great (Pope), 270, Hagia Sophia, 240, 417
Persian wars with, 78–81 273–274, 304 Hague, The, women’s peace meeting
philosophers in, 42, 71–72 Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 591(i) in, 828
Phoenician alphabet in, 51 Gros, Antoine-Jean, 648(i) Haiti, 965, 989. See also St.
polis in, 42 Grosz, George, 849–850, 849(i) Domingue
political disunity in, 118–119 Grotius, Hugo, 497 Hajj (pilgrimage), 253
red-figure painting in, 40(i), 58(i), Grozny, Chechnya, 981 Hamas, 991(m)
76(i) Guadalcanal, battle at, 889 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 481, 498
I-30 Index
[ Ham m u ra b i — H itl e r
]
Hammurabi (Babylon), laws of, Help-desk services, 998–999 Heterosexuality, 846
14–15, 47 Helsinki accords, on human rights, AIDS and, 989
Handbook of the Militant Christian 958 Hezbollah, 991(m), 992
(Erasmus), 449, 449(i) Hemingway, Ernest, 846 Hierarchy. See also Classes
Handel, George Frideric, 555 Henry I (England), 340 in Athens, 68–69
Handguns, 416 Henry I (Saxony), 306 in Christian churches, 198–199,
Hannibal (Carthage), 158, 160 Henry II (England), 337, 355–359, 221, 321, 368
Hanover, house of, 559 356(m), 357(i), 358(i) in Egyptian society, 22
Hanseatic League, 429 Henry II (France), 464, 466, 474 Mesopotamian, 9, 10, 14
Hanukkah, origins of, 138 Henry III (England), 393, 394, Neolithic, 8
Harald Hardrada (Norway), 338, 396–397 Paleolithic, 5
339 Henry III (France), 475, 477 Plato on, 117
Hard Times (Dickens), 734 Henry III (Holy Roman Empire), in Rome, 191
Harold (Wessex), 338, 339 322–323, 325 social, 4, 276, 300–301
Harry Potter novels, 1001 Henry IV (Germany), 321, 324–326, Hieroglyphs (Egypt), 19, 19(i), 112(i)
Harun al-Rashid (Abbasid caliph), 326(i), 341 High culture
285 Henry IV (Henry of Navarre, during cold war, 930
Harvey, William, 495 France), 474, 475–476, 510 in vernacular, 364–367
Hashim clan, 255 Henry V (Germany), 326, 341, Higher education, 688, 716, 729,
Hasidism, 584 360 937. See also Universities
Hastings, battle of, 339 Henry VI (Holy Roman Empire), in Greece, 95
Hatshepsut (Egypt), 24–25, 24(i) 392 High schools, in France, 772
Hattusas (Hittite capital), 28, 35 Henry VII (England), 432 High-tech industries
Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Henry VIII (England), 453–455, in Ireland, 962
726–727 459, 461, 466 in Japan, 994
Havel, Václav, 966, 967, 1000 Henry of Anjou. See Henry II Hijra, 252
Hawaii, 804 (England) Hildebrand, 323. See also Gregory
Haydn, Franz Joseph, 589 Henry of Navarre. See Henry IV VII
Haywood, Eliza, 555 (France) Hillel (Rabbinic teacher), 194
Headscarf, controversy over, 997(i) Henry the Lion (Saxony and Hillesum, Etty, 859, 860, 885, 895
Health. See also Diseases; Health Bavaria), 363, 373 Hilliard, Nicholas, 479(i)
care Henry the Navigator (Portugal), Himmler, Heinrich, 868
air quality and, 565, 987 442 Hindenburg, Paul von, 825
as global issue, 989, 1005 Henry the Younger (England), 357 Hindus, 547, 730, 809, 863, 864, 918
healing by gods and, 136, 137(i) Hephaestus (god), 58 Hip-hop, 1000
insurance for, 873 Hera (god), 58, 148 Hipparchia (female Cynic), 133
malaria treatments and, 756 Heraclius (Byzantine Empire), 257 Hippias (Athens), 70
in Rome, 179 Herakles (Hercules), cult of, 90 Hippocrates of Cos (physician), 99
Health care, 729, 764, 913, 914 Herculaneum, Italy, 180(i), 588 Hippocratic Oath, 99
Hebrew Bible. See Bible Heredity principles, 738 Hirohito (Japan), 876, 883
Hebrews. See Jews and Judaism Heresy, 199. See also Inquisition Hiroshima, bombing of, 891(i), 892
Heisenberg, Werner, 875 anti-heretic campaigns and, 237, Hispaniola, 546, 631
Heliocentrism, 134, 493, 494 371(m) Historians
Hellenistic world, 113–114, 122–139 Cathars and, 369 Herodotus as, 45, 98–99
arts in, 129–131 clarification on acts of, 221 on Punic Wars, 160
culture in, 122, 129–138 dualism as, 369–370 Thucydides as, 98, 99, 104, 106
fall of, 128 Fourth Lateran Council on, 382 Historical and Critical Dictionary
kingdoms in, 122–128, 123(m) Lollards and, 420 (Bayle), 567
languages in, 135 Hermes (god), 58 Histories (Gregory of Tours), 265
Macedonia and, 119–120 Hermit monks, 330 Histories, The (Herodotus), 98
philosophy in, 131–133 Hero cults, 89–90 History of the Decline and Fall of the
religions in, 135–138 Herodotus (historian), 45, 98–99 Roman Empire, The (Gibbon),
Rome and, 128, 139(m), 160, 161, Hero of Alexandria, 134 582
191 Hervier, Louis Adolphe, 699(i) History of the Peloponnesian War
science in, 133–134 Herzen, Alexander, 695 (Thucydides), 99
society in, 126–128 Herzl, Theodor, 803 Hitler, Adolf
Heloise, 349–350 Hesiod (poet), 54, 55, 63 anti-Semitism of, 854, 870, 876
Helots, 65, 119 Hetaira, 92 assassination attempt against, 888
[ H itl e r — H yg i e n e
] Index I-31
Brown Shirts and, 842 Holy wars, crusades as, 331, 332 Hubris (arrogance), 102
in central Europe, 878–881 Home (Morrison), 1001 Hudson Bay region, 513
charisma of, 873 Home front, in World War I, 827–829 Hugenberg, Alfred, 867
expansion by, 876–877 Homeland security, in Rome, 157 Hugh (abbot of Cluny), 326(i)
Final Solution and, 884 Homelessness. See also Refugees Hugh Capet (France), 305
media and, 847 in cities, 553 Hugh of St. Victor, 327–328
Munich Pact and, 880–881 and economic crisis (17th Huguenots, 474–476, 510, 526. See
Mussolini and, 854 century), 490 also Protestantism
rise to power, 859–860 in Middle East, 997 Human capital, 565
Spain and, 878 after World War II, 899 Humanism
suicide of, 889 Homer, 32, 41, 52, 53–54 Christian, 448–450, 451, 454
totalitarianism of, 867–870 Home rule in Renaissance, 422–423
World War II and, 653, 882 for Ireland, 772, 798 Humanitas doctrine (Cicero), 161
Hitler Youth, 869 for Magyars, 701 Human rights, 497, 871, 958, 980(i),
Hittites, 26, 27–28 “Homes for heroes,” 845–846, 846(i) 982
Egypt and, 25, 27 Homo sapiens, 4–5 Humbert of Silva Candida, 323
invasions of, 34–35 Homosexuals and homosexuality Hume, David, 578, 583(f)
Hobbes, Thomas, 506, 520, 582 activism by, 952 Hundred Days (France), 653, 655
Ho Chi Minh, 864, 919 AIDS and, 989 Hundreds (government units), 305
Hogenberg, Franz, 472(i) in eastern Roman Empire, 241 Hundred Years’ War, 410, 413–416,
Hohenlinden, battle at, 648 in Greece, 66, 95 415(m)
Hohenstaufen dynasty, 361 Nazis and, 869, 886 Hungary, 956, 982, 983. See also
Hohenzollern family, 485 persecution of, 592, 788–789 Magyars
Holbein, Hans, 461 in Soviet Union, 866 after 1529, 437(m)
Holland. See Dutch Republic as “third sex,” 788 in 17th century, 537(m)
Holocaust, 883–886, 884(m), 920, Homo Zapiens (Pelevin), 1003 1848 revolution in, 701–702
926 Hong Kong, 691, 918, 994, 994(m), Austria and, 528, 564, 564(m)
Holstein, 720 999 in Austria-Hungary, 723, 723(m)
Holy Alliance (1815), 657 Honorius (western Roman Empire), bureaucracy in, 728
Holy communion. See Eucharist 215, 231 communism in, 905, 966
Holy Land. See Crusader states; Hoover, Herbert, 871 economy in, 950, 979, 998
Crusades; Israel; Jerusalem; Hoplites, in Greece, 60, 60(i), 71(i), fascism and, 860
Middle East; Palestine 76(i), 79 government in, 363
Holy Roman Emperor Horace (Rome), 183 in Great Depression, 874
election of, 526 Hospitals, 565, 713, 943 Huns in, 230–231
as emperor of Austria, 649 Hostage crisis (Iran), 959, 990 liberalism in, 694
use of title, 393 Hotchkiss machine guns, 813 Magyars in, 308, 701, 723, 841
Holy Roman Empire. See also House, Edward, 810 Mongols in, 400
Hapsburg dynasty; Ottonian Households nationalism in, 801
kings in postindustrial society, 929, 946 after Peace of Westphalia, 485
in c. 1340, 405(m) in Soviet Union, 963 protests in, 917
Brandenburg-Prussia and, 526 House of Commons (England), 515, Social Democratic Party in, 769
Burgundy and, 415, 431 559, 560 Turks and, 564
capital of, 428 House of Lords (England), 516, 668 after World War I, 835, 836, 837,
France and, 512 Housing 841
German Confederation after, in 1920s, 845–846, 846(i) World War II and, 882, 888–889,
656 at Çatalhöyük, 7(i) 892
Luther and, 451 in cities, 553, 726, 984 after World War II, 901
Otto I and, 306 in Frankish villages, 265 Hunger. See Famines
Peace of Augsburg and, 473 in Greece, 85 Huns, 229, 230–231, 232(m)
Peace of Westphalia and, 484–486, real estate bubble and, 995–996 Hunter-gatherers, 3
485(m) in Rome, 162(i), 167, 179 Hunting, 6, 462, 761–762
political formations in, 429 Sumerian, 8 Hus, Jan, 420, 421, 451
Protestantism in, 469, 482 in Sweden, 963 Huskisson, William, 673
Thirty Years’ War and, 482–484, urbanization and, 680 Hussein, Saddam, 990, 991, 993
485(m), 488 after World War II, 903 Hussites, 420–421
weakening of, 393, 527 Howitzers, 813, 825 Hydrostatics, 133
Holy Synod, 562 Hubble, Edwin, 875, 941 Hygiene, 847, 852
I-32 Index
[ Hyksos p e ople — Industrialization
]
Hyksos people, in Egypt, 23, 47 in Athenian Golden Age, 83 Britain and, 678, 690, 730, 750,
Hyperinflation, in Rome, 215 British, 730, 747, 749–750 863, 918
in China, 730, 731, 808 civilization in, 4
Iberian peninsula, 430. See also “civilizing mission” of, 754 decolonization in, 918
Portugal; Spain compared to colonialism, 689 economy in, 995, 998, 1006(m)
IBM, 944 French, 512, 730–731, 747, 751 Europeans and, 443, 547–548
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 289 German, 745, 754 French Revolution and, 633
Ibsen, Henrik, 766 Japanese, 751–752, 876 Gandharan style from, 135(i)
Iceland, Vikings in, 297 missionaries and, 659, 730, 731, Gandhi in, 863–864, 863(i), 918
Iconoclasm, 261–262, 294 754 in Great Depression, 863
Icons, 260–262, 261(i), 282 multinationals and, 944 independence for, 918
Idealism, Kant and, 583 new imperialism, 746–754 Jesuits in, 461
Ideal Marriage: . . . (van de Velde), Roman, 156–163 nationalism in, 730
846 after World War I, 843–844 outsourcing to, 998
Ideas, modernity and, 790–794 World War II and, 875–877 partition of, 918
Identity Imperium (power in Rome), 154, railroads in, 676
deterritorialization of, 985 177 resistance to colonialism in,
Greek, 53, 73–74 Imports 808–809
Islamic, 990 Dutch, 522–523 Russia and, 751, 981
sexual, 784, 952 of New World gold and silver, 488 sati in, 659, 730
Ideologies, 337, 674, 688, 689, slave, 545(f) Seven Years’ War in, 594
691–697. See also specific Impressionism, 766–767, 767(i) textiles in, 678
ideologies Inanna (Ishtar, god), 10. See also War of the Austrian Succession
Ides of March, 169, 169(i) Ishtar and, 564
Ignatius (bishop of Antioch), 197 Incas, 445, 536 World War I and, 824
Ignatius of Loyola, 460 Income tax World War II and, 887, 892
Île-de-France, 306, 341 in Britain, 961 Indian National Congress, 750, 808
Iliad, The (Homer), 32, 41, 52 in U.S., 962 Indian Ocean region, 23, 443(m),
Illegal immigrants, 974, 998 Indentured servants, 543, 547 731
Illegitimate children, 547, 681 Independence, 900, 979. See also Indian Rebellion (1857), 730
Illiteracy, 553, 728. See also Literacy specific locations Indians. See Native Americans
Illness. See Diseases; Health; in Africa, 921–923 Indigenous peoples
Medicine in Asia, 918–919 in Americas, 445
Illuminated manuscripts, 378(i), 379 of Austrian Netherlands, 609 Catholic missionaries and, 460,
Illyria, 119 of Czechs, 482 461
Imam, 255, 287 Dutch, 478, 485, 521 Individuals, roles in society, 580–582
Immaculate Conception doctrine, of Greece, 664–665 Indochina. See also Cochin China;
737 of India, 863–864 Vietnam
Immigrants and immigration. See of Ireland, 830, 843 in 1954, 919(m)
also Migration in Latin America, 665–666, 666(m) cold war in, 919
French racism and, 962 in Middle East, 919–920 France and, 751, 810, 919
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 124 125 of Portugal, 483 Indochinese Communist Party, 864
illegal, 974, 998 regional, 985 Indo-European languages
industrialization and, 680 of Serbs, 664 in Greece, 31
motivation for, 762–763 in Soviet bloc, 968(m) of Hittites, 27
non-European to Europe, of United States, 601–602 Minoan and, 28–29
923–925, 973, 973(i), 974 Independence movements. See also Indonesia, 843, 844, 883, 923
in Sweden, 963 specific locations Inductive reasoning, 495
transnational culture of, 1000 in 1820s, 663(m) Indulgences, 419, 450, 460
to Western Hemisphere, 744(i) decolonization and, 918–919, Indulgents (France), 625–626
Imperial cult (Rome), 186 920–921, 933 Industrialization. See also Factories
Imperial Diet of Worms (1521), 451 Independents (England), 515, 516 in Austria-Hungary, 757
Imperialism Index of forbidden books (Vatican), birthrates and, 785
in Africa, 745, 747–750, 748(m), 459, 570 in Britain, 674–675, 755, 756
749(i), 803–804, 805(m), 810, India in eastern Europe, 677–678, 915
990 Alexander the Great and, 122 in Europe (c. 1850), 677(m)
in Asia, 730–731, 750–752, 750(m), Amritsar massacre in, 843 in Germany, 756
751(m), 804, 806, 806(m) Ashoka and, 135 in Great Depression, 862
[ Industrialization — In v itro fertilization
] Index I-33
Marx and Engels on, 696–697 Inheritance tax, in Rome, 178 Intelsat I (satellite), 941
railroads and, 673, 676 Inner light, religious, 516 Intendants (France), 510
roots of, 674–675 Innocent III (Pope), 380–382, 392 Interesting Narrative of the Life of
in Russia, 678, 758, 807 Innovation. See Intellectual thought; Olaudah Equiano, The, 580
Saint-Simon on, 695 Inventions; specific types Interest payments, in Middle Ages,
in Scandinavia, 757 Inoculation, 565–566 319
in Soviet Union, 865 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Interest rates, 959
in Spain, 757 the Wealth of Nations, An Intermarriage
in United States, 756–757 (Smith), 581, 583(f) in American colonies, 547
urbanization and, 680–682 Inquisition in Yugoslavia, 975
working class and, 678 censorship authority of, 459 International Court of Justice. See
Industrial Revolution, 945, 1006(m). courts of, 380 World Court
See also Industrialization defined, 382 International Monetary Fund, 985,
in England, 674–675 Galileo and, 495 990
second, 755 in Spain, 436, 459 International organizations. See
socialist thinkers and, 695 Installment buying, 847 specific organizations
use of term, 673 Institutes (Justinian), 241 International politics. See Global
Industry Institutes of the Christian Religion entries; specific locations
in Britain, 961 (Calvin), 453 Internationals, Marxist, 770, 795,
colonization and, 746 Institutions (Cassiodorus), 236 833
in eastern Europe, 982 Instruction (Catherine II, Russia), International trade. See Trade
emerging, 981 595 International Woman Suffrage
emissions from, 987 Instructions for Merikare (Egypt), 3 Alliance, 796
in former Soviet Union, 979 Insurance International Women’s Day, 830
in France, 757 disability, 774, 913 International Zionist Congress
in Great Depression, 862 in England, 798 (Basel), 803
home, 755–756 French mutual aid societies and, Internet, 998, 1005
innovation in, 755–758 697 Interpretation of Dreams, The
in Japan, 751–752 in Germany under Bismarck, 774 (Freud), 789
management of, 759, 845 health, 873 Invasions. See also specific locations
outwork and, 763–764, 939 unemployment, 873 of 4th and 5th centuries, 232(m)
service, 998–999 U.S. Social Security Act (1935) c. 790–955, 297–299
after World War I, 844–845 and, 871 Akkadian, 12–13
World War II and, 886, 902 Integrated circuit, 939 Magyar, 298–299, 306
“I Never Died for Love” (troubadour Intellectual thought. See also Mongol, 400–401, 401(m)
song), 366(f) Philosophy; Renaissance; Muslim, 298
Infant exposure, 127 Scholars and scholarship; of Roman Empire, 202, 205
Infanticide, 592, 681 Schools; Universities; specific by Sea Peoples, 34
Infant mortality, 193, 591, 679, 914 issues and thinkers Viking, 297–298
Infantry. See Military; Soldiers in Balkans, 776(m) Inventions. See also Technology;
Inflation, 962, 984 brain drain and, 956 specific inventions
in 17th century, 487 Byzantine, 282–283 ancient, 4
economic impact of, 586 in Enlightenment, 542, 566–570, industrial, 755–758
in Germany, 839, 839(i), 867 576–584 Investiture
oil and, 959 Erasmus and, 449–450 of German bishops, 307
in Rome, 215 in Germany, 633–634, 651 lay, 322
in Spain, 446 in Greece, 70–73, 93–103 Investiture Conflict, 321, 323(i),
Influenza pandemics, 834 Mesopotamian, 15 324–327, 324(m), 337, 341,
Information, sharing of, 938, 999 modernism in, 790–794 360, 361
Information age, 938–940 Napoleon and, 645–646 Investment
Information revolution, 996 politics and, 496–497 in Africa, 990
Infrastructure, in Rome, 236 on postmodernism, 1004–1005 in eastern Europe, 982
Inheritance (biological), 942 revolutions of 1848 and, 683 in railroads, 676
Inheritance (property) in sciences, 473–474, 492–496 in Soviet bloc, 915, 959
in Greece, 90–91 Social Darwinism, 739 in United States, 860
medieval patrilineal, 303 on social order, 733–734 Investors, Assyrian, 14
in non-Roman tribes, 230 on technology, 938 Invisible hand, Smith on, 581
in revolutionary France, 624 Intelligentsia (Russia), 807 In vitro fertilization, 943, 943(i)
I-34 Index
[ I o n ia — Jacq u e r i e
]
Ionia, 72 Abbasid caliphate in, 280, 285–286 families in, 304
philosophers from, 72 Black Death in, 411 fascism in, 852–854
revolt against Persians in, 78 caliphs and, 253–255 fertility rate in, 988
Ionic style, 86, 88(i) commerce in, 288 France and, 648
Iran, 993, 995. See also Khomeini, growth and expansion of, Frederick Barbarossa in, 362
Ruhollah (Ayatollah); Persia; 252–253, 254(m), 275(m) government of, 299, 362, 910
Persian Empire Hebrew Bible and, 46 Greeks in, 56, 73(m), 150
hostage crisis in, 959, 990 in Holy Land, 370 Huns in, 231
Mongols in, 401(m) languages in, 288 imperialism by, 804
Persia as, 864 Muhammad and, 250, 251–252 industry in, 757
Iraq, 3, 991(m). See also Babylon; nomads and, 250–251 after Investiture Conflict, 326,
Baghdad; Iraq War; in Ottoman Empire, 809–810 327, 341
Mesopotamia Qur’an and, 50, 251–252, 251(i) Jewish commerce in, 315
Iraq-Iran war, 990–991, 997 radical, 990–993 kingdom in, 262
Iraq War, 991(m), 993, 997 regional lords in, 286 Lombards in, 258, 273(m)
Ireland, 999 renaissance in, 289 Magyars in, 298
Christianity in, 233, 270, 271 in Roman Empire, 249 major powers in, 429
in Common Market, 949 scholars in, 289 monasteries in, 268
Easter protests in (1916), 830 Soviet Union and, 852 Napoleon and, 640, 648, 649, 651
education for high-tech jobs in, in Spain, 287 nationalism in, 691–692, 700
962 West and, 974 Normans and, 324, 342(m)
England and, 515, 517, 520, 559, Islamic State, 997 Ostrogoths in, 233
633, 693, 724, 798, 960 Israel. See also Jews and Judaism; Otto in, 306
famine in, 698 Middle East; Palestine papacy and, 392
France and, 633 Arab wars with (1967, 1973), 958, at Peace of Lodi, 433(m)
in Great Britain, 517, 557, 559 958(m) political system in, 304
home rule for, 772, 798 creation of, 920, 920(m) pope and, 290
immigrants from, 762 kingdom of, 48 railroads in, 672(i)
independence for, 830, 843 Palestinians and, 920, 991(m), 992 Roman expansion in, 156–158
nationalism in, 693, 960(m) peace accords with Egypt, 961(i) Rome in, 722
Northern, 843, 843(m), 960, Suez Canal and, 921 secession in, 985
960(m), 962 Israelites, 42–43, 46–50. See also signori in, 391, 399–400
outsourcing to, 998 Jews and Judaism Spain and, 513
protests in, 771–772 Istanbul (Constantinople), 215, 409, terrorism in, 960
Irish Free State, 843, 843(m) 417, 864 trade and, 315
Irish National Land League, 771 Italian language, Dante’s Divine in Triple Alliance, 775, 810
Irish Republican Army (IRA), 960 Comedy in, 387 unification of, 700, 705, 717–719,
Iron and iron industry Italian people, in Austrian Empire, 718(m), 798
in 1870s and 1880s, 755 691 voting rights in, 773
Greek, 51 Italian Wars (1494), 463–464 welfare state in, 914–915
Hittite, 28 Italy. See also Papacy; Roman women in, 854, 886, 910
in Middle Ages, 319 Empire; Rome; Sicily; specific World War I and, 822, 824
railroads and, 676 rulers after World War I, 836
in Rome, 150 in 13th century, 393(m) World War II and, 881, 888, 901
“Iron curtain,” 967(i) ancient (500 b.c.e.), 151(m) Ivanhoe (Scott), 662
Iroquois Indians, 511 assassinations by anarchists in, Ivan III (Russia), 481
Irrigation 796 Ivan IV (the Terrible, Russia), 474,
Mesopotamian, 8, 13 Austria and, 558(m), 667, 700, 481
in Neolithic Revolution, 8 701 Iwasaki Yataro, 752
Isabella of Castile, 430, 436, 444, Black Death in, 411–412
447, 454 Carolingians and, 290 J’accuse (Zola), 799
Isabelle (Bavaria), 423 after Charlemagne, 295 Jacob (Israelites), 47
Ishtar (god), 10, 43–44 city-states in, 433 Jacobin Clubs (France), 618, 628,
Isis (god), 20 communes in, 319–320, 327, 361 629
cult of, 137, 200 divisions of (1848), 700(m) Jacobite rebellion (Scotland), 559
Islam, 918. See also Arab-Israeli in ECSC, 912 Jacobitism, 559
wars; Middle East; Muslims education in, 728 Jacobs, Aletta, 764, 828
c. 1000, 286(m) Ethiopia and, 798, 876–877 Jacquerie, 416
[ Jad w i ga — J u r i es
] Index I-35
Jadwiga (Poland), 429 Jesuits, 460–461, 491, 596, 658, 737 Joan of Arc, 414
James I (England), 467, 480, 481, Jesus (Christ), 193–196 Job Corps, 951
487, 514, 559 catacomb painting of, 195(i) Jobs. See also Employment
James II (England), 518, 519, 520, as Messiah, 196 in Great Depression, 862
559 mosaic as Sun God, 222(i) white-collar, 787, 944–945
James V (Scotland), 467 nature of, 223 Jogailo (Lithuania), 429
James Edward (England), 559 Jesus movement, 193, 194, 195 John (England), 359
Jane Eyre (Brontë), 685 Jews and Judaism. See also John II (France), 416
Janissaries, 417–418 Anti-Semitism; Holocaust; John II (Portugal), 442
Jansen, Cornelius, 509 Israel; Israelites; Nazis and John XXIII (antipope), 419
Jansenism, 509–510, 556 Nazism John XXIII (Pope), 925
Japan assimilation of, 801 John of Leiden, 457(i)
art influences from, 766–767, 849 Black Death blamed on, 413 John Paul II (Pope), 965
atomic bombing of, 891–892, Christianity and, 193, 381(i), Johnson, Lyndon B., 951
891(i), 900, 904 383–384, 453 John the Baptist, 194
China and, 804, 808 crusades and, 334 Joint-stock companies, 491
economy in, 994 in Dutch Republic, 479, 523, 567 Jolliet, Louis, 511
European imperialism and, 731 in eastern Europe, 481, 801–802 Jordan, Israel and, 958
fascism and, 860 in England, 383, 384, 517 Joseph (Israelites), 47
high-tech industries in, 994 Enlightenment and, 578, 583 Joseph II (Austria and Holy Roman
imperialism by, 751–752, 804, Fourth Lateran Council on, 382 Empire), 594(i), 595, 596–597,
806, 876 in France, 383–384, 772, 1006 598, 609
Jesuits in, 461 in Germany, 413, 801, 842 Josephine (France), 643(i), 644
migrants from, 984–985 in Hellenistic world, 125–126, 138 Journalism
modernization in, 751–752, 752(i) Holocaust and, 883–886, 884(m), mass, 771, 938
reindustrialization of, 919 920, 926 in post-Soviet Russia, 980(i)
Russia and, 804, 806, 806(m), 807, impact on West, 46–50 terrorism against, 1006
810, 834 Islam and, 252–253, 288 Journeymen and journeywomen,
World War I and, 822 Jesus and, 194 318, 552
after World War I, 844 lifestyle of, 315–316 Joyce, James, 850
World War II and, 883, 884, 889, in Lithuania, 525 Juan Carlos (Spain), 960
890(m), 891 Louis IX (France) and, 395 Judaea, 193
after World War II, 899 in Merovingian world, 267 Judah (kingdom), 48, 49(i)
Japanese Americans, internment migration from Europe, 763, 802, Judah the Maccabee, 138
camps for, 887 802(m), 870 Judaism. See Jews and Judaism
Java, Europeans in, 541, 547 monotheism of, 194 Judiciary. See also Courts (law);
Jazz, 846, 851 Napoleon and, 649 Law(s)
Jedwabne, Poland, 884 nationalism of, 802–803 in Athens, 83, 84
Jefferson, Thomas Nazis and, 859, 860, 869, 870 in Rome, 155–156
Declaration of Independence and, Nietzsche and, 791 Judith (wife of Louis the Pious), 295
601 origins of term, 48 Julia (Rome, daughter of Augustus),
on French Declaration of Rights, Palestine and, 803, 876, 920 185
615 in Poland, 429, 525, 901 Julia (Rome, daughter of Julius
on French Revolution, 633 religion and, 597, 737 Caesar), 168
Jena, battle at, 649 revivalism and, 584 Julia Domna (Rome), 203(i)
Jenner, Edward, 566 revolts by, 194, 196 Julian calendar, in Russia, 561n,
Jerome (Saint), 224, 228 rights of, 737 830n
Jerome, Jeanette. See Churchill, Rome and, 186, 219 Julian the Apostate, 219
Jeanette Jerome in Russia, 776–777, 777(i), 799, Julio-Claudians (Rome), 184
Jerusalem 977 Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), 795
crusades and, 331–337 in Soviet Union, 903, 956 Julius II (Pope), 454, 461
Dome of the Rock in, 255(i), 256 in Spain, 436, 447 July revolution (Paris), 667
Jesus in, 194 Spinoza and, 523 June Days (Paris), 699, 699(i), 703
Jewish temple in, 48, 138, 196, 336 terrorism against, 1006 Jünger, Ernst, 850
Rome and, 186 trade and, 315 Junkers, 526, 597, 719
Saladin in, 370 World War I and, 828, 829 Juno (god), 148, 199
Sasanids in, 257 after World War II, 901 Jupiter (god), 148, 199
Turks in, 332 Jihad, 252 Juries, in Rome, 155, 164
I-36 Index
[ J u st i ce — Land
]
Justice Kings and kingdoms. See also Kuril Islands, World War II and,
in Carolingian Empire, 291 Empire(s); specific kings and 890(m), 892
in England, 357 kingdoms Kuwait, Iraq invasion of, 991
Greek, 54 in 15th century, 430–432 Kyoto Protocol, 987–988
in Hammurabi’s code, 14–15 in Egypt, 20
Justices of the peace, 459 in England, 305 Labor. See also Slaves and slavery;
Justinian (Byzantine Empire) European, 275(m) Workers; Working class
eastern Roman Empire under, Frankish, 262–266 agricultural, 677, 678
234, 236, 239–241, 257 German, 308, 361 child, 678, 679–680, 679(i), 703
law code of, 241 Hellenistic, 122–128, 123(m) colonists as, 824, 829, 829(i)
in Ravenna, 239(i) Hittite, 27 compulsory services, serfdom,
St. Catherine at Mount Sinai Israelite, 48 and, 551
monastery and, 227(i) Merovingian, 269 of concentration camp prisoners,
Jutland, battle at, 825 in Middle Ages, 355–364 885
Juvenal (Rome), 191 non-Roman in West, 229–236 corvée, 22
Persian, 44–45, 46(i) in Egypt, 22, 25–26
Ka’ba, 251, 252 post-Carolingian, 299 in England, 551
Kádár, János, 950 in Sparta, 64 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126
Kadesh, battle of, 28 in Sumer, 10 Mesopotamian, 9
Kafka, Franz, 850 in western Europe, 262–274 for multinationals, 944
Kaiser. See William I (Prussia and King’s Peace (Greece), 118 non-Europeans as, 923–925
Germany); William II Kinship, barbarian, 230 political power of, 795–796
(Germany) Kipling, Rudyard, 804 slave, 543
Kamikaze tactics, World War II and, Kissinger, Henry, 957 in World War II, 886
891 Kleptocracies, 979, 990 Labor-intensive production, 758
Kanchei, Giya, 1003 Knight, Death, and the Devil, The Labor strikes. See Strikes
Kandinsky, Wassily, 793 (Dürer), 449(i) Labor unions. See also Strikes
Kant, Immanuel, 576, 583–584, Knights. See also Warriors in 19th century, 768–770
583(f), 633 chivalry and, 367 in 1920s, 845
Karlowitz, Treaty of, 528 in crusades, 336 emergence of, 678, 732
Kay, John, 674 epic poems and, 367 in England, 668, 960
Kazakhstan, 285 in Hundred Years’ War, 416 Mussolini and, 854
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 840 in medieval society, 300, 302 in Nazi Germany, 869
Kemal, Mustafa (Atatürk), 864 as mercenaries, 449(i) new unionism and, 769
Kennedy, John F., 931, 950, 951 in Rome, 164 political power of, 795
Kent State University, 957 Knights Templar, 336, 373(i) women in, 770
Kenya, 923 Knossos, Crete, 29, 29(i), 30, 33 Labour Party (England), 764, 769,
Kepler, Johannes, 494, 496 Kohl, Helmut, 962 798, 843, 873, 910
Kerensky, Aleksandr, 831 Koine language, 135 Labyrinth, for healing, 137(i)
Khadija, 251 Kolkhoz (collective farms), 865 Ladder of offices (Rome), 154
Khagan, 283 Kollontai, Aleksandra, 852 Lady of the Lake, The (Scott), 662
Khomeini, Ruhollah (Ayatollah), Köllwitz, Käthe, 820(i), 849 Lafayette, Madame de (Marie-
959, 990, 1001 Korea Madeleine de la Vergne), 508,
Khrushchev, Nikita, 899, 916–917, Japan and, 804, 806 534
921(i), 930, 931, 932, 950 World War II and, 892 Lafayette, Marie-Joseph (Marquis
Khufu (Cheops, Egypt), 21, 21(i) Korean War, 912, 919, 919(m), de), 614, 618
Kiev (city), 284, 400, 525 932(m) Laissez-faire, 581, 730, 774
Kievan Rus, 282, 283–285 Kościuszko, Tadeusz, 631 Laity, 322, 419, 460
Kikuyu people, 922–923 Kosovo, Albanians in, 976 Lakshmibai (India), 730
King, Martin Luther Jr., 927, 954 Kossuth, Lajos, 694–695, 701, 702 Lamb, Ann, 689
Kingdom of Naples, 643, 663 Kosygin, Alexei, 950 Land
Kingdom of Poland, 630(m) Kotzebue, August, 663 in Byzantine Empire, 283
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Kristallnacht, 870 in Carolingian Empire, 296–297
Slovenes, 836. See also Kronstadt revolt (1921), 851 commerce and, 320
Yugoslavia Kulak, in Russia, 865 in England, 550–551
King Lear (Shakespeare), 481 Kulturkampf (culture wars), in in Frankish kingdoms, 264
King Philip. See Metacomet (King Germany, 737, 774 Jews and, 315
Philip) Kundera, Milan, 956 native Americans and, 524–525
[ L an d — Lep rosy
] Index I-37
peasants and, 490, 551, 861 fascism and, 860 Japanese expansionism and, 876
in Rome, 162, 163, 164, 167 globalization and, 974 mandate system of, 838
in Russia, 714–715, 865 independence in, 665–666, membership in, 838, 855(m)
Land and Liberty (Russia), 775 666(m) nondiscrimination clause of, 844
Landlords, in Ireland, 771 literature from, 1001 sanctions imposed by, 875
Landowners Latin language, 150, 189–190 United Nations and, 892
agricultural changes and, 551 classical, 242, 243 United States and, 838, 872
expansion of estates, 682 in eastern Roman Empire, 237 Learning. See also Education;
papacy as, 273 in Frankish kingdoms, 265 Intellectual thought
in Russia, 715 law code in, 234 in Germany, 307–308
in western Europe, 267, 302 in Merovingian society, 268 traditional, 495
Languages. See also Greek language; in Rome, 157, 160 Lebanon, Israeli attack on, 991(m),
Latin language; Writing; scholarship and, 242 992
specific languages Silver Age of literature in, 191 Lebensraum (living space), 876, 881
of 19th century Europe, 692(m) Latin peoples, 151(m) Lechfeld, battle of, 298, 306
in Akkad, 13 Latvia, 881, 977, 982, 984 Legal systems, reforms of, 595
Anglo-Saxon (Old English), 272 Laud, William, 515 Legion of Honor, 643, 645
Arabic, 288 Law(s). See also Law codes; specific Legions (Roman), 189
Aramaic, 43 acts Legislation. See Law(s); specific acts
from battlefield, 840 Byzantine, 259–260 Legislature. See Assemblies;
Celtic, 233 church, 380–381 Councils; Senate; specific
Chinese, 447 in England, 358 bodies and countries
in eastern Roman Empire, 237 Frederick Barbarossa and, 361 Legnano, battle of, 362
Egyptian, 16, 19, 19(i) of Hammurabi, 14 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 532,
English, 340, 1003 to improve marriage, 787 577
of Franks, 265 in Mesopotamia, 14 Leisure, 761–762, 765, 914–915
French, 388, 623 natural, 496–497 Lem, Stanislaw, 941
Gaelic, 693, 798 to protect women, 765 Lemonnier, Anicet Charles, 578(i)
in Islam, 288 Roman, 154, 191, 213, 234–235 Lenin, V. I., 795, 831, 832, 832(i),
Italian, 387, 718(m), 719 schools of, 349 833, 851
Koine, 135 scientific, 493, 496 Leningrad, 977. See also Petrograd;
Magyar, 701 of universal gravitation, 496 St. Petersburg
in Merovingian society, 268 Law, John, 557 as Petrograd, 852
Minoan, 28–29 Law codes siege of, 882, 887
Occitan as, 364 in Austria, 595 Le Nôtre, André, 509
of Roman Empire, 190(m) Civil Code of Napoleon as, 640, Leo III (Pope), 292
Semitic, 8 644–645 Leo III the Isaurian (Byzantine
Languedoc, 369, 374, 394 in England, 305 Empire), 261
Laodice (Seleucids), 127 of Hammurabi, 14–15 Leo IX (Pope), 323–324
Laon, convent at, 269 of Israelites, 47 Leo X (Pope), 454
Laos, 751, 919 of Justinian, 241 Leo XIII (Pope), 737
Larrey, Dominique-Jean, 645 Roman, 154, 231, 234–235 León, 372(m)
La Salle, René Robert Cavelier in Russia, 529, 595 Leonardo da Vinci, 425, 426(i), 427
(Sieur de), 511 of Ur III rulers, 13 Leopold (Austria, 12th century),
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 445 Lawrence, D. H., 846 370
Las Meninas (Velázquez), 486(i) Laws of War and Peace, The Leopold I (Austria), 512
Las Navas de Tolosa, battle at, 372 (Grotius), 497 Leopold I (Belgium), 667
Last Judgment, 389, 389(i) Lay investiture, 322 Leopold I (Holy Roman Emperor),
Last Supper, The (Leonardo da Lay piety, in Middle Ages, 382–383 486(i), 526, 527, 528
Vinci), 425, 426(i) Lazarus (Bible), 312(i), 313 Leopold II (Belgium), 747, 749(i)
Lateen (triangular) sail, 443 Leadership, in Athenian radical Leopold II (Holy Roman Empire),
Lateran Agreement (1929), 854 democracy, 68 596(i), 597, 609, 617
Lateran Councils. See Councils League of Augsburg, 512 Leovigild (Visigoths, Spain), 272
(Christian) League of Nations, 923 Lepanto, battle of, 477–478, 477(i),
Latifundia (farms), in Rome, 163 Congress of Vienna as model for, 481
Latin America. See also specific 654 Lepidus (Rome), 176–177
locations Germany and, 838, 840, 876 Leprosy, in medieval society,
economic development in, 990 Italian aggression and, 877 384–385
I-38 Index
[ Lesb ia — Lombards
]
Lesbia, 161 in medieval cities, 316–317 humanist, 422–423
Lesbians. See Homosexuals and of middle class, 762 Latin American, 1001
homosexuality Minoan, 29 masculine style in, 928
Lesbos, 71 of nobility, 586–587 Neo-Babylonians and, 44
Lessing, Gotthold, 583 plague and, 413 novels and, 534, 555, 684–686
Letter, The (Cassatt), 767, 767(i) in postindustrial society, 944–945, oral, in Mycenae, 32
Letters Concerning the English 946–947 realist, 734, 736
Nation (Voltaire), 568 in recession of 17th century, Renaissance, 462–463
Levellers (England), 516, 600 488–490 Roman, 183–184, 191
Levi, Primo, 886 religion and, 382–383, 419 romance, 367
Leviathan (Hobbes), 520 in Rome, 150–151, 167, 179–181, romanticism in, 584, 662,
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 948 188–193 684–686
Lewes, battle of, 397 rural, 682–683 Russian, 775
Liberal arts, 348–349 of slaves, 544–545 Soviet, 866–867, 899, 915, 917,
Liberalism. See also Neoliberalism in Stone Age, 4–8 930, 956
in Austria, 723 of students, 953 Soviet-bloc, 950, 1002–1003
in Britain, 694, 798 technology and, 938 space race and, 941
conservatism vs., 693 of upper class, 761–762 Sumerian, 13
economic, 693–695, 774 urban, 551–554, 681–682 travel, 568–570
in Germany, 722, 774 of women, 553, 787–788 vernacular, 364–367, 387
in Hungary, 694–695 of working class, 682, 761–764 wisdom literature, 22
mass politics and, 799 Ligeti, Gyorgy, 956 by women, 534, 570, 685–686,
in Prussia, 719 Like Water for Chocolate (Esquivel), 849, 850, 926, 953, 1001, 1002,
in Russia, 695 1001 1002(i)
Liberal Party (Britain), 724, 771, 798 Limited liability corporation, 758 World War II and, 892–893
Liberation movements Lincoln, Abraham, 725 Lithography, 683, 685(i), 704(i)
in Algeria, 923 Lindisfarne Gospels, 271(i) Lithuania, 977, 982. See also
in Asia, 806(m), 919 Linear A script, 28 Poland-Lithuania
Fanon on, 927 Linear B script, 33, 35, 50 in 14th century, 429
Liberty, representation of, 621, Lipstick Ascending on Caterpillar Northern Crusades and, 374
622(i) Tractor (Oldenburg), 947(i) Russia and, 595, 631
Libido, Freud on, 789 Lister, Joseph, 727 World War II and, 881
Libraries Literacy. See also Illiteracy Little Entente, 840
at Alexandria, 129 of Beguines, 369(i) Liverpool and Manchester Railway,
in Christian Britain, 271 book availability and, 448 673
Enlightenment and, 589 in Dutch Republic, 523 Livestock, 550–551
Libya, Italy and, 804 growth of, 550, 684 Livia (wife of Augustus, Rome), 178,
Licinius (Rome), 217 in lower classes, 553, 590 183(i), 184
Liebknecht, Karl, 835 in public sphere, 771 Livingstone, David, 753(i)
Liège, baptismal font at, 317, 317(i) social reality and, 734 Livy (Rome), 183–184, 422
Life and Martyrdom of St. William of social status and, 553 Lloyd George, David, 836
Norwich (Thomas of Soviet, 851, 852 Loans
Monmouth), 384 Literature. See also Books; Classical contracts for, 319
Life expectancy culture; Epic literature; Poets for economic development, 985,
in Russia, 989 and poetry; specific works and 990
in welfare state, 914 authors student, 962
Life of Insects, The (Pelevin), 1003 in 1920s, 849 Locarno, Treaty of, 840
Life sciences, 942–943 in 1930s, 874–875 Locke, John, 506, 520–521, 568, 582,
Lifestyle. See also Society; Standard in cold war, 915, 926, 930 693, 732
of living; specific locations on decolonization, 927 Locomotives, 676, 755
in Athens, 114–115, 115–116 Enlightenment, 566–568, 570, Logic, 348–349
during cold war, 925, 927–930 577, 583(f) Aristotle on, 118
disposable income and, 541–542, epic, 366–367 Lollards, 420
549 Greek influence on Roman, Lombard League, 362
in eastern Roman Empire, 160–161 Lombards
236–239 hadith, 256 Byzantine Empire and, 257, 258,
in former Soviet Union, 977, 979 Hellenistic, 129–130 258(m)
in Germany, 842 of Holocaust, 926 in Italy, 273(m), 291
[ Lombards — M agellan
] Index I-39
Otto I and, 306 Louis XVI (France) Luther, Martin

popes and, 274, 290 criticisms of, 610 Bible translation by, 458, 458(i)
Lombardy, 392, 691, 717 execution of, 619, 621, 653 Peasants’ War of 1525 and, 455
London, 981, 984, 1000(i) flight of, 617, 617(i) Protestant Reformation and,
coffeehouses in, 540(i) National Assembly and, 613 450–451
electricity in, 757(i) reforms by, 597–598, 611 religious reform and, 442, 447
Enlightenment in, 582 restoration of civil rights by, 597 theology of, 451, 452, 453
exhibition in (1851), 703–704, Louis XVII (France), 610(i), 653 Lutheranism
704(i) Louis XVIII (France) in c. 1648, 501(m)
Great Fire (1666) in, 518, 519(i) foreign ministers of, 655 Peace of Augsburg and, 467, 474
population of, 552 Napoleonic Code and, 658 after Peace of Westphalia, 485
rebuilding of, 727 restoration of, 653 Lützen, battle of, 483
servants in, 553 successor to, 666 Luxembourg, 295, 822, 825, 912. See
strikes in, 768, 769(i) Louis, A., guillotine and, 619(i) also Austrian Netherlands
terrorism in, 993 Louisiana, 511, 648 Luxemburg, Rosa, 835
Treaty of, 824, 836, 852 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. See Luxury goods, Roman trade in,
urbanization in, 680–681 Napoleon III 189
Long-distance trade. See Trade; Louis-Philippe (France), 667, Lycées, 644, 729
specific locations 689–690, 694, 698 Lyceum (Athens), 118
Long Walls (Athens), 86(m), 105, Louis the German (Carolingians), Lydia (Christian woman), 196
115, 115(m) 294, 295 Lyon, Council of, 392
Looms, mechanized, 674 Louis the Pious (Carolingians), Lysias (Athens), 107
Lord Protector, Cromwell as, 518 294–295 Lysimachus (Macedonia), 127
Lords. See also Nobility Lourdes, shrine at, 737 Lysistrata (Aristophanes), 103
in Germany, 362 Louvre Palace (Paris), 509, 1005
in post-Carolingian society, Love, courtly, 365 Maastricht Treaty, 982
299 Love Feasts, 197 Maat (god), 20
Lorentz, Alcide, 685(i) Love in the Time of Cholera (García Maat (truth, justice), 24(i)
Lorenzo de Medici (the Márquez), 1001 Mabuse, Peter, 704(i)
Magnificent), 435 Low Countries. See also Belgium; Macaulay, Catherine, 590
Lorrain, Claude, 531 Luxembourg; Netherlands Macaulay, Thomas, 668
Lorraine agriculture in, 551 Macault, Antoine, 462(i)
France and, 512, 563, 837 Brethren of the Common Life in, Macbeth (Shakespeare), 481
Germany and, 722, 756 419 Maccabees, 138
World War I and, 837 Lower classes. See also Classes; MacDonald, Ramsay, 843, 873
Lothar I (Carolingians), 294, 295 Working class Macedonia. See also Hellenistic
Lothar III ( Germany), 341 Enlightenment and, 575, 580, world
Louis VI (Louis the Fat, France), 586 Balkan region and, 813
340–341, 353 in Hundred Years’ War, 416 Hellenistic Greeks and, 123
Louis VII (France), 336, 337, 355 lifestyle of, 681–682 rise of, 119–122
Louis IX (St. Louis, France), 391, literacy in, 553, 590 Rome and, 158–159, 160
393–396, 394(i), 395(m) Lower Egypt, 16 Macedonian renaissance (Byzantine
Louis XI (France), 431–432 Loyalty, 280 Empire), 282–283, 282(i)
Louis XIII (France), 483, 487, 506 Loyola. See Ignatius of Loyola Macedonians, nationalism of, 809
Louis XIV (France) Lübeck, 363 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 462–463, 496,
as absolute ruler, 505, 506–514 Lucian (Rome), 191 520
acquisitions of, 513(m) Lucretia (Rome), rape of, 152 Machine gun, 824
black code of, 524 Lucretius (Roman poet), 160 Machines. See also Tools
Charles II and, 518 Ludd, Ned, and Luddites, 675 farm, 945
court of, 505 Ludendorff, Erich, 825, 842 in World War I, 824
death of, 513, 556, 557 Ludin, Fereshta, headscarf of, 997(i) Macrina, 228
Edict of Nantes and, 526, 542 Ludwig (Bavaria), 664–665 Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 734
Fronde and, 506–507, 508 Lueger, Karl, 801 Madame Butterfly (Puccini), 794
League of Augsburg against, 512 Luftwaffe, 882 Madrasa (Islamic school), 289
portraits of, 504(i), 507(i) Lully, Jean Baptiste, 509 Madrid, 557, 993
succession of, 483 Luncheon, The (Boucher), 554(i) Mafia, Russian, 979
wars of, 511–512, 512(f), 557 Lupercalia festival, 149 Magazines, 553, 928–929
Louis XV (France), 557, 563, 597 Lusitania (ship), 825 Magellan, Ferdinand, 443
I-40 Index
[ Magic — M ar y St u a r t
]
Magic, 493, 499–500 Mantua, duke of, 428 Marquette, Jacques, 511
in Egypt, 26 Manufacturing, 944 Marriage
in Mesopotamian medicine, 15 division of labor in, 581 in 1960s and 1970s, 946
Magical realism, in literature, 1001 domestic system of, 675 of bishops, 268
Magna Carta (England), 359, 396 in England, 676–677 child, in India, 730
Magna Graecia, 56 industrialization and, 674, 755 church on, 381–382
Magnus (the Great), Pompey World War I and, 844–845 civil ceremony for, 737
(Rome) as, 167 Manuscript illumination clerical, 328
Magyarization, in Hungary, 801 of Aristotle, 378(i) in colonies, 547
Magyars Gothic, 389–390 in early 19th century, 682
in Austria-Hungary, 723 in Macedonian renaissance, 283 in Egypt, 22
in Austrian Empire, 691, 701 Manzikert, battle at, 332, 338 in France, 624
in Hungary, 308, 841 Manzoni, Alessandro, 661–662 in Greece, 62
invasions by, 298–299, 306 Mao Zedong, 918, 957 medieval, 303
nationalism and, 701 Maps in Merovingian society, 267–268
Mahdi (messiah), 287 Babylonian, 15 in Nazi Germany, 869
Mail-order catalogs, 760 European reliance on, 440(i) polygyny, 544
Maine, France and, 360 Marat, Jean-Paul, 620, 624 postponement of, 490, 682
Maintenon, marquise de (Françoise Marathon, battle of, 78–79 reforms of, 459, 784, 787
d’Aubigné), 509 Marathon races, 79 rights in, 148
Mainz, Jews in, 334 Marburg, Colloquy of, 452 in Rome, 146, 191–193
Maize (corn), 490 Marcel, Étienne, 416 in rural eastern Europe, 787
Makine, Andrei, 1002 March on Rome, 852 as sacrament, 327–328
Malaria, 756, 989 Marconi, Guglielmo, 849 working-class, 846
Malaya, 883 Marcus Aurelius (Rome), 186, 187, in Yugoslavia, 975
Malay peninsula, British in, 750, 201, 202 Marriage of Figaro, The
750(m) Mardi Gras, 536 (Beaumarchais), 600
Maldives, rising water levels and, Marengo, battle at, 648 Married Love (Stopes), 846
987 Margarita (Spain), 486(i) Married Women’s Property Act
Malnutrition, 489, 491, 989 Marguerite de Valois, 474 (England, 1870), 724
Malplaquet, battle of, 557 Maria Carolina (Naples), 596(i) “Marseillaise, La” (French anthem),
Malta, 20, 982 Maria Theresa (Austria), 564, 595, 621
Mamelukes, 651(i) 596, 596(i) Marshall, George C., 905
Mamluks, 285–286 Marie-Antoinette (France), 596(i), Marshall Plan (1947), 905, 905(i),
Management 610–611, 610(i), 617, 620–621 906, 912
industrial, 759, 845 Marie-Louise (Austria), 644, 653 Marsilius of Padua, 418
postindustrial, 944 Marijuana, 953 Martial law, in Hungary, 702
Manchester, England, 679, 797 Maritime commerce. See Seaborne Martin (Saint), 266
Manchuria commerce Martin V (Pope), 419
Japan and, 876 Maritime powers. See Navies; Martyrs, Christian, 197
railroad through, 804 specific locations Marx, Karl, 582, 696–697, 732, 831,
World War II and, 892 Marius, Gaius (Rome), 163, 833
Mandate system, 838, 843 164–165, 166 Marxism
Mandela, Nelson, 994–995, 1000 Market(s) materialism and, 732
Manet, Édouard, 735(i), 736 in Athens, 85 in Poland, 836
Manhattan Project, 891 in cities, 316 Russian, 795
Mani (prophet), 211 colonies and, 491 Social Democratic Parties and,
Manichaeans, 211 commercial development and, 769
Mann, Thomas, 874 314–315 Marxism-Leninism, 966
Mannerism, 498 free, 580, 597, 598 Mary. See Virgin Mary
Manners global, 974 Mary I (Mary Tudor, England), 454,
comedies of, 533–534 imperialism and, 746 466, 477, 479
women and, 533–534 online marketplace, 998 Mary II (England), 519, 520, 521,
Manors prices and, 598 524, 557, 559
Carolingian, 296–297, 297(f) in rural areas, 320 Mary of Guise (Scotland), 467
fees on, 301 Market economy Mary of Oignies, 369
Manses, 264, 320 in former Soviet Union, 977, 979 Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of
Mantinea, battle of, 118 market socialism in Hungary, 966 Scots), 467, 480
[ M asons and M asonic lo dges — M e rian
] Index I-41
Masons and Masonic lodges, 586, McCarthy, Joseph, and Europeans in, 731
587–588 McCarthyism, 911 Greeks in, 55, 57(m)
Mass (Christian), 328, 388, 420–421 McDonald’s, protests against, 986 Jews of, 315
Massacre at Chios (Delacroix), Measles, 914, 942 Muslim invasions and, 298
662(i) Mecca, 252, 253 Phoenicians and, 35, 51, 56,
Massacres. See specific massacres Mechanics, Archimedes and, 57(m), 73(m)
Mass culture, in 1920s, 846, 847–851 133–134 population decline in, 488
Mass journalism, 771, 938 Mechanization Rome and, 160, 167, 188(m)
Mass media. See also Media in farming, 756 violence in, 36(m)
dictators and, 860 Luddite protests against, 675 Megarons (rooms), in Mycenaean
Roosevelt, F. D., and, 871 Medea (Euripides), 90 palaces, 33
Mass politics. See also Mass media; Media. See also Mass media; specific Mehmed II (“Mehmet the
Politics types Conqueror,” Ottomans), 408(i),
anti-Semitism in, 799–803 authoritarianism and, 847 409, 417, 418, 433
birth of, 767–777 digital, 999 Meiji Restoration (Japan), 731
tensions in, 794–803 global, 965 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 854, 868
Mass production. See Hitler and, 868 Meir, Golda, 920
Industrialization; Industry; Roosevelt, F. D., and, 871 Memphis, Egypt, 16, 20
Production social, 999, 1007 Men. See also Boys; Gender
Mass society, World War II and, 887 World War I and, 847 in agriculture, 8
Master and Margarita, The Medici family (Florence) education of, 688
(Bulgakov), 1002 Catherine de, 474 in Egypt, 22
Masters, 318 Cosimo de’, 434–435 emigration to Americas, 547
Mastersingers of Nuremberg, The Lorenzo the Magnificent, 435 in Great Depression, 862
(Wagner), 736 Medicine. See also Diseases in Greece, 59–60, 63
Masturbation, 592 breakthroughs in, 493, 495 Neo-Assyrian, 43
Match Girls strike (1888), 768, childbirth and, 727, 943, 943(i) Paleolithic, 5
769(i) in concentration camps, 886 in postwar society, 927–929
Materialism, 131, 693, 732, 984 global health and, 988, 989 in Sparta, 65–66, 67
Maternity leave, 913 healing divinities and, 136 Menander (playwright), 130, 160
Mathematical geography, 134 health care and, 565–566 Mendel, Gregor, 738
Mathematics. See also Science in Hellenistic kingdoms, 127, 134 Mendelssohn, Moses, 583
in 1930s, 875 Hippocrates and, 99 Mendicant orders, 368, 383
Archimedes and, 133–134 Mesopotamian, 15 Menes (Narmer, Egypt), 16
in Enlightenment, 566 as profession, 728 Mennonites, 457
Euclid and, 133 schools of, 349 Mensheviks (Russia), 795
in Greece, 72 women in, 729 Mental illness
Mesopotamian, 15 Medieval period. See Middle Ages Freud and, 783
Matilda (Tuscany), 325, 326(i) Medina, Hijra to, 252 Nazis and, 870
Matrimonial Causes Act (England), Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), 201 Soviets and, 956
724 Mediterranean polyculture, 30 Mercantilism
Matrix Reloaded, The (movie), 1003 Mediterranean region. See also Colbert and, 511
Mau Mau, 922–923 specific locations in England, 517
Mauser rifles, 813 in 400 b.c.e., 108(m) Smith, Adam, on, 581
Maximian (Roman Empire), 213 in c. 1050, 309(m) Mercenaries
Maximianus (bishop of Ravenna), in c. 1150, 342(m) in Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman
239(i) c. 1715, 558(m) wars, 464
Maximilian (Austria), in Mexico, in 1871, 740(m) in Hellenistic kingdoms, 124
712 Akkadian Empire in, 12–13, of Holy Roman Empire, 527–528
Maximilian I (Holy Roman 12(m) in Hundred Years’ War, 414,
Empire), 465–466 attacks on, 34–35 415–416
Maximilla (Roman Christian), 199 Black Death in, 411(m) knights as, 449(i)
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 852 civilizations in, 4 in Thirty Years’ War, 482
Mayflower (ship), 491 cultural interactions in, 32, Merchants, Dutch, 560
Mayor of the palace, 269 113–114 Mercia, 305
Mazarin, Jules (Cardinal), 483, Dark Age in, 37, 42–43 Mercy, A (Morrison), 1001
506–507, 508 economic decline of, 491 Mergers, 944, 974, 982
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 691–692, 700 Egypt in, 17 Merian, Maria Sibylla, 531, 533(i)
I-42 Index
[ M e rove ch — M i l itar y
]
Merovech (Franks), 234 Mickiewicz, Adam, 693 terrorists from, 992
Merovingian society Middle Ages. See also Renaissance World War I in, 824
in 7th century, 263(m) architecture in, 347–348 Middle Kingdom
aristocracy in, 267–269 beginning of, 250 in Egypt, 22–23
Carolingians and, 290 castles in, 301–302 in Europe, 295, 306
elites in, 267–269 church in, 380–385 Middlemarch (Eliot), 734
Frankish kingdoms and, 262 classes in, 300–303 Midrash, 219
gift economy in, 266 commercial revolution of, Midway Island, battle at, 889
law code in, 234–235 314–321 Midwives, 943
Mesopotamia, 3. See also Babylonia; crafts in, 318–319 in Ostia, 192(i)
Sumer England in, 355–359 in Rome, 193
Akkad and, 12–13 feudalism in, 300–301 Miélot, Jean, 431(i)
cities in, 8, 36 France in, 359–360, 360(m) Mieszko I (Poland), 308
civilizations in, 3–4, 8–13 Germany in, 360–363 Migrant workers
economy in, 9 governments in, 355–364 Mexican Americans as, 952
Egypt and, 24 interest payments in, 319 money sent home by, 924–925,
irrigation in, 13 peasants in, 300–301 997
law in, 14 political power in, 300–303, Migration. See also Immigrants and
polytheism in, 10 391–404 immigration; specific groups
Rome and, 186, 187, 188(m) schools in, 348–351 in 4th and 5th centuries, 232(m)
slavery in, 9 society in, 300–301 to colonies, 745–746
Messenia, helots in, 64 synthesis in, 379 global, 973(i), 974, 984–985, 996,
Messiah, 48, 194 universities in, 348–351 997–998, 1005
Messiah (Handel), 555 warriors in, 302–303 Greek, 56
Mestizos, 460, 547 Middle class, 949. See also human, 4–5
Metacomet (King Philip), 525 Bourgeoisie; Classes; specific internal, 763
Metals and metallurgy. See also locations international, 762–763, 973(i)
Gold; Iron and iron industry; in Athens, 68 of Jews, 802, 802(m), 803
Silver Enlightenment and, 575, 582, 586, from newly independent
17th century inflation and, 487 587–590 countries, 923–925
civilization and, 4 expansion of, 762 to Nile River region, 16
in Greece, 51, 55 liberalism and, 694 population of migrants, 997
Hittites and, 28 lifestyle of, 552 into Rome, 230, 235
in Mesopotamia, 12 literacy of, 553 by working people, 762–763
in Rome, 150 music and, 588–589 after World War I, 841
Metamorphoses (Ovid), 184 and nobility, 588 Milan, 431, 433, 700, 798
Metaphysics, 116–117 socialism and, 697 Militance. See also Activism; specific
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 378(i), 379 use of term, 587 groups
Methodism, 585, 658 women in, 673, 688, 689, black, 952
Metics (foreigners in Greece), 90, 93 759–760, 785, 796, 953 global forces and, 1006
Metric system, in France, 623–624 Middle-Class Gentleman, The Islamic, 959, 992, 993
Metternich, Klemens von, 654, 663, (Molière), 533–534 Military. See also Navies; Soldiers;
667, 691, 701 Middle East. See also Islam; Near Warriors; Wars and warfare;
Metz, Jews in, 588 East; specific peoples and states specific battles and wars
Meulen, Adam Frans van der, in 1919–1920, 837(m) in Brandenburg-Prussia, 526
504(i) in 21st century, 991(m) Byzantine, 260, 280, 281
Mexican Americans, as migrant in Arab world, 249 in Egypt, 23–24
workers, 952 Byzantine trade with, 282 in First Crusade, 332, 334, 335(i)
Mexican Ecclesiastical Provincial crusades and, 337 in France, 511, 617, 621, 629,
Council (1555), 460 decolonization in, 918, 920–921 640–641, 646–649, 772, 799
Mexico foreign workers in, 997 in Greece, 60, 78–79
Maximilian in, 712 Great Depression and, 864 Hellenistic, 124
NAFTA and, 981 homelessness in, 997 Hittite, 27, 28
rebellions in, 665 imperialism in, 844 in India, 548, 690
societies of, 445 Islam and, 990 in Japan, 876
U.S. war with, 724 oil policy and, 938 medieval, 302
Michael Romanov (Russia), 481 Russian expansion in, 712 Minoan, 27
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 435, 461 Suez Canal and, 712, 731, 921 Mycenaean, 27
[ M i l itar y — M o nten eg ro
] Index I-43
in Napoleonic France, 646–649, Missiles, 900, 925, 931, 965 in Germany, 341, 360–363
652, 653 Missions and missionaries. See also Hellenistic, 123, 136
Neo-Assyrian, 43 specific orders Israelite, 48
in Prussia, 562–563, 592, 594, 650 in Africa, 754 in Mesopotamia, 10
Roman, 151–152, 153, 165, 178, in Asia, 460–461, 730, 731, 754 in Middle Ages, 348, 355–364
189, 202, 204 Calvinist, 474 in Near East, 42
of Romanus IV, 332 in China, 730, 731, 808 in northeastern Europe, 429
in Russia, 529, 562, 715–716, 977 European imperialism and, 658, Ottoman, 417
in Sparta, 64, 81 659 reforms by, 595–598
in Wessex, 304 in India, 659 revival of, 337–341
after World War I, 838 in Ireland, 270 in Rome, 150–152
Military draft Jesuit, 460–461, 491 in Spain, 960
in France, 619, 621, 641 in New World, 441, 460, 461, 491 in western Europe, 428–429
Napoleonic, 646, 649 in Scandinavia, 298 Monasticism and monasteries. See
World War I and, 813, 824, 828 Mitanni people, Egypt and, 25 also Clergy; Convents;
World War II and, 887, 892 Mithras (god), cult of, 200, 200(i), Religious orders
Military spending 201 Augustinian Order, 449, 450
for cold war, 912 Mithridates VI (Pontus), 165–166, Benedictine, 321–322, 329
Korean War and, 918 167 Boniface and, 290
under Reagan, 962 Mitteleuropa, 811, 814 Carthusian, 330
in Soviet Union, 963 Mitterrand, François, 962 Cistercian, 330, 331(f)
in U.S., 962 Mobile warfare, 888 Columbanus and, 268
Military technology. See also Mobility commercial centers near,
Weapons in Athenian society, 69 314–315
in 16th century, 465 labor, 677 conduct in, 228
of Alexander the Great, 121 women and, 591 emergence of, 226–229
Hellenistic, 134 Mobilization in French Revolution, 615
Militia. See Military World War I and, 822 orders of poverty and, 329–331
Mill, Harriet Taylor, 739, 796 World War II and, 886 Monet, Claude, 766–767
Mill, John Stuart, 739, 796 Modern, use of term, 784 Monetarist theory, 961
Mill on the Floss, The (Eliot), 734 Modern art, 792–794 Money. See Coins
Mills, water, in Middle Ages, 319 Modernism, 791 Money economy, in 1050–1150,
Milosevic, Slobodan, 975, 976, Modernity, 580, 784, 817 313–314
976(m) Modernization Moneylending, by Jews, 383, 384
Miltiades (Athenian general), 243 in China, 994 Mongols and Mongol Empire
Milton, John, 530 Great Depression and, 862 invasions by, 400–401, 401(m)
Milvian Bridge, battle of, 217 in Japan, 731, 751–752, 752(i) in Poland, 429
Mind-body dualism, 117 Napoleon III and, 711 Monks. See also Monasticism and
Minerva (god), 148, 199 by Peter the Great, 560–562, monasteries; specific orders
Minimalist composers, 948 561(i) black, 329–330
Mining, 465, 679, 679(i) in Soviet bloc, 915, 967 Christian, 226–229
Ministerials, 308 Mohács, battle at, 465 white, 330
Minitel (computer network), 939– Moissac, monastery of, 313 Monogamy, in Greece, 62
940 Moldavia, 713 Mono no aware (Japan), 766–767
Minnesingers (love singers), 365 Molecular biology, 942 Monophysite Christianity, 223, 224,
Minoan Crete, 23, 26, 28–30, 31(m), Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 227(i), 241, 254
33 508, 533–534 Monopolies, in Assyria, 13
Mycenaeans and, 32, 33 Monarchs and monarchies. See also Monotheism
Minorities. See also Ethnic groups; French Revolution; Kings and of Islam, 252
specific groups kingdoms; Queens; specific of Israelites, 42, 43, 49–50, 49(i)
in Poland, 842, 842(m) kingdoms and rulers of Jews, 194
in Russia, 716 Bodin on, 497 in Roman Empire, 250
Minos (King), 28 in Byzantine Empire, 338 Monroe, James, 666
Minotaur (mythical creature), 28 in central Europe, 306–308 Monroe Doctrine, 666
Mir (Russian community), 714, 758, in England, 338–340, 355–359, Montagu, Mary Wortley, 566
807 454, 514–516, 518–520, 724 Montaigne, Michel de, 475, 495,
Mishnah, 219 in France, 340–341, 359–360, 505, 499
Missi dominici, 291 506–514, 614, 617–619, 658 Montenegro, 774, 775, 812, 813
I-44 Index
[ M o ntesquieu — Naples
]
Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de during cold war, 899 Muslims. See also Crusades; Islam;
Secondat, baron of), 569–570, ethnographic, 948 Ottoman Empire; Shi’ite
595 globalization and, 1003 Muslims; Sunni Muslims
Montessori, Maria, 787, 788(i) neorealist, 930–931 in Algeria, 923
Monteverdi, Claudio, 499 about space, 940–941 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 975
Montgolfier brothers, 577(i) World War II and, 887 Byzantine Empire and, 257
Montpellier, university in, 348, 349 Mozarabs, 287, 372 crusades and, 332, 334, 337
Moon, astronauts on, 940 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 589 in EU, 982
Moral dualism, in Zoroastrianism, 46 Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), 850 in France, 997
Moralistic family paintings, 588, Muhammad. See also Islam in India, 547, 730, 864, 918
591(i) conversion of others to Islam, invasions by, 298
Morality 252–253 in Jerusalem, 332
of cult of Isis, 200–201 dual roles of, 250 in Kosovo, 976
in Greek tragedies, 101, 102 Qur’an and, 251 Moriscos and, 478
Hebrew, 47 successors to, 253–255 in Morocco, 477
Roman, 144, 149, 161 Mühlberg, battle at, 467 Rushdie and, 1001
Socrates and, 116 Mulattoes, 460 in Sicily, 309(m)
Moral majority (U.S.), 962 Multiculturalism, 1002 in Soviet Union, 852, 887, 975
Moravia, 527 in Near East, 114 in Spain, 254, 324, 371–372,
More, Thomas, 454 Multiethnicity. See also Diversity 436, 447, 461, 474, 492,
Moriscos, 478 of non-Roman kingdoms, 229 557
Morocco, 477, 811, 888, 923, 998 Multinational corporations, 944 Sunni/Shi’ite split in, 286–287
Morris, William and May, 766 Multinationalism in Third Crusade, 370
Morrison, Toni, 1001, 1002(i) in Austria-Hungary, 801 in Yugoslavia, 906
Mortality in Soviet Union, 834 Mussolini, Benito
decline in, 549 Mummies, 26 Black Shirts and, 852, 853(i)
infant and child, 591, 679, 682, Mumps, 942 charisma of, 873
914 Munch, Edvard, 782(i), 793 death of, 888
Mortgages, 995, 996 Munich Pact (1938), 880–881 expansion by, 876–877
Mosaics, 243 Münster, Anabaptists in, 457, 457(i) France and, 881
Byzantine, 256(i) Münter, Gabriele, 793 media and, 847
of chariot racing, 174(i) Müntzer, Thomas, 455 Munich Pact and, 880
of Christ as Sun God, 222(i) Murat, Joachim, 643 rise to power, 852–854
of family from Edessa, 224(i) Mursili II (Hittites), 27 Spain and, 878
from Great Mosque at Damascus, Muscovy, 411n, 481 Mutiny, in World War I, 830
256(i) Museum(s), 686, 930 Mycenaeans, 8, 26, 31–34, 31(m),
in Ravenna, 215, 238(i), 239(i) in Alexandria, 129 36(m)
from villa, 182(i) Music. See also Opera Minoans and, 32, 33
of women exercising (Sicily), baroque, 588 Treasury of Atreus and, 35
235(i) Beethoven symphonies as, Myrdal, Alva, 871–872
Moscow, 652, 807, 831, 977, 984, 998 660–661 Mysteries (initiation ceremonies),
Moses, 47 classical, 588–589 in Greece, 90
Hellenistic play about, 130 Enlightenment and, 588–589 Mystery cults, 90, 137, 199
Mos mairoum (way of the elders), in in former Soviet bloc, 1003 Mythology
Rome, 144, 156 jazz, 846, 851 Greek, 41, 42, 58–59, 101(i)
Mosques, Dome of the Rock as, minimalists and, 948 Mesopotamian, 10–11
255(i), 256 modern, 794
Motet, 388, 389(i) oratorios and, 555 NAFTA. See North American Free
Mothers. See Families; Women orchestral, 588–589 Trade Agreement
Mountain the (France), 619, 620 public concerts and, 554–555 Nagasaki, bombing of, 892
Mount Olympus, 58 Renaissance, 427–428 Nagy, Imre, 917
Mount Sinai rock, 946–947, 1000 Names (personal), in French
monastery at, 227(i) rock-and-roll culture and, Revolution, 623
Moses at, 47 927–928, 928(i) Nanking, Treaty of, 690–691
Movable type, 447–448 romantic, 660–661 Nantes, Edict of, 475
Movies, 939 sacred and secular, 387–388 Naples
in 1920s, 847–848 troubadours and, 365 France and, 431, 635, 649, 718
in 1930s, 874 Muslim League, 809 Greek settlements in, 56
[ Naples — Nav igation Act
] Index I-45
kingdom of, 643, 663, 667 Robespierre and, 626 Nation-states. See also Nation
railway in, 672(i) slavery and, 633 building; State (nation)
Napoleon I Bonaparte (France). National debt, in United States, 957, in global age, 981–986
See also specific locations 958, 994 government and, 710
conquests by, 629, 646–654 National Front Party (France), 962 nationalism and, 716
coronation of, 642, 643(i) National Guard protests in Europe against,
in Egypt, 641 in France, 614, 626, 733 731–733
empire of, 628, 646–649, 647(m), in United States, 957 religion and, 736–737
652 National health care, 913 Native Americans
Europe after, 654–659, 656(m) National Insurance Act (England, Columbus and, 444
fall of, 652–653 1911), 798 conversion of, 441
Goethe and, 584 Nationalism discrimination against, 460
as military hero, 638(i) artists and, 793 diseases and, 446, 488, 491, 524
religion and, 641–642 in Austria-Hungary, 801 Europeans and, 445, 524–525,
rise of, 639, 640–646 in Austrian Empire, 691–692 547
Rosetta stone and, 112(i), 641 in Balkans, 664–665, 664(m), forced labor of, 465
Russia and, 652 774 imperialism and, 804
slavery and, 633 Basque, 960, 960(m) literature by, 1002
Napoleon III (France) French Revolution and, 621 missionaries and, 441, 460, 461
authoritarianism and, 710, 711 of German peoples, 692 reservations for, 724
Crimean War and, 710, 712, 713 in Germany, 722 U.S. expansion and, 725(m)
defeat of, 733 growth of, 716 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty
election of, 699 in Hungary, 701 Organization
Franco-Prussian war and, 722 ideology of, 691–693 Natural gas, 981, 987
Italian unification and, 700, 717, in India, 730, 809 Natural harmonization, Smith on,
718 in Ireland, 693, 960, 960(m) 581
rise of, 685(i) of Islamic fundamentalists, 990 Natural History of Religion, The
Siamese ambassadors and, in Italy, 651, 691–692, 719 (Hume), 578, 583(f)
711(i) Jewish, 802–803 Natural law, 496–497, 577
Suez Canal and, 712, 731 Napoleon and, 651 morality and, 161
Napoleon Crossing the Alps at St. in Ottoman Empire, 664(m), 809 Natural resources
Bernard (David), 638(i) in Poland, 693 in Russia, 977, 979
Napoleonic Code. See Civil Code revolutionary, 809 in United States, 756–757
(Napoleonic) after revolutions of 1848, 702–703 Natural rights, 497, 577, 579, 581
Napoleonic wars, 646–654 romanticism and, 661 Natural science, in 19th century,
Naram-Sin (Akkad), 13 in Russia, 693 737–738
Narmer (Menes, Egypt), 16 World War I and, 816, 827 Natural selection, 738
Naseby, battle of, 515 Nationalist Party (China), 808 Nature
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 921, 921(i) Nationalities. See also Ethnic groups; laws of, 493
Nation. See State (nation) Minorities romanticism and, 584, 659, 660
National Aeronautics and Space in Austria-Hungary, 774 Navarino Bay, battle at, 664
Administration (NASA), 917 Nationalization Navarre, 372(m), 430
National Assembly (France), of private property, 915 Navies
612–613, 614–616, 699 of Suez Canal, 921 Athenian, 78, 82(i), 83, 85, 119
National Association for the National Organization for Women British, 304, 594, 648–649,
Advancement of Colored (NOW), 953–954 813–814
People (NAACP), 927 National Socialists (Germany). See of Corinth, 81
National Congress of the Chechen Nazis and Nazism (Germany) German, 813–814, 838
People, 980 National workshops (France), 698, Persian, 79
National Convention (France) 699, 732 Roman, 158
abolishment of monarchy by, Nation building. See also Russian, 562
618 Imperialism; Unification Washington Conference (1921)
clubs, societies, and, 625 in Africa, 922(m) and, 839
constitution created by, 628 cities and, 726–727 World War I and, 825
education and, 623 education and, 728–729 World War II and, 889
execution of Louis XVI and, 619 social order for, 726–733 Navigation. See Exploration; Ships
General Maximum and, 620 in United States, 724–726 and shipping
inheritance laws and, 624 warfare and, 710, 716–726 Navigation Act (England), 517–518
I-46 Index
[ Nazis and Nazism — Nobilit y
]
Nazis and Nazism (Germany), 900. Nazi conquest of, 859 New York, 952, 984, 1004
See also Fascism Philip II and, 467 immigrants in, 744(i)
anti-Semitism of, 870, 883–886 Spain and, 478, 483, 511–512 September 11, 2001, attacks on,
Austria and, 874, 878–879 urbanization in, 763 992(i), 993
central European conquests by, World Court in, 976 skyscrapers in, 851
878–881 World War II and, 881, 901 New Zealand, 579, 690, 763, 989
denazification program and, 909 Networks NGOs. See Nongovernmental
emigration from, 870 computer, 939, 998 organizations
expansion by, 876–877, 878–881 global communication, 965 Nicaea
growth of, 880(m) Neustria, 263(m), 269 Council of, 223
Hitler and, 854, 867–870 Neutrality, of Belgium, 667 in crusades, 334
Holocaust by, 883–886, 884(m) Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, 319 Nice, France, 465, 717
Jews and, 790(i), 870 New Deal (U.S.), 871 Nicene Creed, 223
Nuremberg trials and, 909 New Economic Policy (NEP), 851, Nicephorus I (Byzantine Empire),
religious opposition to, 875 865 283, 284
resistance to, 874 New England, blacks in, 545 Nicephorus II Phocas (Byzantine
totalitarianism of, 864, 867–870 Newfoundland, 513 Empire), 283
visual power of, 858(i) New France. See Canada Nicetius (bishop), 269
West Germany and, 962 New Harmony, 695 Nicholas I (Russia)
young people and, 862 New imperialism, 746–754 Austria and, 702
Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939), 881, 903 New Kingdom (Egypt), 23–26, 35 Crimean War and, 712
Near East. See also Hellenistic world; New Lanark, Scotland, 695 death of, 713
Mesopotamia; Middle East; New Left, in France, 954 on education, 688
specific locations New man, in Rome, 164–165, 182 liberalism and, 695
ancient, 4–8, 6(m) New Model Army (England), 515, Poland and, 667
Dark Age in, 42–50 516 succession of, 664
empires in, 42–50 New Netherland, 524 Nicholas II (Russia)
environment of, 5 Newnham (women’s college), 729 anti-Semitism and, 799
Greek culture and, 70–73, 114 New Plymouth Colony, 491 revolution of 1905 and, 807
Hellenistic Greeks and, 114, 123 New right, in Germany, 800 Russian Revolution and, 831
violence in, 36(m) News from the Republic of Letters World War I and, 815, 828
Necker, Jacques, 613, 645 (Bayle), 566–567 Nicholas III (Pope), 398(i)
Nelson, Horatio, 641, 649 New Spain, 445 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 787, 791, 849(i)
Neo-Assyrian Empire, 42–43 Newspapers, 964, 977 Nigeria, 922, 995
Neo-Babylonian Empire, 43–44 consumer revolution and, Nightingale, Florence, 713, 728
Neoclassical style, 588, 589(i) 553–554 Night of the Long Knives (Nazi
Neoliberalism, 961, 962, 980, 985 Enlightenment and, 589 Germany), 869
Neolithic (New Stone) Age, 5 Estates General coverage by, 612 Nihilism, in Russia, 716, 734
Neolithic Revolution, 6–8 growth of, 686 Nijmegen, Treaty of, 512
Neoplatonism, 201, 243 mass culture and, 847 Nika Riot, 240
Neorealism, in movies, 930–931 mass politics and, 770, 771 Nile River region, 16, 17, 17(m), 25.
NEPmen, in Soviet Union, 851 political coverage by, 600 See also Egypt (ancient)
Nero (Rome), 186, 187(i), 197 public, 561 Nîmes, France, aqueduct at, 157(i)
Nerva (Rome), 186 New Stone Age. See Neolithic Age 1984 (Orwell), 892, 930
Nestlé, 844 New Testament. See Bible Ninety-five theses (Luther), 450–451
Nestorian Christianity, 223 Newton, Isaac, 493, 496, 499, 532, Nippur, map from, 15
Nestorius, 223 568, 577, 579 Nixon, Richard, 956–957, 957–958
Netherlands, 983, 998. See also New unionism movement, 769 Nkrumah, Kwame, 921–922
Dutch; Dutch Republic New woman, 787–788, 800, 829 Noah, biblical account of, 11
Austrian, 551, 558(m), 564, 608 New World. See also Americas; Nobel, Alfred, 796, 813
Belgium and, 667 Colonies and colonization; Nobel Prize, 899, 926, 1000, 1001
Calvinism in, 473, 474 specific locations Nobility. See also Aristocracy
after Charlemagne, 295 conversion of Indians in, 441, 460, as ambassadors, 565
Congress of Vienna and, 654 461 in Austria, 528, 597
in ECSC, 912 Dutch trade with, 560 in Brandenburg-Prussia, 526
France and, 648 gold and silver from, 477, 487, Byzantine, 338
kingdom of, 656 488 in England, 340, 432
male suffrage in, 773 slave trade and, 445, 544–547 in Enlightenment, 585–587
[ N obil it y — O n th e Baby lonian Captiv it y of th e Church
] Index I-47
in France, 341, 360, 466, 475–476, revolution in, 601–602 Oases, 23

597, 598, 611, 626, 643 Seven Years’ War in, 593–594 Obama, Barack, 993
lifestyle of, 552 slaves in, 445, 544–547 Oblation, 228
middle class and, 588 Vikings in, 297 Obstetricians, 943
in Ostrogothic Italy, 233 War of Austrian Succession in, Occitan (language), 364
in Rome, 155 564 Occupation (military), of Germany,
in Russia, 529, 530, 562, 586, 695, North American Free Trade 892, 901, 906–907, 907(m),
713, 715, 716 Agreement (NAFTA), 981 908, 909
women of, 307–308 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Occupations (jobs), in Rome, 216
Nobility of the robe (France), (NATO), 907, 908(m), 950, Oceans. See specific ocean regions
475–476 976 Ockeghem, Johannes, 428
Nomads North Briton (newspaper), 600 Ockham’s razor, 418
Bedouins as, 250–251 Northern Crusades, 373–374 O’Connell, Daniel, 693
Islam and, 251 Northern Ireland, 843, 843(m), 960, Octavian (Augustus). See Augustus
Russian control of, 730 960(m), 962 (Octavian)
Nominalism, 418 North German Confederation, 721 Odoacer (Germanic general), 233
Nonaggression pact, Nazi-Soviet, North Korea, 919. See also Korea Odyssey, The (Homer), 52, 55–56,
881 Northmen. See Vikings 160
Nonaligned nations, 923 Northumbria, 305 Ogodei (Mongols), 400
Nongovernmental organizations North Vietnam, 919, 952, 957. See Oil and oil industry, 987, 995
(NGOs), 985–986 also Vietnam fluctuating prices in (1955–1985),
Nonviolent resistance, civil rights Northwest passage, search for, 446 959(f)
movement and, 927 Norway, 298, 535, 881 in Middle East, 844, 888, 920, 958,
Nordau, Max, 789 Notke, Bernt, 429 990
Normandy Notre Dame cathedral, 622, 623 in Russia, 981
in c. 1050, 309(m) Nova Scotia, 513 Soviet, 959
France and, 360 Novels. See also Books; Literature; Olaf (Saint), 535
Vikings and, 298 specific works Old Believers (Russia), 529
World War II and, 888 in 1930s, 874–875 Old Curiosity Shop, The (Dickens),
Normans realist, 734, 736 685
Byzantine Empire and, 338 society and, 555, 684–686 Oldenburg, Claes, 947, 947(i)
in England, 338–340, 338(m), by women, 534 Old English language, 272, 304–305
339(i), 357 Nubia, 17, 17(m), 20, 22 Old Kingdom (Egypt), 16–22
power of, 324 Nuclear power, 900, 938 Old Stone Age. See Paleolithic Age
in Sicily, 309(m), 332 Chernobyl catastrophe and, 964, Old Testament. See Bible
North (global), 989–990 986 Oligarchies
North (U.S.), 725, 726 Einstein’s theories of energy and, in Athens, 69, 107
North Africa. See also Carthage; 792 in Corinth, 67
Punic Wars; specific pollution from, 986–987 in Greece, 59, 84
locations power plants for, 941–942 in Sparta, 64–67
Arab world and, 249 Nuclear weapons Oligarchs, in Russia, 977
Christianity in, 223 atomic bomb and, 792, 891–892, Olympia (Manet), 735(i), 736
decolonization in, 918 891(i), 907, 911 Olympias (mother of Alexander the
Fatimids in, 287 cold war and, 907 Great), 120
France and, 811 Soviet, 907 Olympic Games, in Greece, 52–53, 90
Greek settlements in, 56 test-ban treaty and, 931–932 On Agriculture (Cato), 160
immigrants from, 924 World War II and, 891–892, 899 Once Upon the River Love (Makine),
Justinian and, 244(m) Numerals, 15 1002
Rome and, 160, 191 Nuns. See Convents; Monasticism On Crimes and Punishments
terrorists from, 992 and monasteries; specific (Beccaria), 595
Vandals in, 232 orders One Day in the Life of Ivan
World War II and, 888, 889(m) Nur al-Din (Seljuk Empire), 370 Denisovitch (Solzhenitsyn), 917
North America. See also specific Nuremberg Laws (Germany, 1935), One Hundred Years of Solitude
locations 870 (García Márquez), 1001
colonies in, 491–492 Nuremberg trials, 909 On Germany (Staël), 645
French cession of, 513, 558(m) Nursing, in Crimean War, 713, On Liberty (Mill), 739
Great Awakening in, 584 714(i) On the Babylonian Captivity of the
migration to, 762, 763 Nutrition. See Diet (food) Church (Luther), 451
I-48 Index
[ O n th e Construction of th e Human Bo dy — Pan - A ra b m ovem e nts
]
On the Construction of the Human Orwell, George, 874, 892–893, 930 Pachomius, 227
Body (Vesalius), 495 Osiris (god), 200 Pacific Ocean region. See also
On the Nature of Things (Lucretius), Osman I (Ottomans), 417 specific locations
160 Osrhoëne, kingdom of, 224(i) World War II in, 883, 884,
On the Origin of Species (Darwin), Ostia, midwife in, 192(i) 890(m), 891
737 Ostpolitik, 949–950 Pacific tigers, 994, 994(m)
On the Revolution of the Celestial Ostracism, 84 Pacifism
Spheres (Copernicus), 493 Ostrogoths, 233, 240 Christian, 450
On the Rivers of Europe, 129 Oswy (Northumbria), 270–271 as women’s cause, 796
On the Solitary Life (Petrarch), 423 Otto I (Germany), 298–299, 306, Paestum, Italy, 588
OPEC. See Organization of 307 Pagans and paganism
Petroleum Exporting Countries Otto I (Greece), 665, 667 religious campaigns against, 535
Open City (movie), 930 Otto II (Ottonian Empire), 306 Vikings and, 298
Open Society Foundation, 985 Otto III (Ottonian Empire), 306, Painting. See also Art(s); specific
Opera, 497, 498–499, 509, 554–555, 307(i) works and artists
589, 667, 708(i), 709, 736, 930 Ottoman Empire. See also Turkey in 1920s, 849–850, 849(i)
Operation Vittles, 907 in 17th century, 537(m) abstract, 793
Opium, 690, 691 in c. 1780, 603(m) abstract expressionism in, 930
Opium War, 690, 690(m), 731 Armenians in, 828 black-figure style, 40(i)
Optimates (Rome), 164, 166 Balkan region and, 811, 812, 813 Dutch and, 523, 523(i)
Oracles, Greek, 59, 89, 133 Congress of Berlin and, 775 expressionism in, 793
Oral culture, of Anglo-Saxons and Constantinople conquered by, Gothic, 389–390
Irish Celts, 271 417–418 gouache, 540(i)
Oral literature, in Mycenae, 32 Crimean War and, 712–713, of Greek women, 91(i)
Orange, princes of, 479, 522, 608, 712(m) impressionism in, 766–767, 767(i)
653 end of, 836 mannerism in, 498
Orange Free State, 803 expansion of, 428, 527(m), 528 middle class and, 588
Oration on the Dignity of Man exploration and, 443(m) moralistic family scenes in, 588,
(Pico), 423 former colonies of, 838 591(i)
Oratorios, 555 Habsburgs, Valois wars, and, 463, red-figure, 40(i), 58(i), 76(i)
Order of the Sisters of St. Francis, 465 religion and, 497
368 in Hungary, 528 rococo, 549(i), 554, 554(i), 588
Order of the Templars, 336 Italy and, 804 romanticism in, 660, 661(i),
Orders (classes), in Rome, 152–155 Lepanto and, 477–478, 481 662(i), 684(i)
Oresteia (Aeschylus), 101 Middle East after, 844, 864 Pakistan, 918, 993
Orfeo (Monteverdi), 499 nationalism in, 664–665, 774, Palaces. See also specific locations
Organization of Labor (Blanc), 696 809 at Gla, 35
Organization of Petroleum Russia and, 751, 775 Mesopotamian, 10
Exporting Countries (OPEC), World War I and, 822 Minoan, 29, 29(i), 30
958, 959(f) Ottoman Turks. See also Ottoman Mycenaean, 33, 35
Organizations. See also specific Empire Persian, 46(i)
organizations Austria, Hungary, and, 563–564 Palace society, in Crete, 29
global, 981, 985–986 Constantinople and, 409 Palach, Jan, 936(i), 937, 938, 949,
Origen, 201 Greece and, 664–665 956, 957, 966
Original sin, 225 Habsburgs, Valois wars, and, 463, Pale of Settlement, for Russian Jews,
Origins, The (Cato), 160 465 776–777
Orlando (Woolf), 849, 850 Russia and, 481, 609 Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age, 5
Orlando Furioso (Ariosto), 462, 533 Spain and, 474, 477–478 Palermo, 667, 700
Orléans, battle of, 414 trade routes and, 442 Palestine
Orléans, Philippe II (duke of), 557 Venice and, 433 Canaan as, 15
Oroonoko (Behn), 534 Ottonian kings (Germany), 306–308 Israel and, 920, 958, 991(m), 992
Orsanmichele, Florence, 403(i) Outsourcing, 984, 998 Jews and, 803, 876, 901, 920
Orthodox Christianity. See also Outwork, 755–756, 763, 939 partition of, 920, 920(m)
Greek Orthodox Church; Ovid (Rome), 184 Roman Empire and, 219
Russian Orthodox Church Ovism doctrine, 570 after World War I, 838
Justinian and, 241 Owen, Robert, 695 Pan-African movement, 805(m), 918
Orthodoxy (Christian true Oxford University, 351, 729 Pan-Arabic world, 990
doctrine), 199, 221, 369 Ozone layer, 987 Pan-Arab movements, 918
[ Pandemics — Peasants
] Index I-49
Pandemics, 1005 Parlement of Paris, 394, 611 Patristic authors, 224

influenza, 834 Parlements (France), 396n, 506–507, Patron-client system (Rome),
Pandora, 63 510, 597, 600 145–146, 166, 178. See also
Pan-Islamic world, 990 Parliament (England) Clients
Pankhurst, Christabel, 827 Act of Supremacy and, 454 Paul III (Pope), 459
Pankhurst, Emmeline, 797, 827 Charles I and, 514–515 Paul VI (Pope), 323n, 948–949
Pan-Slavism, 723, 774 Irish representatives in, 771, 843 Paul of Tarsus (Saint Paul),
Papacy. See also Great Schism; mercantilist policies of, 517 195–196
Popes; specific popes monarchy and, 559 Pavia, Italy, 273, 464
in Avignon, 399, 410, 418 reforms in, 516, 600, 667–668, Pax Romana, 176
Carolingians and, 290 724 Paxton, Joseph, 704(i)
criticisms of, 418 as representative institution, Peace. See also specific treaties
Freemasonry and, 587–588 396–397 diplomacy and, 564–565, 773
Germany and, 361, 392, 393 Parliament(s). See also Parliament World War I and, 828, 835–838
Great Schism and, 410, 418–421 (England) Peacekeeping, in former Yugoslavia,
Investiture Conflict and, 324–327 in Finland, 797 975–976
in Italy, 722 in France, 658 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 564
in Middle Ages, 392, 393 in Hungary, 723, 966 Peace of Augsburg, 467, 473, 474,
Normans and, 324 in Russia, 977 482
payment for, 329 Parma cathedral complex, 316(i) Peace of God movement, 303
power of, 273–274, 328, 393, Parnell, Charles Stewart, 772 Peace of Lodi, 433, 433(m)
397–399 Pärt, Arvo, 948 Peace of Paris
Papal bulls Parthenon (Athens), 85–86, 86–88, of 1856, 713
Louis XIV and, 510 87(i), 219 of 1919–1920, 836–838, 837(m),
Unam Sanctam, 398–399 Parthian Empire, 202 854, 874, 903
Papal curia (government), 329 Partisans, World War II and, 906 Peace of Rijswijk, 512
Papal inquisition. See Inquisition Partitions. See Germany; Poland; Peace of Utrecht, 513, 564
Papal primacy, 324 Zones of occupation Peace of Westphalia, 484–486,
Papal States, 392, 589, 629 Partnerships, 318 485(m), 565
Paper, in Islam, 289 Pascal, Blaise, 510, 530 Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on,
Papermaking, 448 Pasternak, Boris, 899, 899(i), 900, 883
Paradise Lost (Milton), 530 903, 917, 932 Peasants. See also Serfs and serfdom
Parchment, books on, 243, 448 Pasteur, Louis, 727 in Austrian Empire, 701
Paris, 950, 981, 984, 987. See also Pasteurization, 727 in Austrian Netherlands, 609
France; Peace of Paris Pastoral Rule (Gregory the Great), in Byzantine Empire, 259
Capetian dynasty and, 306 274 in Carolingian Empire, 296
Enlightenment in, 582 Paternalism commerce and, 315, 319, 320–321
in Frankish kingdom, 269 in Greece, 62 culture of, 535–536
French Revolution and, 613–614 Napoleonic, 644–645 in eastern Europe, 551
Haussmannization in, 726–727 in Rome, 178 economic activity and, 266–267,
immigrants in, 973, 973(i) Patria potestas (father’s power), in 489–490
July revolution in, 667 Rome, 146 in England, 339, 551
Louis VI and, 341 Patriarch in Enlightenment, 586, 590
parlement of, 394 of Constantinople, 260 entertainment for, 590
protests in (1968), 954 of Russian Orthodox Church, 562 as factory workers, 677
rebuilding of, 711 Patriarchy famine and, 489
sanitation in, 727 in barbarian society, 230 in France, 611, 614, 682
siege of (1870–1871), 722, Islamic, 253 in Frankish kingdoms, 264–265
732–733 in Mesopotamia, 10 in Great Depression, 861
terrorism in, 992 Patricians (Rome), 152–155, 158 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126
university in, 348, 351 Patrick (Saint), 270 Hundred Years’ War and, 416
uprising in (1848), 698–699 Patrilineal inheritance, 303, 307 illiteracy of, 553
World War II and, 882, 888 Patriotism Irish, 698
Paris, Treaty of (1763), 594 during French Revolution, 623 lifestyle of, 586
Paris Commune (1871), 733, 741, in World War II, 886 as medieval class, 300–301
770 Patriots plague and, 413, 489
Paris Peace Conference, 836–838 in Dutch Republic, 608–609 in Prussia, 526, 650
Parks, Rosa, 927 in Poland, 609, 631 revolts by, 403–404, 483, 599
I-50 Index
[ Peas ants — Pius V
]
Peasants (continued) nationalism in, 864 Philoponus, John, 243
in Russia, 529, 634, 688, 713, Rome and, 213 Philosopher-kings, Plato on, 117
714–715, 751, 758, 796, 807, Russia and, 751 Philosophes, 576–580, 578(i), 583,
808, 831 Sasanids and, 257 597
as serfs, 491 Persian Empire, 44–46, 73(m) Philosophical and Political History of
in Soviet Union, 865 Alexander the Great and, 113, 121 European Colonies and
after Thirty Years’ War, 483 Athens and, 78–79, 107 Commerce in Two Indies
uprising in Greece, 664 expansion of, 45(m) (Raynal), 579, 583(f)
Peasants’ War (1525), 455, 456(m) Greece and, 119 Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire),
Pedagogues, 148 Philip II (Macedonia) and, 579, 583(f)
Peel, Robert, 668, 694 119–120 Philosophy. See also specific
Peers (England), 552, 586. See also religion in, 45–46 philosophers
Nobility Sasanids and, 202 in Athens, 71–73, 96–99, 116–118
Peisistratus (Athens), 69–70 Persian Letters (Montesquieu), 569 existential, 926
Pelevin, Victor, 1003 Persian people, in India, 547 Greek, 42, 96–99
Pelletier, Fernande, 945 Persian Wars, 76(i), 79–81, 80(m) Greek impact on Romans, 201
Peloponnese region Peru, 445–446, 536 Hellenistic, 131–133
Byzantines and, 283 Pesticides, 945 positivism and, 791
Mantinea battle in, 119 Pétain, Henri Philippe, 882 Phocas family (Byzantine Empire),
Mycenae in, 31, 35 Peter (Saint), 195 283, 284
Sparta in, 81 authority of, 271 Phoenicians, 35, 51, 56, 57(m), 73(m).
Peloponnesian War, 104–107 bishops of Rome as successors to, See also Carthage; Punic Wars
Greece after, 114–119 221 Photography, 683, 686, 766
Penance, sacrament of, 450 “republic” of, 290 Physical fitness, of workers, 770
Pensées (Pascal), 530 Peter I (the Great, Russia), 560–562, Physicians. See Doctors; Medicine
Pensions 561(i) Physics, 496, 791, 792, 875
for veterans, 845, 913 Peter III (Russia), 574(i), 594 Physiocrats, 597–598
in welfare states, 913 Peterloo massacre, 667 Piacenza, 317, 317(m), 399–400
after World War I, 845 Peters, Carl, 745, 746, 747, 778 Picart, Bernard, 569(i)
Pentagon, terrorist attack on, 992(i), Peter the Chanter, 349, 350–351, Picasso, Pablo, 792–793, 878
993 385 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni,
Pentateuch. See Torah Peter the Hermit, 334 423
People, the. See Common people Petition of Right (England), 514 Pictographs. See Writing
People of color Petrarch, Francesco, 422–423 Piedmont, 640, 667, 709, 717, 718,
Darwin and, 739 Petrograd, 828, 831, 851. See also 718(m)
Egyptians as, 18 Leningrad; St. Petersburg Piedmont–Sardinia, 663, 717
on liberation and race, 927 Petty, William, 565 Pietism, 555–556, 584, 658
People’s Charter, 697 Peugeot, Armand, 755 Pilate, Pontius (Judaea), 194
People’s Crusade, 334 Pharaohs (Egypt), 23–24, 47, 128(i) Pilgrimage of Grace, 454
People’s Republic of China. See Pharisees, 194 Pilgrimages
China Pharos (Alexandria lighthouse), 134 church regulation of, 535
People’s Will (Russia), 776 Pharsalus, battle of, 168 crusades as, 331–332
Perestroika (restructuring), 963–964, Philip II (Augustus, France), to Lourdes, 737
965, 969, 977 359–360, 360(m), 370, 394 to Mecca, 253
Pergamum, 124, 127 Philip II (Macedonia), 119 Pilgrims, in American colonies, 491
Pericles (Athens), 83–84, 92, 103, Philip II (Spain), 464, 467, 474, 475, Pill, the, 942–943, 953
104–106 476–478, 476(m), 478(i), 479, Pilsudski, Jozef, 842
Periodicals, 553, 686 480 Pinsker, Leon, 803
Perpetua, Vibia, 175, 197 Philip III (Spain), 478 Pipe Rolls (England), 358
Persecution Philip IV (the Fair, France), 384, Pippin (son of Louis the Pius), 294
of Christians, 197, 217 397–399 Pippin III (the Short, Carolingians),
political, 795 Philip IV (Spain), 486(i) 274, 290
of witches, 499–500 Philip V (Spain), 512, 513, 557 Piracy, 547
Persephone (god), 90, 199 Philip VI (France), 413 Piraeus, 86(m)
Persia. See also Iran; Persian Empire; Philippines, 492, 804, 883, 965, 998 Pisa, Council of, 419
specific dynasties Philip the Bold (Burgundy), 423 Pistoia, Italy, Black Death in, 412
Greek wars with, 78–81 Philip the Good (Burgundy), 430, Pitt, William, 621
Islam and, 253 431(i) Pius V (Pope), 478(i)
[ P iu s VI — Polit ic s
] Index I-51
Pius VI (Pope), 616 antisemitism in, 901 Politianus, Bartholomaeus, 422

Pius VII (Pope), 642, 643(i) communism in, 904, 905, 966 Political Arithmetick (Petty), 565
Pius IX (Pope), 700, 737 concentration camps in, 884–885, Political life. See also Authority;
Pius XI (Pope), 875 884(m) Government; Political power
Pizarro, Francisco, 445–446 duchy of Warsaw and, 655 Great Depression and, 862, 867
Plague, 409–410, 489, 518, 549. See economy in, 979, 984 Islam and, 252
also Black Death; Epidemics ethnic minorities in, 842, 842(m) religion and, 535–536
in Athens, 106 fascism and, 860 Political parties. See also specific
Planck, Max, 792 German invasion of (1939), 860, parties and locations
Planetary motion, 473–474, 493, 494 881 right-wing in Germany, 842
Plantagenet dynasty, 355n Great Northern War and, 562 women in, 770
Plantation(s) Holocaust in, 884 working-class, 769, 774, 795–796
described, 542 independence and, 308 World War I and, 827
slavery on, 542, 543 Iraq War and, 993 after World War II, 910
Plantation economy, 492, 543–544 Jews in, 413, 901 Political power. See also Authority;
Plato, 97, 114, 116–117, 201, 242 Kingdom of, 630(m) specific locations
Playboy magazine, 928–929 Mongols in, 400 in 15th century republics,
Playwrights, 498, 508, 509. See also nationalism in, 693 432–435
Drama; Theater; specific writers nobility in, 586 in Carolingian Empire, 296
Plebeian Assembly (Rome), 155, 164 partitions of, 594(i), 595, 595(m), in central Europe, 308
Plebeians (Rome), 152–155, 158 609, 630–631, 631(m) consolidation of, 428–436
Plebiscites refugees from, 909(i) European state system and,
in France, 641, 642 reunification of, 842 556–564, 558(m)
in Rome, 155 revolts in, 608, 609, 667, 965 in feudal society, 300–303
Plenary indulgence. See Indulgences Russia and, 630–631, 631(m), 667, of labor, 795–796
Pliny (Rome), 197 716 Machiavelli on, 463
Pliska, Bulgaria, 284 Solidarity movement in, 965, 966 in Merovingian society, 267–269
Plotinus, 201 Soviet invasion of, 881 of NGOs, 985
Plutarch, 191 succession in, 563 of papacy, 273–274, 329, 393,
Pneumatics, 134 Sweden and, 562 397–399
Poets and poetry. See also specific after World War I, 836–837, 840 people as source of, 418
poets World War II and, 860, 881, 883, rebellions against state, 598–602
in Akkad, 12 887, 888, 892 of rural elites, 682–683
“beat,” 928 after World War II, 901 of state (18th century), 592–598
Bedouin, 251 Poland-Lithuania. See also tools of, 435–436
dissident, 965 Lithuania; Poland Political science, 462, 506
epics and, 462 in 17th century, 525(m), 537(m) Political structure. See Government;
Greek, 32, 41, 52, 53–54, 70–71 constitutionalism in, 525–526 specific types
Hellenistic, 129 Enlightenment in, 578 Politics. See also Conservatism;
on Holocaust, 926 government system in, 525 Democracy; Government;
Islamic, 256 partitions of, 593, 594(i), 595, Liberalism; specific locations
Latin, 160 595(m) anti-Semitism in, 799–803
realist, 734 political formations in, 429–430 artists and, 793
Roman, 183 religious conflict in, 474 Catholicism and, 737
romanticism in, 660, 683 Russia and, 481, 481(m), 563 in England, 668, 723–724
Soviet, 915 Polanians (Slavic tribe), 308 in Greek world, 114, 118–119
of troubadours, 364–366 Police international, 950
vernacular culture and, 364–367 in Austrian Empire, 691 in Ireland, 798
Pogroms, against Jews, 334, 763, Cheka, 833 mass, 767–777, 794–803
777, 799 in London, 668 in Middle Ages, 391–404
Poitiers, battle at in Rome, 179 natural law and, 496–497
of 732, 290 in Russia, 664, 775, 807 Nazification of German, 868–870
of 1358, 416 Polio, 872(i), 914, 942 Ostpolitik in, 949–950
Poitou, 360, 394 Polis, 42, 60. See also City-states Realpolitik in, 709, 710, 717,
Poland, 917, 982, 983. See also Polish Corridor, 837 719–722, 724, 737, 957
Poland-Lithuania Polish Legion, 693 in Rome, 152–156, 164, 184–187
in 14th century, 429 Polish people, in Austrian Empire, Russia and, 980–981
agriculture in, 551 691 television and, 939
I-52 Index
[ Po l it i c s — P r i nt i n g
]
Politics (continued) Population. See also Agriculture; in Enlightenment, 590
after World War I, 841–844 Food(s) of factory workers, 678–679
after World War II, 900–907, 910 birthrate decline and, 784, 988 female, 913
Politiques, 475, 486 of Britain, 565 in Greece, 60
Politkovskya, Anna, 980(i) in cities, 548, 551–552, 680–681 religious orders of, 329–331
Poliziano, Angelo, 425, 435 Dutch, 560 Power (political). See Political power
Polke, Sigmar, 947 of Egypt, 17 Power politics. See Realpolitik
Pollock, Jackson, 930 famine and, 698 Praetor (Rome), 154
Pollution foreign-born in Europe, 924 Praetorian guard (Rome), 178
from factories, 678–679 of French colonies, 864 Pragmatic Sanction (Austria), 564
globalization and, 986–987 as global issue, 988–989 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 432
in Soviet Union, 963, 986–987 Greek, 60 Pragmatists, 791
Polo, Marco, 401 growth of, 487, 548–549, 550, 590, Prague, 413, 701
Poltava, battle of, 562 785 Prague Spring, 954–956, 955(i),
Polyculture, Mediterranean, 30 of Rome, 150, 158, 167, 179, 955(m)
Polygyny, 250–251, 544 191–192, 204 Praise of Folly, The (Erasmus), 449
Polytheism of slaves in Greece, 61 Pravda (Soviet newspaper), 866, 977
in Arabia, 250 of Sparta, 67 Praxiteles, statue by, 130–131, 130(i)
in Canaan, 49(i) after Thirty Years’ War, 483–484, Predestination, 453
Christianity and, 218–221 488, 490 Pregnancy. See also Abortion; Birth
Greek, 135 Populists (Russia), 775 control
Mesopotamian, 10 Porcelain, 443 out of wedlock, 591
Roman, 199–201, 217 Pornography, 583 social legislation and, 913, 914
Pompeii, 180(i), 588 Porphyry, 219 Premarital intercourse, 490
Pompey, Gnaeus (Rome), 163, 167, Porta Nigra (Trier), 263, 264(i) Presbyterians and Presbyterianism,
168 Port Arthur, battle at, 804 480, 515, 516
Poniatowski, Stanislaw August Portugal Presley, Elvis, 927–928
(Poland), 609 African trading posts of, 547 Press. See also Newspapers
Pontifex maximus (chief Roman American settlement by, 441, 546 Milton on freedom of, 530
priest), 149, 218, 219 Brazil and, 444, 665 Price, Richard, 633
Poor people. See also Poverty democracy in, 960 Priests. See also Clergy
attitude toward, 535 explorations by, 441, 442–443 education by, 419
in cities, 553, 681 inflation in, 959 in Rome, 149
disease and, 989 Napoleon and, 651, 652 Primary school systems, 687–688,
in Enlightenment, 590 reconquista and, 372(m), 373(i) 729
in Greece, 60–61, 96 slave trade and, 445, 542, 543, Prime ministers
in Hellenistic world, 126, 657, 690 in England, 559–560, 843, 957,
127–128 Spain and, 371, 469, 477, 483 960–962
relief for, 458–459 Poseidon (god), 58 in France, 487, 772
Roman women and, 148 Positivism, 739, 791 in Italy, 798
in Rome, 162 Possessed, The (Dostoevsky), 775 Primogeniture, 303
Pop art, 947 Postindustrialism, society, culture, Prince, The (Machiavelli), 462–463
Popes. See also Great Schism; and, 937, 943–949 Princeps (Rome), 177, 178, 213
Papacy; specific popes Postmodernism, 1003–1005 Princes. See also specific rulers
expansion of power by, 273–274 Potatoes, 698 courts of, 462–463
German kings and, 307 Potemkin (movie), 848 in Germany, 360–361, 362–363
in Italy, 273–274, 700 Potemkin mutiny, 807 Princess of Cleves, The (Madame de
multiple (1046), 322 Potocki family (Polish Ukraine), 551 Lafayette), 508, 534
Napoleon and, 641–642 Potosí, 446 Princip, Gavrilo, 814, 815(i)
taxation of clergy by, 397–398 Potsdam, World War II meeting at, Principalities, in Germany, 392–393
Popolo (people), 399–400 892, 906 Principate (Rome), 177–178,
Popular culture. See also Art(s); Pottery. See Art(s); Black-figure 184–187, 213
Culture; Mass media style; Red-figure painting Principia Mathematica (Newton),
in 18th century, 530–536 Poulain de la Barre, François, 534 496
Populares (Rome), 164 Poussin, Nicolas, 531, 532(i) Printing
Popular Front Poverty. See also Poor people innovations in, 771
in France, 873 in Africa, 921, 989 invention of press, 447–448,
in Spain, 877 of Cistercian churches, 330 447(i)
[ Prisca — Pugachev
] Index I-53
Prisca (Roman Christian), 199 Protectorates, French, 690 Prussia. See also Junkers
Prison camps, Soviet, 866, 916 Protest(s). See also Strikes; specific agriculture in, 551
Prisoners of war movements aristocracy in, 587
German, 910 of 1968, 954–957 armed forces in, 562–563, 592
Grotius on, 497 in Czechoslovakia, 937, 966 Bismarck and, 719–722
Soviet, 901, 902(m) against globalization, 986, 995(i) clergy in, 737
Privatization, in eastern Europe, 982 in Ireland, 771–772, 960 Congress of Vienna and, 654
Production. See also Agriculture; in Italy, 798 Dutch Republic and, 608
Industry labor, 768 education in, 596
in 1870s and 1880s, 758–759 against nation-state, 731–733 France and, 617–618, 621, 733
World War II and, 886 in Russia, 807 German unification and, 692–693,
Productivity in Soviet bloc, 916, 917, 950, 965, 719–722, 721(m)
in 1920s, 844 966–967 Great Britain and, 593
Soviets and, 915, 964 by students, 952–953, 954, 957 after Great Northern War,
Professions technology and, 937, 966, 977 562–563
middle class in, 587, 762 in Tiananmen Square, 965–966, industrialization in, 676
in 19th century, 728 999 Napoleon and, 649
women in, 729 by women, 953–954, 953(i) Pietism in, 556
Profits in World War I, 830 Poland and, 630–631, 631(m)
in money economy, 313–314 after World War I, 835 Poland-Lithuania and, 526, 563,
from slave trade, 445 Protestantism. See also Calvin, John, 593
Project Head Start, 951 and Calvinism; Luther, Martin; reforms in, 650
Prokofiev, Sergei, 867 Lutheranism; specific groups revolts against, 662
Proletarians, in Rome, 165, 166 in c. 1648, 501(m) revolutionary movement in, 700
Proletariat, 696, 697, 770, 954 in Dutch Republic, 567 Seven Years’ War and, 594
Prometheus, 660 Edict of Nantes and, 475, 510, slave trade and, 543
Propaganda 579 War of the Austrian Succession
during cold war, 911(i), 931, 973 in England, 453–455, 466, and, 564
in fascist Italy, 854 479–481, 520, 559 War of the Polish Succession and,
Hitler’s use of, 868 in France, 466, 474–476, 510, 579, 563
Soviet, 916(i) 596–597 Psalters, 260, 283, 369(i)
in World War I, 828, 836, 847 in Holy Roman Empire, 469, 482 Psychoanalysis, 783, 789–790
World War II and, 879, 886, 887 in Ireland, 843, 960 Psychology, 789–790
Property. See also Inheritance paganism and, 535 Ptolemaic rulers (Egypt), 123–124,
church (France), 615 in Poland-Lithuania, 526 125, 126–127, 128, 129. See also
in Greece, 90–91 in postindustrial society, 949 Cleopatra VII
in Napoleonic code, 644 reform societies and, 687 Ptolemy I, 123
private, 582, 696, 903 religious reform and, 442 Ptolemy II, 129, 138
in Rome, 216 revivalism and, 448, 555–556, Ptolemy III, 136
slaves as, 61 584–585, 658–659 Ptolemy V, 112(i)
of women, 14, 63, 127, 148, 724, Schmalkaldic League and, 467 Ptolemy VIII, 147
787 in Scotland, 467, 559 ruler cults and, 136
Prophets. See also Muhammad spread of, 452–453 Ptolemy (astronomer), 493
Christian women as, 199 Protestant Reformation, 450–453, Public health, 565–566, 681(m), 727
Greek, 59 452(f), 455–459, 466, 468(m). Public life. See also Lifestyle
Jewish, 48–49 See also Calvin, John, and arts in, 554–555
Prosperity Calvinism; Luther, Martin; coffeehouses and, 540(i)
in 1920s, 847 specific groups Public opinion, 599–600, 957
after World War II, 902, 912, 925 Proto-industrialization, 675 Public policy, 1005
Prostitutes and prostitution Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 696, Public works
in cities, 682 732 in Great Depression, 871
in former Soviet Union, 979 Provence, Germany and, 362 of Louis XIV, 509
international sex rings and, 997 Provinces, Roman, 186, 189–190, in Rome, 157(i), 236
regulation of, 592, 728 191, 235–236 Publishing, in France, 582–583
rehabilitation of, 535 Provincial Letters (Pascal), 510 Puccini, Giacomo, 794
in Rome, 148, 181 Provisional Government (Russia), Puerperal fever, 727
women’s work against, 673, 687 831 Puerto Rico, 665, 804
Protagoras (Athens), 95, 96 Proxy wars, 919 Pugachev, Emelian, 599
I-54 Index
[ P u ga ch ev re b e l l i o n — Refo rm ( s )
]
Pugachev rebellion, 599, 599(m) World War I and, 827–828 Raynal, Guillaume (Abbé), 578(i),
Pump priming, 869, 873 World War II and, 887 579, 583(f)
Punic Wars, 158–160 Racine, Jean-Baptiste, 509, 534 Razin, Stenka, 529, 529(i)
Punishment Radical democracy, in Athens, Re (god), 20
in Hammurabi’s code, 14–15 83–85, 107 Reading, 553–554, 589–590. See also
in Israelite law, 48 Radical Islam, 990–993 Literacy
in Rome, 213 Radicalism Reagan, Ronald, 962, 965, 969
of slaves, 545 France and, 699 Reaganomics, 962
torture and, 497 Russia and, 775–776 Real estate bubble, 995–996
wergeld as, 234–235 after World War I, 835 Realism
Purges Radical right, 799 in arts, 161, 733–736, 735(i)
Lenin and, 851 Radio, 847, 848–849, 854, 869, 871, Greek, 161
by Stalin, 866, 903 872(i), 887, 929–930, 931, 938, Roman, 161
Puritanism. See also Calvin, John, 939, 946 socialist, 866, 950
and Calvinism Radioactivity, 792, 964, 986 Realpolitik, 709, 710, 717, 719–722,
in England, 479–480, 514, 515, Radio telescope, 941 724, 737, 957
516, 517 Railroads Reason. See also Logic; Rationalism
paganism and, 535 in Asia, 676 Descartes on, 496
Putin, Vladimir, 977, 980(i), 981, in Belgium, 676 Enlightenment and, 576, 580, 583
1003 Crimean War and, 713 faith and, 379
Putting-out system, 675, 678 in England, 673, 676, 703 limits of, 584–585
Pylos, 35, 106 in Hungary, 694 scholastics and, 385, 386
Pyramids, in Egypt, 9(i), 16, 20–21, industrial growth and, 755 Rebellions. See Revolts and
21(i) in Italy, 672(i), 717 rebellions
Pythagoras (mathematician), 72 in Russia, 683, 758 Rebel Without a Cause (movie), 928
Pyxis, 288(i) state power and, 676 Reccared (Visigoths, Spain), 272
in United States, 676 Receipt Rolls (England), 358
Qaddafi, Muammar, 990 Rain, Steam, and Speed: . . . Recessions
Qing dynasty (China), 731, 806(m), (Turner), 684 in 17th century, 487–490
808 Rainforests, clearing of, 987 oil and, 938
Quaestors (Rome), 154 Raison d’état, 487 Reconquista (Spain), 324, 371–372,
Quakers, 516, 689 Rákóczi, Ferenc, 564 372(m), 373(i)
Quantum theory, 792 Ramadan, 253 Recovery
Quebec, 511 Ranters (England), 516 in Europe (1920s), 840–847
Queens. See also Kings and Rape, 591, 908, 975 after World War II, 910–913,
kingdoms; Monarchs and Rape of Nanjing, 876 915–917
monarchies; specific rulers Rational investigation, Bayle on, Recycling, 987
in Egypt, 24–25, 24(i) 567 Red Army (Soviet), 832(i), 834, 836,
Hellenistic, 126–127 Rationalism, 72, 693, 948 910, 915
Hittite, 27 Rationing Red Army Faction, 960
in Sumer, 10 in World War I, 829 Red Brigades, 960
Quest of the Holy Grail, 387 in World War II, 887 Red-figure painting, 40(i), 58(i),
Quietism, 556 Rauschenberg, Robert, 947 76(i)
Quinine, Africa and, 756 Ravenna Redistributive economy, 10, 13, 50
Quirini, Lauro, 409, 423, 433 Aachen and, 291 Reds (faction), in Russian civil war,
Qur’an, 50, 251–252, 251(i), 253, 256 Exarchate of, 258, 274 832
Quraysh tribe, 251, 252 Justinian in, 239(i) Red Sea, 23, 731
Theodora in, 238(i) Red Shirts (Italy), 717(i), 718, 719
Race and racism as western Roman capital, 215 Red Terror (Jacobin France), 628
in Catholic church, 460 Raw materials. See also specific Reflections upon Marriage (Astell),
in colonies, 547, 927 materials 570
Darwin and, 739 from Africa, 746, 747, 995 Reform(s). See also specific reforms
decline in fertility and, 786 from Asia, 746, 750 and locations
in France, 962 global need for, 995 in agriculture, 597
in Great Depression, 862 natural resources in U.S. and, in Athens, 83
imperialism and, 745, 750 756–757 British parliamentary, 600
in Nazi Germany, 870 producers’ control of, 958 in Czechoslovakia, 954–955
in United States, 871, 927 Raymond d’Aguiliers, 335 Diocletian and, 212
[ Refo rm(s ) — Republic, Th e
] Index I-55
educational, 687–688, 728–729 Relics and reliquaries (Christian), Religious Customs and Ceremonies of
in England, 304–305, 357, 515, 226–227, 248(i), 261, 266 All the Peoples of the World
667–668, 771–772 Relief. See also Social welfare; (Bernard), 569(i)
Enlightenment and, 575–576, 577, Welfare state Religious orders. See also
579–580, 582 organizations for, 687 Monasticism and monasteries;
in France, 597, 598, 698–699 for poor, 458–459 specific orders
Gregorian, 324 in World War I, 828 in Middle Ages, 368–370, 374
industrialization and, 673 Religion(s). See also Caliphs; poverty of, 329–331
in Japan, 731 Crusades; Gods; Monotheism; for women, 368–369, 383, 737
of popular culture, 535–536 Polytheism; Reformation; Religious Society of Friends. See
in Prussia, 650 specific religions Quakers
religion and, 442, 450–455, in 19th century, 736–737 Religious toleration. See also
455–457, 687, 764 in 1930s, 875 Anti-Semitism
in Roman Catholic church, Black Death and, 412–413 Charles V and, 467
321–331, 455, 459–461 in Byzantine Empire, 260–262, in Dutch Republic, 478–479, 567
in Russia, 650, 713–716, 807–808 284–285 in Enlightenment, 566–567, 576,
social, 687–689, 764–765 in cities, 368–370 579, 583
in Soviet Union, 851, 917, civilization and, 4 in France, 466, 475, 596–597, 644
963–965, 977 comparisons of, 569(i) by Joseph II (Austria), 596–597
state-sponsored, 595–598 cults in, 199–201 by Ottoman Turks, 481
in urban areas, 682 in Dutch Republic, 478–479 Remarque, Erich Maria, 850, 869
Reform Act (England, 1884), 771 education and, 728–729 Renaissance, 461–463
Reformation in Egypt, 20, 25, 26 arts in, 423–428
Catholic Counter-Reformation, in England, 466, 514, 515 Byzantine, 280, 282–283
455, 459–461, 468(m) Enlightenment and, 566–568, 575, Carolingian, 289–290, 293–294
Protestant, 450–453, 452(f), 576, 578–580 classical culture of, 421, 423
455–459, 466, 468(m) in Europe (c. 1648), 501(m) humanism in, 422–423
Reform Bills (England) in France, 466, 474–476, 509–510, Islamic, 289
in 1832, 668, 703 621 Italian, 422–428
in 1867, 724 Greek, 57–59, 62, 89–90 Reparations
Reformed church, 453 Hellenistic, 135–138 after World War I, 837–839
Refrigeration, 756 Hittite, 27 World War II and, 906
Refugees Holy Alliance and, 657 Representative government
in Lebanon, 991(m) in homes, 419 in England, 396–397
in Middle East, 997 humanism and, 448–450, 451, 454 in English North American
after World War I, 841 Israelites and, 47–50 colonies, 524
after World War II, 901, 902(m), Judaism and, 138 in Spain, 396
909(i) Mesopotamian, 8 Repression
Regents, in Dutch Republic, 479, Minoan, 32–33 in France, 694
521–522 Napoleon and, 641–642, 645–646 in Russia, 777
Regional departments, in France, Neo-Assyrian, 43 in Soviet bloc, 904, 950, 955(i)
615, 616(m) paganism and, 535 Reproduction
Regional nationalism, 985 after Peace of Westphalia, 485 Aristotelian view of, 570
Regulus, Marcus Atilius (Rome), Persian, 45–46 biological research on, 738, 942
161 polytheism and, 10 ovism doctrine and, 570
Reichstag (Germany) in postindustrial society, 948–949 in Rome, 192–193
authority of, 722 reforms and, 442, 450–455, technology for, 938, 942–943
Enabling Act and, 868 455–457, 687, 764 Reproductive rights, 953
German Social Democratic Party revivals in, 448, 555–556, Republic(s). See also Roman
and, 795 584–585, 658–659 republic; specific locations
Nazi Party and, 867 in Rome, 148–149, 175 in 15th century, 432–435
postmodern style of, 1004, secular worldview vs., 492–500 in France, 618, 623, 628, 698–699,
1004(i) Sophists on, 96 772, 799, 910
World War I and, 830 in Spain, 436 in Italy, 700, 910
Reims, 348, 390(i) Thirty Years’ War and, 482–487 in Rome, 152–156
Reinsurance Treaty, 775, 777 wars of, 466–467, 474–476, 514, Rousseau on, 582
Relativists, 791 580 in Spain, 877
Relativity theory, 792 in Wessex, 304–305 Republic, The (Plato), 117
I-56 Index
[ Republicanism — Ro man Cath olicism
]
Republicanism (Spain), 877–878 against state power, 598–602 Roads and highways
Republican Party (U.S.), 725 Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, 416 in 12th century, 317
Republic of letters, 576 Revolution(s). See also specific Autobahn and, 869
Republic of Virtue (France), 620, locations Ottoman, 418
621–624 of 1830s, 640, 666–668 Roman, 157(m)
Research of 1848, 697–703, 702(f), 704–705 Roaring Twenties, 822, 840
genetic, 914, 942, 945 of 1989, 966–967 Robber-knights, 449(i)
investments in, 944, 945–946 English, 600 Robespierre, Maximilien, 619–620,
military, 902, 912 suppression of movements, 623, 625–627
scientific, 496 664–665 Robins, John, 516
Resistance. See also Protest(s); in technology, 938–943 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe), 555
Revolts and rebellions; specific World War I and, 830–834 Robots, in Japan, 994
locations Revolutionary Tribunal (France), Rob Roy (Scott), 662
to imperialism, 750, 922–923 620–621, 626, 628 Rock-and-roll music, culture of,
movements in World War II, Revolutionary War in America. See 927–929, 928(i)
887–888, 908 American War of Rockefeller, John D., 757, 759
Res publica (public business), in Independence Rockefeller Foundation, 985
Rome, 150 Rhetoric, training in, 95 Rocket (railroad engine), 673, 674
Restoration Rhineland Rocket technology, 941
in England, 518–520 demilitarization of, 840 Rock music, 946–947, 1000
of European regimes, 655, 658, German invasion of, 877 Rococo style, 549(i), 554, 554(i), 588
662 Jews in, 334 Roehm, Ernst, 869
Resurrection, in cults of Isis, 200 Rhine River region Roger I (Norman), 324
Reunification cities in, 315 Roland, Jeanne, 619, 621
of Germany, 966, 967(i) after World War I, 837 Rolin, Nicolas, 427, 427(i)
of Poland, 842 after World War II, 901 Rolling Stones, 1000
Revenue. See Economy Rhodes, Cecil, 749–750, 803 Rollo (Vikings), 298
Revisionism, in socialism, 795 Rhodes, earthquake in, 127 Roma. See Gypsies
Revivals, religious, 448, 555–556, Rhône River region, 263 Roman alphabet, 15
584–585, 658–659 Richard I (the Lion-Hearted, Roman Catholicism. See also
Revolts and rebellions. See also England), 359, 366, 370 Councils (Christian);
Protest(s) Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis Inquisition; Investiture
in 1820s, 662–666, 663(m) (Cardinal), 483, 487, 506 Conflict; Papacy; Popes;
in 1830s, 640, 666–668 Rich people. See Wealth specific orders
in Austrian Netherlands, 608, 609 Riga, 763 in c. 1648, 501(m)
by Boudica, 186 Right (political), 842, 873 in Austria, 596, 723
against British in India, 730 multiculturalism and, 1002 Babylonian captivity of church,
Dutch, 477, 478, 608–609 Rights. See also specific groups 399
in France, 416, 506–507, 512, 599, civil rights movement and, 900, Byzantium and, 274
624–625, 626, 733 927, 950–951, 952 Carolingian dynasty and, 290
in Greece, 61–62, 664–665 in France, 657 Concordat of Worms and, 326,
in Italy, 700 of Jews, 737 341
Jacobite, 559 in Magna Carta, 359 Counter-Reformation of, 455,
Jacquerie, 416 in Nazi Germany, 868 459–461
by Jews, 194, 196 of women, 688, 739, 787, in Dutch Republic, 567
in Neo-Assyrian Empire, 43 796–797, 953 in eastern Europe, 284, 915
in Ottoman Empire, 774, 809 Rijswijk, Peace of (1697), 512 in England, 271, 453, 466, 479,
Paris Commune and, 733 Ring of the Nibelung, The (Wagner), 514, 515, 517, 518, 520, 600,
by peasants, 403–404, 483, 599 736 668
in Poland, 609 Riots. See also Revolts and rebellions in France, 474–476, 509–510, 582,
Pugachev Rebellion and, 599, in Britain (1981), 961 611, 615–616, 623, 658
599(m) food shortages and, 598, 599 Galileo and, 495
in Rome, 163 Gordon, 600 in Germany, 308, 875
in Russia, 683 Nika, 240 Greek Orthodox church and,
in St. Domingue, 632–633, urban, 952, 954 324
632(m) Rite of Spring, The (Stravinsky), 794 hierarchy in, 368
in Soviet Union (1921), 851 Rivers. See Transportation; specific in Holy Roman Empire, 482
in Spain, 483, 651–652 river regions in Hungary, 308
[ Ro man Cath oli cis m — Ro u n dh eads
] Index I-57
in Ireland, 559, 798, 960 lifestyle in, 179–181 Romanus IV (Byzantine Empire),
in Italy, 854 literature in, 191 332
Luther and, 451 natural features and languages of, Rome. See also Italy; Papacy; Roman
of Magyars, 299 190(m) Empire; Roman republic; Wars
in Middle Ages, 380–385 politics in, 184–187 and warfare; specific wars
Napoleon and, 640 polytheism in, 199–201 army in, 151–152
paganism and, 535 population of, 204 bishops of, 221
Philip II (Spain) and, 477 principate in, 177–178 citizenship in, 143, 150, 165
in Poland, 965 reproduction in, 192–193 civil wars in, 163–169, 176–177,
politics and, 737 republic transition to, 176–184 186
Protestant Reformation and, society in, 191–193 classes in, 155–156
451–455 spending in, 203–204 Diocletian and, 213
reforms of, 321–331, 442, 925, Vandals and, 232 education in, 148
948–949 Romanesque architecture, 351–352, Etruscans and, 142(i)
religious orders of poverty and, 352(i), 353(i) expansion of, 150
329–331 Romania, 983, 984 families in, 146–148
revival of, 556, 658 abandoned children in, 967 founding of, 142(i), 143
in Scotland, 467 Balkan region and, 812 Greece and, 150–151, 160
social reform and, 687 collapse of communism in, 967, Hellenistic kingdoms and, 128,
in Spain, 272, 557, 652, 773 968(m) 139(m)
Zwingli and, 452 formation of, 713 housing in, 162(i)
Romance literature, 367 in Little Entente, 840 land in, 167
Roman Empire, 178. See also migration of Magyars from, 841 Latin language in, 150
Byzantine Empire; Cult(s); Rome and, 186 law in, 154, 191, 213, 234–235
Eastern Roman Empire; Holy Soviets and, 892, 904 lifestyle in, 150–151
Roman Empire; Pax Romana; World War II and, 882, 888 monarchy in, 150–152
Roman republic; Rome; Romanian people, 691, 801 patron-client system in, 145
Western Roman Empire Romanization, 191 population of, 150, 158, 167
in 3rd century, 205(m) Roman law, 213, 234–235 religion in, 148–149
barbarians in, 212 Romanov dynasty, 831. See also republic of, 700
British invasion by, 185 specific tsars rise of, 143–149
chariot racing in, 174(i) Roman republic, 152–156. See also society in, 144–149
Charlemagne and, 292–293 Roman Empire; Rome unification of Italy and, 719,
Christianity in, 175, 193–201, aqueduct of, 157(i) 722
205, 207, 217–229, 220(m) arts in, 156, 160–161 values in, 144, 148, 163, 165
civil wars in, 204 after Augustus, 178 women in, 144–145, 146–148,
creation of, 175–207 Carthage and, 158–160 147(i)
crisis in (284 c.e.), 206(m) civil wars in, 163–169, 176–177 Rome (city)
division of, 213, 214–215, 214(m), classes in, 152–155 housing in, 179
215(m) economy in, 161 population of, 179
dominate in, 212–218 Egypt and, 168 under Republic, 154
earthquakes and epidemics in, end of, 170(m) sacks of, 156–157, 231, 464
203–204 expansion of, 156–158, 159(m) Rome, Treaty of, 912
economy in, 215–217 Forum in, 153(i) Rome-Berlin Axis, 877
education in, 182–183 government in, 155–156 Rommel, Erwin, 888
expansion of, 186, 188(m) Greece and, 150–151, 160–161 Romulus and Remus, 142(i), 143,
five good emperors in, 186–187 housing in, 162(i) 149
Flavians in, 186 imperialism by, 156–163 Romulus Augustulus (Rome),
Frankish kingdoms and, 262 land in, 162, 164 233
frontiers of, 202–205 Latin language in, 157 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 871, 872(i)
Golden Age of politics and navy of, 158 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 871,
economy in, 186, 188–193 roads in, 157(m) 872(i), 876, 883, 892, 904, 951
heirs to (c. 750), 275(m) social stresses from imperialism, Roosevelt, Sarah, 872(i)
Hellenistic world and, 139(m), 161–163 Rosetta stone, 112(i), 125–126, 641
191 struggle of the orders in, 152–153 Rossbach, battle at, 594
invasions of, 202 transition to Roman Empire, Rosselini, Roberto, 930
Islam in, 249 176–184 Rotten boroughs (England), 600
Jews in, 193 Romanticism, 584–585, 659–662 Roundheads (England), 515
I-58 Index
[ Ro u ss ea u — St . Bar th o l o m ew ’s Day M assa c re
]
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 577, 578(i), Crimean War and, 712–713 Westernization of, 560–563, 693
580, 581–582, 583, 583(f), 588, Danubian principalities and, 664 women in, 561, 716, 807
592, 621 Decembrist Revolt in, 664 World War I and, 815, 822, 823,
Roxane (wife of Alexander the domestic problems in, 775–777 825, 826
Great), 122 education in, 688, 703, 729 Russian Academy of Sciences, 560,
Royal Academy of Sciences (France), Enlightenment and, 582 561
532 epidemics in, 681 Russian Orthodox Church, 411, 474,
Royal African Company (England), as European power, 560–563 481, 529, 562, 737
521 France and, 710, 712–713, 811 Russian Republic, 977. See also
Royal courts. See Courts (royal) Franco-Austrian alliance and, 593 Russia; Soviet Union (former)
Royal Dutch Shell, 844 Great Northern War and, 562, Russian Revolution
Royalists 563(m) of 1905, 807
in England, 515, 516 Huns in, 230 of 1917, 795, 830–834, 899
in France, 628, 642, 645, 658 imperialism of, 712, 729–730, Russification, 975
Royal Society (London), 532, 568 751, 751(m) under Alexander II (Russia),
Royalty. See Kings and kingdoms; industrialization in, 678, 758, 807 716
Monarchs and monarchies; Iraq War and, 993 in eastern Europe, 915
Queens; specific kingdoms and Jews in, 777, 777(i), 799, 977 nationalism and, 807
rulers landowners in, 715 Russo-Japanese War, 806, 806(m),
Rubber, vulcanization of, 682, 785 liberalism in, 695 810, 813
Ruble (Russia), 995 Lithuania and, 429, 595 Russo-Polish war, 525
Rudolf (Habsburgs, Germany), 393 minorities in, 716 Ruthenians, in Hungary, 801
Ruhr basin, World War I and, 839, Mongols in, 400, 401(m) Rwanda, 990
842 Muscovy and, 481
Ruler cults, 136 Napoleon I and, 649, 652 SA (Stürmabteilung), 868, 869
Rump Parliament (England), 516, nationalism in, 693 Saar basin, after World War I, 837
518 nobility in, 529, 530, 562, 586, Sabines, 143
Runnymede, Magna Carta and, 359 695, 713, 715, 716 Sachs, Nelly, 926
Rural areas. See also Farms and Orthodox Christianity in, 474 Sacks
farming Ottoman Empire and, 775 of Constantinople, 364
arts and customs from, 766 Pan-Slavism and, 723, 774 of Rome, 156–157, 231, 464
Byzantine, 259–260 peasants in, 599, 634 Sacraments (Christian)
commercial revolution in, Poland and, 630–631, 631(m), Fourth Lateran Council on, 381
320–321 656, 667, 716 penance and, 450
in France, 614 Poland-Lithuania and, 481, reform and, 327–328
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126 481(m), 563, 593, 595 Sacred music, 387–388
industrialization and, 680 political persecution in, 795 Sacred texts, 49–50
migration from, 763 population decline in, 989 Sacrifice of Isaac, The (Ghiberti),
peasants in, 301 Putin in, 977, 980(i), 981, 1003 425, 425(i)
television in, 939 realist literature in, 734, 736 Sacrifices
Rus, 280. See also Russia reforms in, 650, 713–716, in Crete, 30
Rushdie, Salman, 1001 807–808 in Greece, 59, 89
Russia, 978(m), 995. See also Russian revolts against, 662, 667 in Rome, 149, 219
Republic; Russian Revolution; serfs in, 529, 562, 587, 599, 650, al-Sadat, Mohammed Anwar,
Soviet Union; World War II; 683 961(i)
specific rulers Seven Years’ War and, 594 Saddam Hussein. See Hussein,
1848 revolutions and, 703 Slavophiles in, 693 Saddam
absolutism in, 528–530 social order in, 730 Saduccees, 194
agriculture in, 551 Sweden and, 481, 481(m) Sahara region, 16
Balkan region and, 284–285, 774, threats to empire of, 807–808 Saigon, 731
811, 813 in Three Emperors’ League, 773 Sailors. See also Navies; Ships and
Baltic region and, 562 Time of Troubles in, 481 shipping
Black Death in, 411 Turks and, 664 Kronstadt revolt by, 851
Britain and, 811 Ukraine and, 525 Pharos lighthouse and, 134
Byzantines and, 280, 283–285 violence and ethnic conflict in, Saint(s). See also specific individuals
Chechnya invasion by, 980–981 768 relics of, 226–227, 261, 266
civil war in, 832–834, 833(m), 841 War of the Polish Succession and, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Congress of Vienna and, 654 563 (1572), 475
[ St . Cath e r i n e at M o u nt Si n a i — S c i e nt if i c m eth o d
] Index I-59
St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, Sanssouci (palace of Frederick II), Schoenberg, Arnold, 794
monastery of, 227(i) 588 Scholars and scholarship. See also
Saint-Denis, church of, 314, 341, San Stefano, Treaty of, 774 Intellectual thought; specific
353 Santa Maria Novella, 424, 424(i) disciplines and individuals
St. Domingue, 545–546, 631–633, Sant’Andrea, church of (Vercelli), in 12th century, 348–351
632(m), 648 354, 354(i) Byzantine, 282–283
Saint-Germain-des-Près San Vitale (Ravenna), 291 in Carolingian renaissance, 293
(monastery), 296 Sappho (poet), 71 Islamic, 289
St. Giles (London), 680 Saracens, Muslims as, 287 Jewish, 219
St. Helena, Napoleon on, 653 Sarajevo, Francis Ferdinand in late Roman Empire, 242–243
St. Paul’s Outside the Walls (Rome), assassination in, 814 Latin, 242
398(i) Sardinia, 158, 563, 621, 709, 718(m). printing and, 448
St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome), 531 See also Piedmont-Sardinia Scholastica, 228
St. Petersburg, 561, 562, 807. See also Sargon (Akkad), 12 Scholasticism, 385–387
Leningrad; Petrograd Sartre, Jean-Paul, 926 Schools. See also Education
St. Peter’s Fields, Peterloo massacre Sasanid Empire in 12th and 13th centuries, 347
at, 667 c. 600, 253, 258(m) attendance in, 728, 729
Saint Phalle, Niki de, 948 Byzantine Empire and, 257, 258(m) in Byzantine Empire, 260
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de, 695 Muslims in, 253, 254 Christianity and, 448
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy Rome and, 202, 205, 213 classical, 243
(duke of ), 513 Satanic Verses, The (Rushdie), 1001 in France, 623, 644
Saisset (bishop of Pamiers), 398 Satellite kingdoms, of Napoleon, 649 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 127
Sakhalin Islands, World War II and, Satellite republics, of revolutionary Islamic, 289
892 France, 629 in Middle Ages, 348–351
Saladin (Seljuk Empire), 370 Satellites (artificial) parish, 553
Salamis, battle at, 81 in 1960s, 938 reforms of, 596, 687–688
Salat (Muslim worship), 253 communications, 939, 940, 941 in Rome, 182
Salem, Massachusetts, witchcraft Sputnik, 917, 940 Schuman, Robert, 912
trials in, 500 Satellite states. See Soviet bloc; Soviet Science. See also Astronomy;
Sales taxes, in Britain, 961 Union Medicine; Scientific revolution;
Salian dynasty (Germany), 308 Satellite television, 999 Technology; specific fields
Salisbury, earl of, 423 Sati, in India, 659, 730 in 1930s, 875
Salons, 534, 577–578, 578(i), 587 Satire Alexander the Great and, 122
Salt, taxation on, 586 in 1920s, 849–850 Aristotle and, 118
SALT I. See Strategic Arms by Erasmus, 449 in Athens, 96, 132(i)
Limitation Treaty Satraps (regional governors), in atomic, 900
Salvation Persian Empire, 44 brain drain and, 945
in Calvinist doctrine, 452 Satyagraha (Gandhi), 927 in Enlightenment, 566–568
in Christianity, 193, 196, 198 Saudi Arabia, 990, 993, 995 gender stereotypes and, 689
Council of Trent on, 460 Saul (Israelite king), 48 Greek philosophy and, 93
by faith alone, 451 Savage Mind, The (Lévi-Strauss), 948 Hellenistic, 133–134
Jansenists on, 510 Savoy, 717 of the mind, 789–790
by kings, 136 Saxons, 233, 291 Napoleon and, 645–646
Mass and, 328 Saxony, 451, 467, 562, 593, 594, 654 origins of, 474
in mystery cults, 37 Scandinavia. See also Baltic region; paradigm shift in, 792
Samizdat culture, 950 Vikings; specific locations physics and, 791, 792, 875
Samurai (Japan), 752 economy in, 912 in postindustrial society, 945–946
Sand, George (Amandine-Aurore- England and, 298, 305 rationalism and, 72
Lucile Dupin Dudevant), immigrants to, 924 revolution in, 791–792
685–686, 685(i) industrialization in, 757 space race and, 941
Sanitation Lutheranism in, 451 training in, 729
in cities, 565, 727 Vikings and, 298 women in, 532–533, 534, 792
in Crimean War, 713, 714(i) Schiller, Friedrich, 661 Scientific method
in Rome, 179–180 Schism. See Great Schism breakthroughs resulting from,
in Soviet Union, 852 Schleswig, 720 493, 496
urbanization and, 680–681 Schlieffen Plan, 825 elite and, 495
Sans-culottes (French workers), 611, Schliemann, Heinrich, 31–32 Enlightenment and, 566
613, 618, 625 Schmalkaldic League, 467 social laws uncovered by, 764, 791
I-60 Index
[ Scientific research — Seven Years ’ War
]
Scientific research. See Research Second Triumvirate (Rome), 176–177 Senatorial order (Rome), 191, 216
Scientific revolution, 492–496 Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), Senegal, immigrants from, 972(i)
Scientific societies, 532 925 Sensationalist press, 771
Scotland Second world (socialist bloc), 900 Separate spheres, 688–689, 845
Calvinism in, 474 Second World War. See World September 11, 2001, terrorist
Christianity in, 270, 271 War II attacks, 992(i), 993
England and, 515 Secret ballot, 771 “September massacres” (French
in Great Britain, 517, 557, 559 Secret police Revolution), 618
literacy in, 553 in Russia, 775, 807, 977 Septuagint, 138
New Lanark in, 695 Soviet (KGB), 977 Serbia, 280, 284, 774, 775, 811, 812,
Protestant and Catholic divisions Secret societies, in 1820s, 662 813, 814, 815, 906, 975
in, 466, 467 “Secret speech,” of Khrushchev, Serbs
United Kingdom and, 985 916–917 in Austrian Empire, 691
Scott, Walter, 662 Sects. See also Religion(s); specific Bosnian, 975
Scottish Parliament, 559 groups nationalism of, 801, 809, 975
Scotus, John Duns. See Duns English religious, 516 revolt against Turks, 664
Scotus, John Protestant, 949 slaughter of Albanian Kosovars
Scramble for Africa, 747–750, Secularism by, 976
748(m) Catholic church and, 321 Srebrenica massacre by, 975
Scream, The (Munch), 782(i), 793 in French Revolution, 623 World War I and, 828
Scribes, Roman, 242(i), 243 religion and, 737 World War II and, 887, 906
Script. See Writing Secularization Serfs and serfdom. See also Peasants;
Scriptures, Hebrew, 49–50 Enlightenment and, 580 Slaves and slavery
Sculpture nonreligious foundations and, compulsory labor services and,
baroque, 531(i) 492–493 551
of Buddha, 135(i) Secular music, 387–388 in eastern Europe, 491
Gothic, 389 Security Council (U.N.), 919 in England, 416
Greek, 60(i), 70, 88–89 Sedition laws, 828 in France, 614
Hellenistic, 130–131, 130(i) Seekers (England), 516 industrialization and, 677
of Parthenon, 88 Segregation, civil rights movement Joseph II and, 597
Persian, 46(i) and, 927, 951 medieval, 300
postindustrial, 947–948 Seigneurial dues, 586, 611, 614 in Poland, 631
Roman, 161, 183(i), 184 Selective breeding, 550–551 in Prussia, 597, 650
Scutage (tax), 359 Seleucid kingdom, 123–124, 123(m) in Russia, 529, 562, 587, 599, 650,
Seaborne commerce Jews in, 194 683
Dutch and, 479 Rome and, 167 Russian emancipation of,
Greek, 51 ruler cults and, 136 714–715, 715(i), 758
Sea Peoples, 34–35, 36(m) Seleucus (Hellenistic king), 123 Serious Proposal to the Ladies, A
Secondary education, 729 Self-determination (Astell), 570
Second Balkan War, 813 for Canada, 690 Servants
Second Continental Congress, 601 of Czechs, 828 indentured, 543
Second Crusade, 334, 336–337, ethnic, 691, 701, 828 of upper class, 762
372–373, 383 Wilson on, 878 women as, 490, 553, 591
Second Empire (France), 699, 722, World War II and, 878, 892 Servetus, Michael, 453
772 Self-government, for cities and Service economy, 937
Second Estate (France), 611 towns, 319–320 Service industries, Internet and, 998
Second Great Awakening, 659 Self-interest, Smith, Adam, on, 581 Service workers, 944–945
Second Industrial Revolution, 755 Seljuk Turks Settlements. See also Cities and towns;
Second Intermediate Period (Egypt), in Anatolia, 342(m) Villages; specific locations
23 Byzantine Empire and, 338 Greek, 56
Second International, 770, 795 First Crusade and, 332 permanent, 4, 7
Second Moroccan Crisis, 811 Third Crusade and, 370 Phoenician, 56
Second of May, 1808, The (Goya), Semitic languages, 8 world trade and, 546–548
651(i) Sen, Amartya, 996 Seurat, Georges, 766
Second Punic War, 158–159 Senate Sevastopol, siege of, 713
Second Reform Bill (England), 724 in France, 653 Seven Years’ War
Second Republic (France), 699 in Rome, 153(i), 155, 163, 166, casualties in, 594
Second Sex, The (Beauvoir), 926 167, 177 coalitions in, 593–594, 593(m)
[ Seven Years ’ War — Slovak Fascist Part y
] Index I-61
France after, 609–610 Shopping malls, 984 Slave code (Barbados), 524
reforms after, 595–598, 601 Show trials, 866 Slaves and slavery. See also Forced
Severe acute respiratory syndrome Shtetls, 525 labor; Serfs and serfdom; Slave
(SARS), 989 Siberia, 695, 751, 751(m), 834 trade
Severus, Septimius (Rome), 203, Sic et Non (Abelard), 349 from Africa, 444–445, 524, 542, 543
203(i) Sicily Africa-New World system of, 441
Seville, 444 Byzantines in, 258 in American colonies, 524,
Sewage system Frederick II in, 392 544–547
Mesopotamian, 15 governing of, 393 in Athens, 68
in Rome, 179 Greeks in, 56, 73(m), 150 in Caribbean region, 446, 524,
Sex and sexuality. See also immigration from, 762 631–633
Homosexuals and liberation of, 718 cotton industry and, 678
homosexuality Muslims in, 309(m) criticism of, 445, 579
in 17th century, 490 Normans in, 309(m), 332, 342(m) before European voyages, 444
in 1920s, 846 Peloponnesian Wars and, 105(m), France and, 523, 631–633
bishops and, 268 106 in Greece, 61, 90, 93
Christian doctrine on, 225–226 revolt in, 700 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126
Freud on, 789 Roger I and, 324 helots and, 65
in Greece, 62, 92 Rome and, 158 justification of, 546
men and, 928–929 Syracuse and, 80 lifestyle of, 544–545
patterns of, 590–591 World War II and, 888 Locke and, 521
pill and, 942–943 Sickingen, Franz von, 449(i) Portuguese and, 444–445, 690
in postindustrial society, 946 Sidonius Apollinaris (Rome), 231 in Rome, 150, 163, 181
reproductive technology and, Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph, 611 Rousseau on, 582
942–943 Sigismund (Holy Roman Empire), in Russia, 529
sexual identity and, 784, 787–788, 421, 429 Spain and, 444, 690
789, 952 Signori (Italy), 391, 399–400, 433 in Sumer, 9
in Sparta, 66 Sikhs, 547 treatment of, 544–545
urbanization and, 681 Silent Spring (Carson), 987 in United States, 602, 690,
women and, 237, 763, 787–788 Silesia, 527, 564, 594 724–725
Sexism, Marie Curie and, 792 Silicon chips, 939 Slave trade. See also Africa; Slaves
“Sexology,” 787–788 Silver, 441, 446, 465, 477, 487, 488 and slavery
Sex rings, international, 997 in Athens, 115, 115(i) abolition of, 689–690
Sexual harassment, 770 Silver Age, of Latin literature, 191 in Atlantic system, 524, 541,
Sexual Inversion (Ellis), 787–788 Simeon (hermit), 264(i) 542–548
Sexual revolution, 946, 953 Simon de Montfort (England), 397 Congress of Vienna and, 656–657
Shahadah (profession of faith), Simon Magus, 322n denunciation of, 579
253 Simons, Menno, 457 in European colonies, 544(f),
Shakespeare, William, 191, 481, Simony, 322, 323 545(f)
498, 795 Simyonov, Yulian, 930 growth of, 488, 524
Shamash (god), 14 Sin patterns of, 446
Shapur I (Sasanids), 205 indulgences for, 419 slave ships in, 544
Shelley, Mary, 639, 660 original, 225 Spain and, 444
Sheriffs, in England, 357 Sinai peninsula, 17, 920 (m), 958 Slavophiles, in Russia, 693
Shi’at Ali, 255 Singapore, 690, 883, 994, 994(m) Slavs
Shi’ite Muslims, 255, 285, 286–287, Sino-Japanese War, 804 in Austrian Empire, 691
332, 337, 959, 990, 991(m) Sinope, 713 in Balkan region, 283, 811
Ship money, 514 Sinti people, 860, 870, 886 Byzantine Empire and, 257, 258,
Ships and shipping Sister republics, of France, 629, 259, 280
convoy system of, 830 630(m), 639 Christianity among, 284
lateen sail and, 443 Sistine Chapel, 461 in concentration camps, 886
navies, 813–814 Six Acts (England), 668 nationalism of, 801, 985
technology of, 442–443 Six Books of the Commonwealth, The in Nazi Germany, 860, 870
transatlantic, 491 (Bodin), 496–497 Northern Crusades and, 373
triremes and, 82, 82(i) Six-Day War, 958, 958(m) in Ottoman Empire, 308, 774
Shires (England), 305, 340 Skepticism, doctrine of, 475 Pan-Slavism and, 723
Shock treatment (economic), 961 Skeptics, 133 separate states of, 985
Shopkeepers, 552 Slav congress, 701 Slovak Fascist Party, 874
I-62 Index
[ Slovakia — Sophie
]
Slovakia, 982, 985 Social security religion and, 455–461, 736–737
Slovaks in Germany, 913 Roman, 144–149, 161–163,
in Austro-Hungarian Empire, 801 in Italy and Spain, 988 191–193, 216–217, 234–236
fascism and, 874 in United States, 871 rural, 682–683
independence of, 834 Social Security Act (U.S., 1935), 871 scientific approach to problems
nationalism of, 801 Social status of, 764
Slovenes (Slovenians), 828 in cities, 553 socialists on, 695
Slovenia, 975, 982, 984 clothing and, 553 Soviet, 866
Slumdog Millionaire (movie), 1003 of rich, 586–587 in World War I, 822, 827–829, 830
Slums, of global cities, 984 Social War (Rome), 165 after World War I, 840
Smallpox, 446, 565–566, 989 Social welfare. See also Welfare state World War II and, 886–887
Smart car, 987, 988(i) Britain and, 688, 913, 962 after World War II, 927–930
Smith, Adam, 580–581, 582, 583, in former Soviet bloc, 980 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
583(f) in France, 654, 873, 962 to Animals, 688
Smith, Zadie, 1001 global south and, 989–990 Society of Jesus (Jesuits). See Jesuits
Smuggling, British, 650 in Sweden, 871–872, 963 Society of Revolutionary Republican
Sobieski, Jan (Poland-Lithuania), in United States, 962 Women, 625
526 Social work, 790 Society of Supporters of the Bill of
Social classes. See Classes Society. See also Art(s); Culture; Rights, 600
Social Contract, The (Rousseau), Lifestyle; Religion; specific Society of United Irishmen, 633
581–582, 583(f) locations Sociology, 739
Social contract theory, 520–521, 602 in 1920s, 845–847 Socrates, 96–98, 114, 115, 116
Social Darwinism, 739, 750, 761, agricultural revolution and, Socratic method, 97, 98
789 550–551 Sodomy, 592
Social Democratic Parties arts and, 733–734, 736 Soissons, Council of, 350
in Germany, 774, 795, 800, 814, in Babylon, 14 Solaris (Lem), 941
834, 835, 949–950, 960 barbarian, 230–235 Solar system
Marxism and, 769 Byzantine, 259–260, 283 age of, 941
in Sweden, Hungary, and Austria, capitalist, 580 Aristarchus on, 134
769 Christian, 220 Soldiers. See also Military; Veterans;
Socialism. See also Communism in cities, 551–554 specific battles and wars
in China, 808 consumer, 549–550 as Christians, 219–220
divisions in, 795 in Crete, 29–30 in crusades, 332, 334, 335(i)
in France, 695–696, 962 Dutch, 523 in French revolutionary army, 629
labor movement and, 695–697 in England, 552–553, 688–689, Hellenistic, 124
Nazis and, 869 723–724 mercenaries as, 414, 415–416
World War I and, 827, 835 during Enlightenment, 585–592 in Napoleonic army, 652
Socialist Parties, in France, 769, 962 European, 299 permanent army and, 416
Socialist realism, 866, 950 feudal, 300–303 Roman, 156, 161–162, 165, 166,
Socialist Revolutionaries (Russia), global, 996–1005 168, 178, 189, 202, 203
795–796 in Great Depression, 862 in Russia, 830, 979
Social laws, 791 Greek, 60, 64, 93–94 Spartan, 65, 81
Social media, 999, 1007 Hellenistic, 126–128 in Thirty Years’ War, 483–484
Social networking, 974 Hittite, 28 in World War I, 824, 825–827,
Social order imperialism and, 761–767 826(i), 834
conservatism and, 657 individuals and, 580–582 after World War I, 834, 835, 841,
culture of, 733–739 Jews in Middle Ages, 383–384 845–846
for nation building, 726–733 leprosy in, 384–385 in World War II, 882, 887
reform of, 683–691 manners in, 533–534 after World War II, 908
rural, 683–684 Marx on, 732 Solidarity movement, 965, 966
World War I and, 828–829 medieval, 300–301 Solomon (Israelite king), 48
Social programs. See also Social under Napoleon, 645–646 Solon (Athens), 68–69, 71
welfare Neo-Assyrian, 43 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 917, 956
Reagan on, 962 peasant, 266–267 Somalia, 989, 990
after World War I, 845 Plato on, 117 Somme region, battle in, 826
Social sciences postindustrial, 943–949 Sony Corporation, 939
in 19th century, 739 reforms of (mid-19th century), Sophia (Russia), 529
in postindustrial society, 948 687–689 Sophie (Austria), 814
[ S o p h ists — Sp a i n
] Index I-63
Sophists, 93, 95–96 Soviets (councils), 807, 831 Space exploration, 917
Sophocles (Athens), 101 Soviet Union. See also Russia; Soviet Space race, 940–941
Sorbonne, student riots at, 954 Union (former) Spain. See also Cortes (Spain);
Sorrows of Young Werther, The in 1920s, 851–852 Spanish Civil War; Spanish
(Goethe), 584 Afghanistan and, 133, 963, 965, Empire; specific rulers
Soubirous, Bernadette. See 980 in 15th century, 430
Bernadette (Saint) Berlin and, 906–907, 907(m), 925 American settlement by, 546
Soulforce (King), 927 Chernobyl catastrophe in, 964, baroque churches of, 498
South (global), 989–990, 994 986 Basque nationalists in, 960,
South (U.S.), 725, 951 China and, 938, 949, 957 960(m), 985
South Africa, 749, 803–804, 965, in cold war, 903–904, 949 Charles V and, 467–469
994–995 collapse of, 963–965, 973, in Common Market, 962
South African War (Boer War), 974–975, 977 constitutional monarchy in, 960
803–804, 813 Cuba and, 931 creation of, 430
South America. See also specific Czech protests and, 955–956, crusades in, 371–372
locations 955(m), 956(i) decline of, 556
colonization of, 491, 524, 546 détente and, 958, 962 Dutch and, 477, 478, 521
migration to, 762, 763 dissidents in, 956, 1002 England and, 479, 480, 601
slavery in, 524 eastern Europe and, 901, 904, 949 Enlightenment and, 582
western consumer economy and, education in, 946 explorations by, 441, 442, 444
999 effects of collapse, 977, 979–980 fascism in, 860, 873, 877–878
South Carolina, blacks in, 545 German occupation by, 892, fertility rate in, 988
Southeast Asia, 899, 951(m). See also 906–907, 907(m), 908 France and, 511–512, 557,
specific locations Gorbachev in, 938, 957, 963–965 558(m), 621, 634
France and, 712 under Khrushchev, 916–917, as global power, 469
sea routes to, 442 921(i), 930, 931, 932 gold imports by, 446
World War II and, 884 naming of, 852 Greek settlements in, 56
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Nazi attack on, 882 industry in, 757
(SEATO), 919 Nazi-Soviet Pact and, 881 Inquisition in, 436
Southern Africa, imperialism in, nuclear power in, 942, 964 Iraq War and, 993
749 oil and, 959 Jews in, 315, 436
Southern Europe, economies of, Poland and, 881, 965 kingdom in, 262
490 purges in, 851, 866 Latin American independence
South Korea, 919, 994, 994(m) reforms in, 851, 917, 950 from, 665–666
South Vietnam, 919, 952, 957. See social welfare in, 914 Muslims and, 254, 324, 371–372,
also Vietnam Spanish Civil War and, 878 436, 474
Southwest (U.S.), 724 Stalin in, 860, 865–867, 903, Napoleon and, 643, 651–652
Southwest Africa, 804 915–916 nobility in, 586
Southwestern Asia, migrations from, as superpower, 900, 902–903, 946 Ottoman Turks and, 474
26–27 television in, 939, 956 Peace of Utrecht and, 513
Sovereignty, types of, 497 Vietnam and, 952 Peace of Westphalia and, 484–485,
Soviet bloc, 907, 958, 959, 969 women in, 866, 886, 915, 940, 485(m)
birthrate in, 946, 989 940(i) peasant revolt in, 483
collapse of, 938, 957, 963, World War II and, 882, 886, 887, reconquista in, 324, 371–372,
966–967, 968, 968(m) 888–889 372(m), 373(i)
dissent in, 916, 917, 954–956, after World War II, 901, 903 religious uniformity in, 436
965 Soviet Union (former). See also representative government in, 396
postindustrial work life in, 944 Commonwealth of revolts in, 662–663, 663(m)
recovery in, 915–917 Independent States; Russia Roman Catholicism in, 272, 557
reforms in, 950 artists and writers in, 1002–1003 Rome and, 160
revolutions of 1989 in, 966–967 Chechnya and, 980–981 St. Domingue and, 632
scientific findings in, 945–946 consequences of Soviet collapse slave trade and, 444, 690
Stalinism and, 915 and, 977, 979–980 succession in, 557
starvation music in, 948 corruption in, 977, 979, 980(i) terrorism in Madrid, 993
women in, 929, 945 countries of (c. 2000), 978(m) theaters in, 498
youth in, 928, 979–980 international politics and, in Thirty Years’ War, 483
Soviet republics, after World War I, 980–981 Umayyads in, 287
836 market economy in, 979 unemployment in, 996
I-64 Index
[ Spain — Sub -Saharan Africa
]
Spain (continued) Staël, Anne-Louise Germaine de, Steen, Jan, 523(i)
unity in early medieval, 272–273 645, 645(i), 652 Stephen I (Saint, Hungary), 308
Visigoths in, 231, 272–273 Stagflation, 959, 961–962 Stephen II (Pope), 274
voting rights in, 772 Stained-glass windows, 347, Stephenson, George, 673, 674, 676
War of the Polish Succession and, 353–354, 389, 389(i) Sterilization, 786
563 Stalin, Joseph, 903, 906 Stilicho (Vandals), 210(i)
Spanish-American War (1898), 804 cold war and, 904, 905 Still Life (Daguerre), 686(i)
Spanish Civil War, 874, 877–878, death of, 916 Stock market
878(m), 879(i) eastern Europe and, 904, 915 crash in 1929, 855, 859, 860–861
Spanish Empire, 446, 476–477, Hitler and, 881 limited liability corporations and,
476(m), 478 media and, 847 759
Spanish Fury, 472(i), 473, 478 rise to power, 852 Stoicism, 131–132, 199, 201
Spanish-language television, 1003 totalitarianism of, 860, 865–867 Stolypin, Pyotr, 807–808
Spanish Netherlands, 511–512 World War II and, 892, 893, 895, Stone Age, 3, 4–8. See also Neolithic
Sparta, 64(m). See also Allies, Greek 904 Age; Paleolithic Age
alliances of, 81 Stalingrad, battle of, 888 Stonewall riot, 952
Athens and, 77, 81, 85 Stalinism, 903, 915, 916 Stopes, Marie, 846
coalition against, 118 Stamp Act (1765), 601, 602(i) Stores, department, 760
families in, 62 Standard of living. See also Lifestyle Storm troopers (SA,
helots (slaves) in, 65 in Africa, 750 Stürmabteilung), 868, 869
men in, 65–66, 66(i), 67 of Dutch, 522(m) Story of My Misfortunes, The
oligarchy in, 64–67 of EU members, 983 (Abelard), 349
Peloponnesian War and, 78, globalization and, 1006 Story of Sinuhe, The (Egypt), 23
104–107 in global south, 989–990 Strasbourg, seizure of, 512
Persian Wars and, 81 medieval, 301 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
population of, 67 plague and, 413 (SALT I, 1972), 958
women in, 66, 67 in Soviet Union, 949, 963 Strategos (general), 260
Spartacists, 835 welfare state and, 914–915 Strauss, Richard, 794
Spectator, The, 553 after World War II, 900, 908 Stravinsky, Igor, 794
Spencer, Herbert, 739 Standard Oil Trust, 759 Stream of consciousness technique,
Spending. See also Economy Starvation. See also Famines in literature, 850
on military, 813, 912, 918, 962, in Crimean War, 713 Strikes. See also Labor; Labor unions
963 in Soviet Union, 865 in British coal industry (1926),
in Rome, 203–204 World War II and, 885(i), 887 843
Speyer, Germany, Jews of, 334 Starvation Act (1834), 688 in colonies, 863
Sphinx, 16, 18(i) “Starvation” music, 948 in France, 954
Spices, 442, 443 State (nation). See also Church and government response to, 768–769
Spies and spying state; Nation-state; specific in London, 668, 768, 769(i)
books about, 930 states in Russia, 807, 808
former Nazis as, 906 in 18th century, 592–598 in Soviet bloc, 965
satellites for, 941 bureaucratic growth and, 727–728 in World War I, 830
Spinning jenny, 674 European system of, 556–564, after World War I, 843
Spinoza, Benedict, 523 558(m) Structuralism, 948
Spirit of the Laws, The power of, 676 Struggle of the orders (Rome),
(Montesquieu), 570 rebellions against power of, 152–153
Spoleto, duchy of, 273, 274 598–602 Stuart family (Scotland), 559
Spontaneous ovulation, 738 after Thirty Years’ War, 486–487 Students, 946
Sports State of nature, Hobbes on, 520 activism by, 701, 952–953, 954,
blood sports, 688 Statue of Liberty, 622(i) 957
in Greece, 52–53, 53(i) Statues. See Sculpture as clerics, 351
team, 765 Status. See Classes; Hierarchy; Social nationalistic, 664
Sputnik, 917 status; specific classes Styria, 527, 757
Square II, The (Giacometti), 893(i) Statute in Favor of the Princes, 392 Subjection of Women, The (Mill), 739
Srebrenica, massacre in, 975 Staufer clan, 361 Subjectivism, 95
SS (Schutzstaffel), 868 Steamboats, 676, 684, 694, 756 Submarines, in World War I, 824,
Stadholder (Dutch official), 522, 557, Steam engines, 674, 676 825, 830
560, 608, 656 Steel, 755, 995 Sub-Saharan Africa, 747, 824,
Stadium, Greek, 52 Steele, Richard, 553 921–922, 924, 989
[ Su b s iste n ce a g r i cu lt u re — Ta x at i o n
] Index I-65
Subsistence agriculture, 551 cold war and, 917, 919, 921(i), Syracuse
Subsistence economy, 549 932–933, 932(m) Carthage and, 81
Suburbs, 903, 915, 984 U.S. as dominant power and, Greek settlements in, 56
Succession 974 Peloponnesian Wars and, 106
in England, 518, 559 World War II and, 900 Persian Wars and, 80–81
in French Valois dynasty, 414(f) Superstition, religion and, 535, 567 Syria, 958, 993
to Muhammad, 253–255 Superstores, 984 Abbasids and, 285
in Rome, 184 Supply-side economics, 961 Christianity in, 223
in Spain, 557 Supranational organizations, Fatimids in, 287
Sudan, 989, 990 985–986 Greek trade and, 56
Sudetenland, 879–880 Supreme Court (U.S.), 927 Islam and, 253, 254
Suetonius (Rome), 293 Suras, 251, 251(i) nationalism in, 810
Suez Canal, 712, 731, 747, 888, 921 Surplus, agricultural, 7, 30, 266 refugees from, 997
Suffrage. See also Voting and voting Suttner, Bertha von, 796 Rome and, 167
rights Swabia, 362, 393 Sasanids in, 257
in Britain, 559, 600, 668, 702, 771 Sweden after World War I, 838
in France, 618, 698, 699 balance of power and, 562 Széchenyi, Stephen, 694, 701, 702
in Germany, 722, 768 birthrate in, 785
for men, 618, 668, 768, 772–773, Danes in, 298 Taaffe, Edouard von, 774
798 economy in, 912 Table of Ranks (Russia, 1772), 562
universal, 831 education in, 946 Tabula rasa, 521
universal male, 618, 722, 772–773 Franco-Austrian alliance and, Tacitus (historian)
for women, 796–797, 831, 841, 593 on Augustus, 178
841(f), 864, 910 in Great Depression, 871–872 historical works of, 191
Suffragists, in Britain, 796–797, 845 Great Northern War and, 562, Tagmata (mobile armies), 281
Sugar and sugar industry 563(m) Tahiti, as French protectorate, 690
in Caribbean region, 492 migration from, 762–763 Taifas (independent regions), 288,
slavery in, 446, 492, 544–545 Peace of Westphalia and, 484, 324
as standard food item, 546 485(m) Taiping (“Heavenly Kingdom”
Suger (abbot of Saint-Denis), 341, religious conflict in, 526 movement), 731
353–354 Russia and, 481, 481(m), 561, 562 Taiwan, as Pacific Tiger, 994, 994(m)
Suicide bombers, 981, 992 Social Democratic Party in, 769 Taliban, 992, 993
Sukarno, Achmed, 923 social welfare in, 871–872, 963 Talking cure, of Freud, 789–790
Suleiman I (the Magnificent, in Thirty Years’ War, 483 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de,
Ottoman Empire), 464(i), 465 in War of Devolution, 511 655
Sulla, Lucius Cornelius (Rome), women in, 787, 954 Talmud, Palestinian and Babylonian,
163, 165–166 Swift, Jonathan, 565 219
Sultans, Ottoman, 408(i), 528 Swine flu, 989 Tanks, in World War I, 824, 834
Sumer and Sumerians, 8–12, 9(i), 13. Swiss Confederation, 429, 432–433 Tariffs
See also Mesopotamia Switzerland in Britain, 694, 873
Summa, 385 after Charlemagne, 295 in Germany, 774
Summa Theologiae (Thomas education in, 553 Tartuffe (Molière), 508
Aquinas), 386 egalitarianism in, 432–433 Tatars (Tartars), 400, 776, 807. See
Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway), non-Europeans in, 923–924 also Mongols
846 Syllabus of Errors, The, 737 Tavernier, Jan, 431(i)
Sunday, naming of, 218 Symeon (monk), 226 Taxation
Sunday school movement, 687 Symmachus (Rome), 219 antiglobalization and, 986
Sun King, Louis XIV as, 508 Symposium, Greek, 94(i) of clergy, 397–398
Sunna, 255 Synagogues, 315(i), 316, 479. See in colonies, 601, 753
Sunni Muslims, 991(m) also Temples in Egypt, 22
crusades and, 332, 337 Syndicalists, 796 in England, 359, 514, 518, 961
Shi’ites and, 255, 286–287 Synods in France, 486, 510, 512, 610, 614,
Sun Yat-Sen (China), 806(m), 808 Henry IV excommunicated by, 615
“Superman,” Nietzsche on, 791 325 of gasoline, 988(i)
Superpowers, 902–903, 938, 973. See of Sutri (1046), 322 in Germany, 838, 839
also Soviet Union; United States of Whitby (664), 270, 272 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 125
balance of power and, 900, Synthetics, 912 of Jews, 383, 384
957–959 Syphilis, 446, 728, 796 by Justinian, 239–240
I-66 Index
[ Ta x at i o n — Th olos to mbs
]
Taxation (continued) Temperance, 673, 687 Thatcher, Margaret, 957, 960–962,
in Mesopotamia, 10 Templars, 336, 373(i) 961(i), 969
of peasants, 486–487, 490–491, Temples. See also Synagogues Theater(s). See also Drama
586 Egyptian, 20 professional, 497, 498, 533
representation and, 601 Greek, 86–88, 87(i) public, 686
in Rome, 178, 189, 215–216 Jewish, in Jerusalem, 48, 196, 336 in Russia, 529
in Russia, 562, 587, 807 in Rome, 150 Thebes, 23, 24
in Spain, 430, 459 Temporary workers, foreign, Alexander the Great and, 120
tithe as, 301, 490–491 924–925 Macedonians and, 120
in United States, 962 Tenant farmers Sparta and, 118, 119
Taylor, Frederick, 844 coloni as, 216, 265 Themes (Byzantine military
Tea Act (1773), 601 in England, 551 districts), 260, 281, 283
Teachers, women as, 687, 729 in Ireland, 771 Themistocles (Athens), 80, 81
Team sports, 765 Ten Commandments, 47 Theocracy, in Geneva, 453
Technocrats, 913 Ten Days That Shook the World Theocritus (poet), 129
Technology, 912, 937. See also (movie), 848 Theodora (Byzantine empress), 236,
Metals and metallurgy; Tennis court oath, 612 237–238, 238(i), 240
Science; Weapons Tennyson, Alfred (Lord), 688 Theodoric (Ostrogoths), 233
in 1920s, 850–851 Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), 445 Theodorus the Atheist, 133
in Britain, 756, 946 Tereshkova, Valentina, 940, 940(i) Theodosius I (Rome), 212, 214, 219,
bubble in, 995 Terror, the (France), 619–628 231
communications, 998 Terrorism Theogony (Hesiod), 54
in Crimean War, 713 in Algeria, 923 Theology. See also Religion; specific
Einstein’s theories applied to, 792 al-Qaeda and, 990 groups
exchange of, 4 by anarchists, 796 of Calvin, 453
impact of, 948, 969, 999, 1007 by Basque nationalists, 985 Enlightenment and, 580
imperialism and, 756 by Chechens, 981 of Jansenists, 509–510
information technology, 938–940, in Europe, 959–960 of Luther, 451
1007 as global issue, 974, 992–993, of Peter the Chanter, 350
medical, 942–943 1006 schools of, 349
metallurgy and, 12 in Ireland, 843, 960, 960(m) Thérèse (Congolese immigrant),
military, 121, 134, 465 in London, 993 973, 974, 998, 1005
Neo-Assyrian, 43 in Madrid, 993 Thermidorian Reaction, 627
nuclear, 941–942 Middle East and, 992 Thermopylae, battle at, 81
reproductive, 942–943 in Nazi Germany, 868–869 Thévenin, Charles, 612(i)
space, 917, 940–941 on September 11, 2001, 992(i), Third Crusade, 359, 370
training in, 729 993 Third Estate (general populace), in
voyages of discovery and, at U.S. embassy in Iran, 959 France, 611, 612, 613(i)
442–443 war against, 993 Third Lateran Council, 384–385
in World War I, 824, 827 in West Germany, 960, 962 Third Punic War, 159
Technopoles, 950 Tertullian, 197 Third Reich (Germany), 869, 889,
Teenagers. See also Young people Test Act (England), 518 926
in postindustrial society, 946–947 Test-ban treaty (1963), 931–932 Third Republic (France), 772,
Teheran, U.S. embassy hostages in, Test-tube babies, 943, 943(i) 799–800
959 Tetanus, 942 Third Section (political police), 664
Telecommunications, 974 Tet offensive, 954 Third world, 900, 918
Telegraph, 713 Tetradia, 268–269 Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 480
Telephone, 755, 760(i), 771 Tetrarchy, 213, 214 Thirty Tyrants (Athens), 107, 114,
Telescope, 494, 941 Tetzel, Johann, 450 116
Television, 931, 966 Texas, 724 Thirty Years’ War
in 1950s and 1960s, 929–930 Textile industry Baltic region following, 562
in 1960s and 1970s, 938–939, 946 in Britain, 678, 796–797 economic crisis after, 489–490
Einstein’s theories applied to, 792 Dutch, 560 effects of, 483–484, 486–487, 527
satellite-beamed telecasts on, 966, in India, 678 origins and course of, 482–483
999 industrialization of, 674–675 Peace of Westphalia and, 484–486,
Soviet, 956, 964 T4 project, 870, 885 485(m)
Spanish-language, 1003 Thailand, 995, 1005 violence of, 484(i)
Tell el-Amarna, 25 Thales of Miletus, 72 Tholos tombs (Mycenae), 32
[ Th omas Aquinas — Trinit y (Christian )
] Index I-67
Thomas Aquinas (Saint), 386, 418 Totalitarianism. See also Ottoman, 418
Thomas of Norwich, 384 Authoritarianism; Roman, 189
Thornton, Alice, 490 Dictatorships Suez Canal and, 731
Thoth (god), 20 in Europe, 864–870 in Sumer, 8
Thrace, 44 French Revolution and, 607 in western Europe, 267
Persian invasion of, 80(m) Total war West German, 949–950
Three Emperors’ League, 773 World War I as, 822, 827, 836 Trade routes, 442–443, 444
Three-field system, 296, 297(f), 301 World War II as, 900 Trade unions, 697, 796. See also
Three Guineas (Woolf), 874–875 To the Nobility of the German Nation Labor unions
Thucydides of Athens (historian), (Luther), 451 Trading companies, French, 511,
98, 99 Touraine, France and, 360 557. See also specific companies
on Peloponnesian War, 104, 106 Tour de France, 765 Trafalgar, battle of, 648
Thuringia, Peasants’ War in, 455 Tourism Tragedy (drama)
Tiananmen Square, protests in battlefield, 840, 850 Greek, 99–102
(1989), 965–966, 999 Great War, 850 of Shakespeare, 498
Tiberius (Rome), 184–185, 189, in West, 1000(i) Trajan (Rome), 186, 188(m), 191
194 Tours (city), 249, 265, 265(m) Transportation. See also Canals;
Tiberius Gracchus. See Gracchus Toussaint L’Ouverture, François- Travel; specific types
family Dominique, 632(i), 633 in 12th century, 317
Tigris River region, 3, 4, 8 Tower of the Winds (Athens), 132(i) of food, 756
Tilak, B. G., 808–809 Towns. See Cities and towns; Urban in Greece, 55
Tilsit, Treaties of, 649 areas; Villages; specific Trans-Siberian Railroad, 751, 758,
Time of Troubles (Russia), 481 locations 804
Tin, 756 Toxic waste, in lakes and rivers, 986 Transubstantiation, 381
Tinguely, Jean, 947–948 Trade. See also Commerce; Transvaal, 803
“Tintern Abbey” (Wordsworth), Economy; Free trade Transvestitism, 789
660 in 1050–1150, 313–314 Transylvania, 564, 691
Tipu Sultan, 633 Assyrian, 13 Trasformismo policy (Italy), 798
Tithe, 301, 490–491, 586, 611 in Athens, 115 Travel
Tito (Josip Broz), 905–906 Atlantic system of, 541, 542–548 civilian, 912, 979
Titus (Rome), 186 in Baltic region, 373 literature about, 568–570
Colosseum and, 186, 187(i) Byzantine, 281–282, 284 Montesquieu on, 569
Jews and, 196 Carolingian, 295–296 in Rome, 262–263
Tobacco, 492, 546 with China, 401 Travels in Icaria (Cabet), 696
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 679 civilizations and, 4 Treasury of Atreas (Mycenaean
Togo, 838 Common Market and, 912–913, domed tomb), 35
Togoland, 804 949 Treaties. See also specific treaties
Toilets, public, 727 Congress of Vienna and, 656–657 after War of the Spanish
Tokyo, World War II and, 883, 891 cultural interaction through, 32 Succession, 556–557
Toledo, Spain, 272 Dutch, 518, 522–523, 522(m), 560 after World War I, 837
Tolerance. See Religion(s); Religious economy and, 488 Trench warfare, in World War I, 813,
toleration Egyptian, 23, 35 823(m), 825–827, 826(i)
Toleration Act (England), 519 European imperialism and, Trent, Council of, 459–460
Tolstoy, Leo, 775, 776 778(m) Trial, The (Kafka), 850
Tombs. See Burials European patterns of (c. 1740), Trials
To Myself (Meditations, Marcus 543(m) of Galileo, 494(i)
Aurelius), 201 in former Soviet Union, 979 of Nazis, 909
Tonkin, 751 by France, 511, 590 of terrorists, 993
Tools, 4, 12, 51 in Great Depression, 864, 873 of witches, 499–500
Topkapi Saray, 409 Greek, 50, 55–56 Tribal Assembly (Rome), 155
Torah, 47 Hanseatic League and, 429 Tribes. See also specific groups
Tordesillas, Treaty of, 443(m), 444 by hunter-gatherers, 5 barbarian, 229
Tories (Britain), 518, 519, 560, 668, Islamic networks of, 288 Tribunes (Rome), 155, 177
724 Jews in, 315 Tricolor (French flag), 623
Torture Mycenaean, 32 Triennial Act (Great Britain), 559
efforts to abolish, 575, 579 in Near East, 6(m) Trier, as Roman city, 262, 263
natural law and, 497 by nobility, 586 Trilogy, tragedies as, 100
of witches, 499–500 open doors in, 892 Trinity (Christian), 222–223, 453
I-68 Index
[ Tri n it y, o f P l o t i n u s — U n ite d States
]
Trinity, of Plotinus, 201 Turner, Joseph M. W., 660, 684, in Great Depression, 860, 861,
Triple Alliance, 775, 777, 810, 822 684(i) 861(i), 871
Triremes (warships), 82, 82(i) Tustari brothers (merchants), 288 insurance for, 873
Tristan, Flora, 696 Tutankhamun (Egypt), 25 in mid-19th century, 698
Triumvirates (Rome) Twelve Tables (Rome), 154 oil embargo and, 958–959
First, 167–168 Twilight (Grosz), 849(i) after World War I, 841
Second, 176–177 2001: A Space Odyssey (movie), Unification. See also Berlin;
Trivium, 348–349 940–941, 956 Germany; Reunification
Trojan War, 32, 34, 41 Two Treatises of Government of Europe, 981
Tromboncino, Bartolomeo, 428 (Locke), 520 of Germany, 701, 705, 719–722,
Troops. See Military; Soldiers Tychê (god), 137, 136 721(m)
Trotsky, Leon, 832(i), 833, 852 Typefaces, 294 of Italy, 700, 705, 717–719, 718(m)
Troubadours, 364–366, 366(f) Typewriter, 755 Unified law code, in Austria, 595
Trouvères (singers), 365–366 Typhoid, 727 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Troy, 32, 52, 101(i), 166(i) Tyrants and tyranny (USSR). See Soviet Union
Truce of God movement, 303, 332 in Athens, 84 Union of Soviet Writers, 866
Truce of Nice (1538), 463(i) in Corinth, 67 Unions. See Labor unions
Truman, Harry S, 892, 904, 905 government and, 56–57 United Kingdom. See Britain;
Truman Doctrine, 904–905 in Greece, 59, 61 England
Trusts (business), 759 Tyre, 121 United Nations (UN), 900, 991
Truth Tyrol, 527 formation of, 892
in Hellenistic philosophy, 131 Tz’u-hsi (Cixi), 808 Korean War and, 919
Protagoras on, 95 newly independent nations in,
Tsars (Russia). See also specific U-boats. See Submarines 923
individuals Ukraine Palestine partition and, 920,
as absolutists, 528 Cossacks in, 525 920(m)
Tsushima Strait, battle of, 806 fertility in, 989 United States. See also Iraq War;
Tuberculosis, 914 land in, 551 specific presidents
Tudor monarchs (England), 432, Russia and, 525, 981 American Revolution and,
454. See also specific World War II and, 882, 883 601–602
monarchs Ulm, Bavaria, Napoleon in, 649 arts in, 851, 947
Tullia (Rome), 147 Ulster, 517 assassinations by anarchists in, 796
Tunis, 56. See also Carthage Ultra code-breaking group, 882 Canada and, 726
Tunisia. See also Carthage Ultrarevolutionaries (France), 625 cholera in, 681
digital media and government Ulysses (Joyce), 850 civil rights in, 900, 927, 950–951,
change in, 999 Umayyads 952
Fatimids in, 287 caliphate of, 254–255, 256, 280, Civil War in, 714(i), 725
France and, 747 285 in cold war, 903–904, 918–919
independence for, 923 Great Mosque at Damascus and, culture in, 1003
Turgenev, Ivan, 734 256(i) détente policy and, 958, 962
Turgot, Jacques, 598, 599 Islam and, 254(m) as dominant world power, 974
Turkey. See also Anatolia; Ottoman Qur’an and, 251(i) economy in, 756–757, 844, 962,
Empire in Spain, 287 974, 994, 996, 1006(m)
Armenians in, 828 Ummah, 252, 253, 254(m) emigration to, 682, 763
in cold war, 904–905 UN. See United Nations environment and, 988
in eastern Roman Empire, 249 Unam Sanctam (papal bull), 398–399 expansion of, 724, 725(m)
in EU, 982 Unbearable Lightness of Being, The France and, 633, 648
food supplies and, 5–6 (Kundera), 956 German occupation by, 892,
Germany and, 811 Uncertainty (indeterminacy) 906–907, 907(m)
Kemal Atatürk in, 864 principle, 875 Great Depression in, 871
migration from, 841, 924 Unconscious, Freud on, 789 Great Society in, 951
nationalism in, 810 Unemployment imperialism by, 804
Russian war with, 774 assistance, 798 industry in, 756–757
Turks. See also Ottoman Empire; in Britain, 861, 873 Iraq War and, 993
Ottoman Turks in depression of 1873, 758 Jewish migration to, 802
Mamluks as, 285–286 in France, 611–612, 962 McCarthy in, 911
Ottoman, 409, 463, 465 in Germany, 861, 861(i), 869 Monroe Doctrine and, 666
Seljuk, 332, 338, 370 in global economic crisis, 996 NAFTA and, 981
[ Unite d States — Veterans
] Index I-69
national debt in, 957, 958, 994 Upper Egypt, 16, 24(i) Van Gogh, Vincent, 766, 767
poverty in, 951 Ur (Mesopotamian city-state), 8, 10, Varro (writer), 422
railroads in, 676 47 Vassals and vassalage
real estate bubble in, 995–996 Ur III dynasty (Sumer), 13 Carolingian, 295
reform societies in, 687 Urban II (Pope), 332–333 in England, 340, 359
research funding by, 945 Urban VI (Pope), 418 in France, 306
second Great Awakening in, 659 Urban areas. See also Cities and medieval, 300, 302
slavery in, 602, 690, 724–725 towns; specific locations Vassilacchi, Antonio, 477(i)
stock market and (1929), 855, Byzantine, 259–260 Vatican. See also Roman
859, 860–861 charity in, 590 Catholicism; Sistine Chapel
as superpower, 900, 902–903, factories in, 678–679 as independent state, 854
974 globalization and, 981 Vatican II, 925
television in, 929, 938, 939, 1003 in Greece, 85–89 Vauxhall Gardens, London, 552(i)
terrorist attack on, 992(i), 993 industrialization and, 673, Vega, Lope de, 498
Vietnam and, 919, 938, 949, 680–681 Veii (Etruscan town), 156
951–952, 951(m), 957 in Rome, 180 Velázquez, Diego, 486(i)
Watergate scandal in, 958 social life in, 551–554 Vellum, 448
women in, 796 after World War II, 915 Velvet revolution, in Czechoslovakia,
World War I and, 830 Urbanization. See also Cities and 967
World War II and, 883, 887, 889, towns; specific locations Vendée rebellion, 624–625, 626
895, 900–901 birthrates and, 681, 785 Venereal disease, 728
United States of Belgium, 609 in Britain, 680–681 Venetia, 691, 717, 719
Universal Exhibition (Manet), 736 in Dutch Republic, 523 Venice
Universal Exposition (1889), 755 industrialization and, 674, arts in, 433–434, 434(i)
Universal gravitation, law of, 496 680–682 Asian trade by, 401
Universal male suffrage internal migration and, 551, 763 Byzantine trade and, 282
in Belgium, 772 Urbino, 462 classes in, 433
in France, 618 Uruk (Mesopotamian city-state), 8, crusaders in, 370
in Germany, 722 10 uprising in, 700
in Italy, 773 USSR. See Soviet Union Ventris, Michael, 33
in Netherlands, 773 Usury, 319 Verdi, Giuseppe, 708(i), 709, 719,
in Spain, 772 Uthman (Umayyad), 254–255 731, 736
Universe, 875, 941. See also Utilitarianism, 694 Verdun
Astronomy Utopia, communist, 851–852 battle at, 826
Universities. See also Education; Utrecht Treaty of (843), 292(m), 295, 306
Higher education; specific occupation of, 608 Vernacular languages
locations Peace of, 513, 564 courtly culture in, 364–367
Black Death and, 413 Uzbekistan, Alexander the Great in, in England, 304–305
curriculum of, 952–953 121 medieval literature in, 364–367,
Dutch, 523 387
Great Awakening and, 584 Vaccines, 914, 989 Versailles
growth of, 946 Václav (Bohemia), 308 Estates General at, 612
as guilds, 351 Valens (Rome), 223, 231 festivities at, 505, 508
Jesuit, 460 Vallain, Jeanne-Louise, 622(i) palace at, 509
in Middle Ages, 347, 348–351 Valois dynasty (France), 413, 414(f), women’s march to, 606(i), 607,
protests at, 954 463–465, 474 615
Upper classes. See also Aristocracy; Values Versailles Treaty, 837, 840, 876, 880
Classes; Elites; Lords advertising of, 930 Vesalius, Andreas, 495
cleanliness and, 566 postmodernism and, 2–5, 1005 Vespasian (Rome), 186
culture of, 533 restoration of “western,” 925–926 Vespucci, Amerigo, 444
Enlightenment and, 575 in Rome, 144, 148, 163, 165, 216, Vesta (god), cult of, 148–149
in France, 611 235 Vestal Virgins (Rome), 149
lifestyle of, 761–762 during World War II, 892 Vesuvius, eruption of, 162(i), 180(i),
literacy of, 553 Vandals, 210(i), 232, 235, 240 186
in rural areas, 682–683 Van de Velde, Theodor, 846 Veterans
in Russia, 561–562 Van de Venne, Adriaen Pietersz, in Rome, 167
women in, 688, 689 489(i) after World War I, 840, 845–846
in World War I, 829 Van Eyck, Jan, 427, 427(i) after World War II, 913
I-70 Index
[ Veto — Wars and warfare
]
Veto, absolute power of, 525 in Thirty Years’ War, 484(i) Wagner, Richard, 736
Veturia (Rome), tombstone of, 193 Western civilization and Walentynowicz, Anna, 965
Vichy France, 882 (1200–1000 b.c.e.), 34 Wales, 233, 680
Victor Emmanuel II (Italy), 709, Vipsania (Rome), 185 Walesa, Lech, 965
717, 718–719 Virgil (Rome), 183, 293, 387 Wallachia, 713
Victor Emmanuel III (Italy), 852 Virginia, African slaves in, 488, 545 Walled cities
Victoria (England), 689, 703, 723, Virginity, in Christianity, 226 commerce and, 314–315
724, 727, 730 Virgin Mary, 535 Frankish, 265
Victorian society, 689, 723–724 Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, The (Van Minoans and, 30
Video recorders, 939 Eyck), 427(i) Piacenza as, 317, 317(m)
Videotape, 939, 999 Virtue(s) Wallenberg, Raoul, 887
Vienna. See also Congress of of Merovingian warriors, 267 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 482, 483
Vienna in Rome, 144–145 Walpole, Robert, 559–560
“homes for heroes” in, 845–846, Viruses, 942, 989 Wannsee, Germany, 884
846(i) Visigoths, 232, 233, 272–273 War against terrorism, 993
industry in, 757 Visual arts. See also Art(s); Painting; War and Peace (Tolstoy), 775
Jews in, 801 Sculpture War communism, in Russia, 833,
Napoleon and, 649 realism in, 735(i), 736 851
Nazi rule in, 879 secular subjects in, 493 War debts, German, 838–839
rebuilding of, 726 in technocratic society, 947–948 War guilt clause, 838
sieges of, 464(i), 465, 526 Vladimir (Kiev and Russia), 284 Warhol, Andy, 947
university at, 413 Voice of America, 931 War ministries, in World War I, 828
uprisings in, 701, 702 Volksgemeinschaft, in Germany, 868 War of Devolution, 511
Vietcong, 952, 954 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), War of Independence (United
Viet Minh, 919 577 States). See American War of
Vietnam. See also Indochina; anticlericalism of, 657 Independence
Vietnam War Catherine II and, 575, 592 War of Italian Unification, 712
in cold war, 919 persecution of, 568, 582 War of the Austrian Succession, 564,
division of, 919 Philosophical Dictionary, 579, 571(m), 594
France and, 751, 919, 951(m) 583(f) War of the League of Augsburg
World War II and, 892 on religious fanaticism, 576, 579 (Nine Years’ War), 512
Vietnam War, 932(m), 938, 949, Von Bülow, Frieda, 745, 746, 747, War of the Polish Succession, 563
951–952, 951(m), 958 778 War of the Spanish Succession,
protests against, 957 Voting and voting rights. See also 512–513, 526, 556–557, 558(m)
Tet offensive in, 954 Suffrage Warriors. See also Military; Soldiers
Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Louise- in 19th century, 768 Greek, 33, 60(i)
Élizabeth, 610(i), 645(i) in Athens, 68 medieval, 302–303
Vikings in Britain, 559, 600, 668, 702, 724, Merovingian, 267
in England, 298, 305 771 in post-Carolingian society, 299
invasions by, 297–298 in France, 611, 612, 615, 618, 641, Wars and warfare. See also Crusades;
Kievan Russia and, 284 658, 667, 698, 699, 910 Mercenaries; Military;
Villages. See also Cities and towns in Germany, 722 Violence; Weapons; specific
demes as, 70, 86(m) in Italy, 798 battles and wars
forms of justice in, 536 in Rome, 154 advantages to, 817
Frankish, 265 in Russia, 795 Alexander the Great and, 121
medieval, 301 Voyages of exploration, 441, Bismarck and, 719–722
Villeneuve Saint-Georges (manor), 442–444, 443(m) in Byzantine Empire, 257–259
296 Vulcanization, of rubber, 682, 785 dynastic, 463–465
Violence. See also Terrorism; Wars Vulgate Bible, 293, 460 during French Revolution, 617,
and warfare; specific locations 619, 620–621, 626, 628–633,
by anarchists, 770, 796 Wage and price controls, under 630(m)
in early Western civilization, Diocletian, 215–216 French wars of religion and,
34–36, 36(m) Wages, 962 474–476
by fascists, 852, 853 c. 1730, 590 in global age, 1006
medieval, 303–304 by gender, 845, 945 in Greece, 33
in nation building, 710 rise of, 487 Hundred Years’ War and, 413–416
in Roman entertainment, 181 for women, 759–760, 770, 862, of Louis XIV, 511–512, 512(f),
by suffragists, 797 945, 953 513(m)
[ Wars and warfare — Westernization
] Index I-71
medieval, 302–303 Hellenistic, 124 global migration and, 974, 996,

in Mediterranean region, 34 Hittite, 28 997–998
mobile, 888 of hoplites, 71(i) Great Depression beyond,
Napoleonic, 646–654 in Hundred Years’ War, 416 862–864
nation building and, 710, 716–726 imperialism and, 756 Greek Golden Age and, 78
proxy, 919 of mass destruction, 993 immigrants in, 744(i)
Roman, 158–160, 189 Mycenaean, 33, 33(i) Judaism’s impact on, 46–50
technology in, 713, 813 World War I and, 813, 824 non-West cultural influences in,
troubadour poetry about, 366 World War II and, 881 1001
Warsaw (city), 552 Weather. See also Climate population growth in, 785
Warsaw, duchy of, 649, 654, 655 predicting in Athens, 132(i) postwar recovery in, 910–913
Warsaw ghetto, Jewish uprising in, Weaving, mechanization of, 674 religions in, 46–50
885 Weber, Max, 791 spread of national power and
Warsaw Pact, 907, 908(m), 917, 955 Weddings, 866. See also Marriage order from, 731–733
Wars of the Roses, 432 in Greece, 62, 63(i) and world (c. 1890), 778(m)
Washington, D.C., AIDS in, 989 Wedgwood, Josiah, and Wedgwood after World War II, 910–913
Washington Conference (1921), pottery, 588 West Africa. See also Gold Coast
839 Weimar Republic, 835, 842, 845, decolonization in, 921–922, 923
Wastes, urbanization and, 680–681 850, 854, 867 marriage practices in, 544
Water Welfare state, 900, 913–915. See also Portugal and, 442–443, 444
in Africa, 989 Social welfare slave trade and, 543, 544
in urban areas, 680–681, 727 in eastern Europe, 914 West Bank, 958
Watergate scandal, 958 in former Soviet bloc, 980 West Berlin, 907(m)
Waterloo, battle at, 653 foundations for, 787 Western civilization. See West, the
Water mills, 319 limitations on, 962 Western Europe. See also specific
Waterways. See also Rivers; specific New Deal and, 871 locations
locations non-European workers and, 924(i) in c. 600, 244(m)
commerce and, 317 standard of living and, 914–915 by 1050, 280
Watson, James, 928, 942 television and, 939 in 15th century, 430–432
Watt, James, 674–675 in western Europe, 913–915, in 17th century, 537(m)
Watteau, Antoine, 549(i) 914(i), 963 in 1750, 571(m)
Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, 416 after World War I, 841 Byzantine trade with, 282
Wealth. See also Upper classes after World War II, 900 after Charlemagne, 295
in 12th century, 313 Welfs (Germany), 361 cold war and, 899, 933
Carolingian, 295–296 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley (duke economy in, 313–314, 911–912
in cities, 552 of), 653, 668, 673 governments in, 910
from colonies, 746 Wells, H. G., 783, 824(i) immigrant labor in, 924(i)
gap with poor, 490–491 Wergild, 234–235 Jews in, 801
Greek women and, 92 Wesley, John, 584–585, 658, 659 kingdoms in, 262–274
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 125, 127 Wesleyans. See Methodism male suffrage in, 768
human capital and, 565 Wessex, 304–305 monarchies in, 428–429
metallurgy and, 12 West, the, 900. See also World War I; nobility in, 586
of Mycenae, 35 World War II; specific locations oil conservation in, 959
of nobility, 586–587 alphabet in, 15 political participation in, 770–773
in Rome, 162–163, 162(i), Athenian democracy and, 68–70 religious conflict in, 473, 474–481
180–181, 191 China and, 731 Roman culture in, 189–191
of Russian oligarchs, 977 cities in, 984 state power in, 476–481, 556–560,
Wealth of Nations (Smith), 581, cold war and, 899, 933 558(m)
583(f) concept of, 4 subsistence agriculture in, 551
Weapons. See also Arms race; cross-cultural contact and, U.S. and, 901, 929
Military technology; Nuclear 999–1001 western Roman Empire and,
weapons Digital Age in, 1007 249–250
ancient, 4 end of early civilizations in, Western front, in World War I,
bronze, 12, 51 34–36, 36(m) 823(m), 825, 826, 834
in Crimean War, 713 Europe and (c. 1340), 405(m) Westernization
crossbows as, 416 global economic crisis in, in Iran, 990
flintlock muskets, 592 995–996 Russia and, 560–563, 561(i), 693
Germany and, 838 globalization and, 974, 999 of Turkey, 864
I-72 Index
[ Western Ro man Empire — Wo men
]
Western Roman Empire. See also “Wilkes and Liberty” campaign, 600, in arts, 767
Eastern Roman Empire; 601 in Athens, 85, 115
Roman Empire William (Franks, 9th century), 279, as athletes, 235(i)
barbarians in, 212, 229–235 295 as authors, 12, 534, 555, 926, 953
Franks in, 234 William (child, England), killing of, in barbarian society, 230
non-Roman kingdoms in, 384 Beauvoir and, 926
229–236 William I (the Conqueror, birth control and, 764, 785
separation from eastern empire, England), 338–340, 339(i) in Byzantine Empire, 260
214–215, 215(m) William I (Netherlands), 667 Carolingian peasant, 296
society and culture in, 234–236 William I (Prussia and Germany), as Cathars, 369
as western Europe, 249–250 719, 720(i), 722 charitable work by, 687, 688
West Germany, 906, 907, 954, 966, William II (Germany) Christianity and, 196, 199, 221
967(i). See also Germany antisocialist laws and, 795 in concentration camps, 885, 886
economy of, 912 conquests of, 811 in confraternities, 535
in ECSC, 912 homosexuality and, 789 as consumers, 760
former Fascists and Nazis in, 910 Reinsurance Treaty and, 777 in convents, 300
Green Party in, 987 World War I and, 814, 825, 827, domestic tasks of, 8
policy changes in, 949–950, 962 834 in Dutch society, 523
postwar politics in, 910 William III (Prince of Orange and in eastern Roman Empire,
terrorism in, 960, 962 king of England and Scotland), 237–238
university students in, 946 519, 520, 521, 524, 557, 559, education for, 94, 148, 307–308,
welfare state and, 913, 962 560 729, 772, 787, 796, 994
West Indies, 492, 594 William IX of Aquitaine, 364 in Egypt, 22
Westphalia William of Ockham, 418 emigration to Americas, 547
kingdom of, 649 William of Orange (d. 1584), 478 in England, 658, 724
Peace of, 484–486, 485(m), 565 Will to power, Nietzsche on, 791 in Enlightenment, 567(i), 570,
Wetlands, draining of, 550, 551 Wilson, Woodrow 577–578, 589–590
What Is Property? (Proudhon), 696 “cold war,” before World War I in factories, 679–680
What Is the Third Estate? (Sieyès), and, 810 food riots and, 599
611 Fourteen Points of, 830, 836, in former Soviet Union, 979
Wheel, invention, 8 909(i) in former Yugoslavia, 975
Whigs (England), 518, 519, 560, 601, neutrality policies of, 825 in France, 644, 873, 910
668, 724 Windischgrätz, Alfred von, in French Revolution, 606(i), 607,
Whitby, Synod of, 270, 272 701–702 615, 624, 625
White-collar jobs, 787 Wind power, 987 in Germany, 307–308, 796, 869,
White-collar service workers, 759, Windsor, house of, 559 908, 911(i), 997(i)
944–945, 984 Winfrith (Boniface), 272 in Great Depression, 862
Whitefield, George, 585(i), 659 Winter Palace (St. Petersburg), 807 Greek, 42, 59, 62, 63, 89, 90–92,
White monks, 330 Wisdom literature, 22, 44 91(i)
White Mountain, battle of, 482 Witches and witchcraft, 493, Greek slavery and, 61, 62
White people 499–500, 500(i), 567 in Hammurabi’s code, 14
in Africa, 750, 922–923 Wladyslaw II Jagiello (Lithuania- in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126–127,
civil rights movement and, Poland), 429 129
950–951 Wolf, Christa, 950 Hittite, 27
Whites (faction), in Russia, 832, “Wolf-Man” (Freud’s patient), 783, as indentured servants, 547
841 784, 789, 814 in Iran, 990
White supremacists, anti-immigrant Wolsey, Thomas, 454 in Islam, 253
sentiment of, 998 Woman suffrage, 796–797, 841, Israelite, 48
White Teeth (Smith), 1001 841(f). See also Suffrage; Voting in Italy, 854, 886
“White Terror” (France), 628 and voting rights in labor unions, 770
Why God Became Man (Anselm), Women. See also Feminism; Gender; lifestyle of, 553, 787–788
331, 340 Woman suffrage; Women’s literature by, 534, 570, 685–686,
Widows rights 849, 850
in England, 359 in 1920s, 845, 846, 847 in Lysistrata, 103
in recession (17th century), 490 as abbesses, 269 march to Versailles by, 606(i), 607
in Rome, 220 activism of, 927, 953–954, 953(i) Masonic lodges of, 587
Wilde, Oscar, 788, 788(i) in Afghanistan, 992 medieval schools and, 349
Wilkes, John, 600 in Algeria, 923 as medieval vassals, 300
[ Wo m e n — Wo rl d War I I
] Index I-73
Merovingian aristocratic, 268– in World War I, 828–829, 829(i) Working class. See also Workers
269 after World War I, 841, 841(f) education and, 728, 729, 795
middle class, 688, 689 World War II and, 886, 887–888 government assistance for, 798
Minoan, 30 after World War II, 908 intervention in lives of, 688, 764
monastic communities for, 228 Women in Love (Lawrence), 846 lifestyle of, 682, 761–764
nation-building and, 717(i) Women’s Paradise (Zola), 766 political parties of, 769, 774,
in Nazi Germany, 869, 886 Women’s rights, 644, 688, 739, 787, 795–796
Neo-Assyrian, 43 796–797, 953 protests by, 731–733
new woman and, 787–788 Women’s Social and Political Union socialism and, 695–696
as nurses, 713, 714(i) (WSPU), 797 sports, leisure, and, 765
Olympic Games and, 52–53 Wonders of the World, The, 129 use of term, 678
outwork by, 763–764 Woolf, Virginia, 849, 850, 874–875 white-collar service personnel in,
paintings by, 549(i), 767, 767(i) Wordsworth, William, 660 944–945
Paleolithic, 5, 6 Workday, industrial, 678, 679–680 women in, 689, 796–797
in Paris Commune, 733 Worker Opposition (Soviet Union), World War I and, 827
patrilineal inheritance and, 303 851 Workplace, 678, 679–680
as political activists, 698, 768, 770, Workers. See also Labor; Slaves and Works and Days (Hesiod), 54
965 slavery World Bank, 985, 990
portrayed in arts, 874, 947 agricultural, 551 World Court, Milosevic and, 976
in postwar society, 929, 945 Chartists and, 697, 703 World economy. See Global
as prime minister, 957, 960–962 community activities of, 770 economy
in professions, 729 computers and, 939–940 World Trade Center, destruction of,
property of, 148 in England, 668 992(i), 993
protective legislation for, 765 in factories, 678–679, 763–764 World Trade Organization, 985
protests by, 953–954, 953(i), 965 foreign, 923–925, 997–998 Worldview, secular vs. religious,
reading by, 553 in France, 611, 613, 618, 698, 699, 492–500
in realist art, 735(i) 873, 954 World War I
in recession (17th century), 490 globalization and, 984, 994, 997, alliances before, 810–813
reform and, 673, 687 999 alliances in, 822–824
religion and, 737 in Great Depression, 861, 861(i) arms race prior to, 810, 813–814
in religious orders, 368–369, 383 guest, 924–925 artistic expression during, 820(i)
as Roman slaves, 181 labor unions and, 678, 768–770 Balkan region prior to and,
in Rome, 144–145, 146–148, in medieval crafts, 318–319 811–813
147(i) migrant, 952 battles in, 825–827
in Russia, 561, 716 migrations by, 762–763, 923–925, colonial troops in, 824, 827
as salon hostesses, 533, 577–578 997–998 ending of (1918), 834
in sciences, 532–533, 534, 792 in multinationals, 944 Europe at outbreak of, 816(m)
scientific theories about, 738 in Napoleonic Code, 644–645 Europe after, 834, 835, 840–847,
separate spheres and, 688–689 in Nazi Germany, 869 902(m)
sexuality and, 591–592, 789 outworkers as, 755–756, 763–764, events leading to, 810–815
social and legal status of, 688 939 fronts in, 823(m)
socialism and, 696, 697 in postindustrial age, 944–945 home front in, 827–829
social manners and, 533–534 protests by, 954, 965 Ireland and, 830
Soviet, 852, 866, 903, 915, 929, in Russia, 795–796, 807, 977 mandate system after, 838
945 sans-culottes as, 611, 613, 618, mobilization for, 815
in space exploration, 940, 940(i) 625 outbreak of, 814–815, 816(m)
Spartan, 66, 67 in Soviet bloc, 915 peace after, 828, 835–838
sports and, 765 in Soviet Union, 865 protests against, 830
in sweat shops, 994 in textile industry, 675 Russian withdrawal from, 831
in Turkey, 864 in welfare state, 914–915 trench warfare in, 813, 823(m),
upper-class, 688, 689, 762 women as, 759–760, 760(i), 825–827, 826(i)
welfare-state policies and, 913, 763–764, 841, 845, 886, 912, United States in, 830
914 929, 994 women in, 828–829, 829(i)
witch trials and, 499–500 workplace conditions and, World War II
in workforce, 680, 703, 759–760, 679–680 in Africa, 887, 888, 889(m)
760(i), 763–764, 841, 912, 929, World War I and, 828–829 alliances before, 877
945, 994 after World War I, 835, 836, 845 civilians in, 860, 878, 879(i),
working class, 689 Workhouses, 590, 688 883–886, 891
I-74 Index
[ Wo rl d War I I — Zw i n g l i
]
World War II (continued) travel, 568–570 Yugoslavia, 973
colonized peoples in, 875, 887 in vernacular, 387 breakup of, 968(m), 974, 975–976,
in Europe, 860, 881–882, Wyck, Thomas, 517(i) 976(m), 985
887–889, 889(m) Wycliffe, John, 420, 453 after Communist revolution,
Europe after, 894(m), 901, 902(m) 906(m)
events leading to, 875–881 Xenophanes of Colophon, 72–73 ethnic groups in, 975, 976(m)
German surrender in, 889 Xenophon (author), 66 former (c. 2000), 976(m), 985–986
Holocaust during, 883–886 Xerxes I (Persia), 79–81 in Little Entente, 840
home front in, 886–887 Xhosa people, 749 migration of Magyars from, 841
imperialism preceding, 875–877 resistance to Soviets in, 905–906
Japanese surrender and, 892 Yahweh (Hebrew deity), 47, 48, 138 after World War I, 836
outbreak of, 859, 860, 881 Yalta meeting (1945), 892, 906 World War II and, 892
in Pacific region, 883, 890(m) Yeats, William Butler, 798 Yukos Oil Company (Russia), 977
postwar settlement and, 892–893 Yehud (kingdom), 48
resistance in, 887–888 Yeltsin, Boris, 965, 977 Zachary (Pope), 274, 290
Spain as training ground for, 878 Yeomanry, in England, 432 Zakat (tax), 253
wartime agreements in, 892–893 Yom Kippur War, 958 Zama, battle of, 159
weapons in, 881, 886 Young Bosnians, 815(i) Zara, Dalmatia, 370
World Wide Web, 974, 998, 1004, Young Ireland movement, 693 Zarathustra (prophet), 45–46
1007 Young Italy, 691–692 Zasulich,Vera, 775
Worms Young people. See also Students Zemstvos (Russian councils), 715,
Concordat of (1122), 326, 341, in 1920s, 846 807
361, 363 activism by, 701, 952–953 Zeno (eastern Roman Empire), 233
Imperial Diet of (1521), 451 in former Soviet bloc, 979–980 Zenobia (Palmyra), 205
Jews of, 334 generation gap and, 947 Zeus (god), 54, 63, 148
synagogue in, 315(i) in Great Depression, 862 Zhukov, Marshal, 915
Wretched of the Earth, The (Fanon), in Nazi Germany, 867, 869 Ziggurats, in Sumer, 9(i), 10, 13
927 postwar youth culture and, Zionism, 803, 901
Writing 927–928, 928(i) Zola, Émile, 765–766, 799
cuneiform, 11–12, 11(i) in Russia, 716 Zollverein (customs union), 692
Egyptian, 16, 19, 19(i) sexuality and, 942, 946 Zones of occupation, in Germany.
Linear A, 28 social reform and, 764 See Occupation (military)
Linear B, 33, 35 Young Plan (1929), 839 Zoroastrianism, 45–46, 48
in Mesopotamia, 11–12, 11(i) Young Turks, 810, 811 Zulu people, 749
in Mycenae, 32 Youth culture, 927–928, 947 Zurich, Zwingli in, 452, 455–456
social status and, 553 Ypsilanti, Alexander, 664 Zwingli, Huldrych, 452, 455–456
About the Authors
Lynn Hunt (PhD., Stanford University) Chicago and has been visiting
is Eugen Weber Professor of Modern professor at the Universities of Utrecht
European History at University of (Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), and
California, Los Angeles. She is the author Oxford (Trinity College, England). She
or editor of several books, including is the author or editor of many books,
most recently Inventing Human Rights, including A Short History of the Middle
Measuring Time, Making History, and Ages and the very recent Generations of
The Book that Changed Europe. Feeling: A History of Emotion, 600–1700.
Thomas R. Martin (PhD., Harvard Bonnie G. Smith (PhD., University
University) is Jeremiah O’Connor of Rochester) is Board of Governors
Professor in Classics at the College of the Professor of History at Rutgers University.
Holy Cross. He is the author of Ancient She is author or editor of several books
Greece and Ancient Rome, and was one including Ladies of the Leisure Class;
of the originators of Perseus: Interactive The Gender of History: Men, Women
Sources and Studies on Ancient Greece and Historical Practice; and The Oxford
(perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/). Encyclopedia of Women in World
Barbara H. Rosenwein (PhD., History. Currently, she is studying the
University of Chicago) is professor globalization of European culture and
emerita of history at Loyola University society since the seventeenth century.
About the Cover Image

The Orrery, c.1766 (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–1797)
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman Images
Joseph Wright’s
painting shows a
red-gowned lecturer
explaining the
workings of the
solar system with a
mechanical model
called an orrery. The
sun is represented
by an oil lamp.
Wright was known
for his interest in
the new science
and especially
mechanics.
How to Analyze Primary Sources
In their search for an improved understanding of the past, historians look
for new evidence — written documents or visual artifacts. When they
encounter a written or visual primary source, historians ask certain key
questions. You should ask these questions too. Sometimes historians can’t
be certain about the answer, but they always ask the question.
ANALYZING A WRITTEN DOCUMENT

•W
ho wrote the document? Is it a specific person or someone whose identity
you can merely infer from the context of the document (for example, a parent
writing to a child, a traveler writing home)?
• When and where was it written?
• Why was the document written? Is there a clear purpose, or are multiple
interpretations possible?
• Who was, or who might have been, its intended audience?
• What point of view does it reflect?
• What can the document tell us about the individual who produced it and the
society from which he or she came?
ANALYZING A VISUAL SOURCE

• Who made the image or artifact, and how was it made?
• When and where was the image or artifact made?
• Who paid for or commissioned it? How can you tell?
• For what audience might it have been intended? Where might it have originally
been displayed or used?
• What message or messages is it trying to convey?
• How could it be interpreted differently depending on who viewed or used it?
• What can this visual source tell us about the individual who produced it and
the society from which he or she came?

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1 Early Western Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 3

From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 4

Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e. 15

The Middle and New Kingdoms in Egypt, 2061–1081 b.c.e. 22

The Hittites, the Minoans, and the Mycenaeans, 2200–1000 b.c.e. 26

© The Trustees of the British

The Reemergence of Greek Civilization, 1000–750 b.c.e. 50

Homer, Hesiod, and Divine Justice in Greek Myth 53

The Creation of the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 54

New Directions for the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 64

The Triptolemos Painter / © National Museums of Scotland / Bridgeman Images.

Wars between Persia and Greece, 499–479 b.c.e. 78

The Great Persian Invasion, 480–479 b.c.e. 80

Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 b.c.e. 81

Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 89

The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e. 104

Chapter 3 Review 110

Art Resource, NY.

The Rise of Macedonia, 359–323 b.c.e. 119

The Hellenistic Kingdoms, 323–30 b.c.e. 122

The End of the Hellenistic Kingdoms 128

Hellenistic Culture 129

Chapter 4 Review 140

Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Roman Social and Religious Traditions 144

From Monarchy to Republic 150

Roman Imperialism and Its Consequences 156

Civil War and the Destruction of the Republic 163

Chapter 5 Review 172

Museo Arqueologico Nacional, Madrid, Spain / De Agostini Picture Library /

Politics and Society in the Early Roman Empire 184

Life in the Roman Golden Age, 96–180 c.e. 188

The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire 193

Competing Religious Beliefs 199

From Stability to Crisis in the Third Century c.e. 202

Chapter 6 Review 208

Basilica di San Giovanni Battista, Monza, Italy / Bridgeman Images.

The Official Christianization of the Empire, 312–c. 540 218

Non-Roman Kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire, c. 370–550s 229

The Roman Empire in the East, c. 500–565 236

Chapter 7 Review 246

Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.